As many of you are no doubt aware, Jersey Jack Pinball is working hard on their forthcoming The Hobbit pinball machine – and one of the latest revelations is updated playfield artwork. Although complaints about the original artwork were honestly quite minimal, the updated artwork is in a league of its own.

Here’s a direct side-by-side comparison, with the new artwork (and playfield plastics) on the left, and the original artwork on the right.

As Keanu would say... whoa! Click on the photo for a larger version. More updates after the break.

What’s that? I haven’t even mentioned Jersey Jack Pinball’s second game here on Pinplay! So, let me do that right now: it’s The Hobbit, and it’s due out in late 2014. There, now that wasn’t so hard!

Yesterday in a news release, JJP uncovered the third piece of The Hobbit’s currently incomplete playfield schematic, making this a bit like a puzzle that we can all put together. It was back in mid-May when JJP first showed the lower third of the playfield, and then last week when they added the top right corner. Yesterday, the entire middle section was uncovered, along with an updated lower half that shows significant changes over the one back in May.

So far, JJP has stated that The Hobbit will be “a more expansive flowing game with fast shots and multiple ramps”, will feature an interactive Smaug as the main toy, along with subways and a mountainscape. Details visible in the so-far rather symmetrical playfield layout include a magnet, 4 flippers, a left outlane kickback with adjustable ball aiming device, dual banks of 3 drop targets, moving axes on the slings, what looks to be like 4 pop-up items in the playfield (think bash toys), a rear ramp diverter, a newton ball, numerous habitrails, a unique VUK fed by a subway, and what could possibly be a center pop-up post between the flippers.

The complete playfield layout is expected to be revealed before the end of August, when the pre-order price of the game is set to increase from $7500 to $8000. For more on JJP’s The Hobbit, visit the Jersey Jack Pinball website.

For now, in addition to the above image of the two separate releases of the playfield already joined together for your convenience, I have also prepared a joined PDF with original vector artwork that you can use to zoom in on any section without a loss of quality. It’s also only a couple hundred kilobytes in size. To download the vector PDF, click here!