The Brain

The Brain is a truly unique, one-of-a-kind pinball machine: a special conversion of Stern's 2003 'The Simpsons Pinball Party', created in 2006 for the Discovery Center Museum in Rockford, Illinois, where it remains on exhibit. Only a single unit was ever made.

Stern sent a blank white cabinet and blank playfield to the museum, where Bruce Quast, the museum's Exhibits Manager, hand-painted all new artwork for the playfield, plastics, cabinet, and translite around a human-physiology theme. Stern then clear-coated the art, produced custom playfield plastics, assembled the finished machine, stripped all Simpsons references from the software, and changed the mini-display to continuously scroll "BRAIN GAME." All sounds were replaced with simple electronic chime-like tones reminiscent of classic electro-mechanical games.

A distinctive quirk built into the software has the game randomly go into a simulated "seizure," locking up for about 15 seconds with an accompanying display effect before a special game-over message tells the next person in line to play - a playful, if unsettling, nod to the machine's medical theme. As a hand-built museum piece rather than a commercially produced game, The Brain occupies an unusual niche in Stern's history.