When Stern fired up Rush in 2022, it didn’t just license a band — it enshrined one of rock’s most cerebral power trios in glass and chrome, and did so with real reverence. Designer John Borg, the Stern veteran behind music-licensed favorites like Metallica and Kiss, was a natural fit for a band whose fans prize musicianship the way pinball players prize a clean combo. This is solid-state Stern with an LCD, built for four players and wired to celebrate the catalog: sixteen Rush tracks — from “Tom Sawyer” and “The Spirit of Radio” to “2112” and “Red Barchetta” — are yours to choose from at the start of every ball, with custom speech piped in from Geddy Lee, Alex Lifeson, and Barenaked Ladies frontman Ed Robertson cheering you on.

Mechanically, Borg lays the playfield out like a stage rig. A bidirectional thrust magnet snaps the ball across the table, a transparent subway insert lets you watch locked balls idle below the surface, and the signature wrinkle lives on the lockdown bar: an action button that diverts your ramp feeds left or right, with a flasher strobing to tip you off where the next shot is headed. Pop bumpers, a three-bank of drop targets, and a spinning target round out the arena, but the heartbeat is always that setlist.

For the competitor, song selection is where strategy begins — the colored records you light steer which song mode you fall into, so smart players cue up shots like a jukebox rather than flailing for points. There’s poignancy here too: the game honors late drummer Neil Peart, who died in 2020, with Stern backing a research award in his name. Loud, deep, and rewarding to the players who know the deep cuts — it’s a fitting monument to a band that never coasted.