Cardona Pinball

Cardona Pinball Designs is a pinball manufacturer based near Pennsville, New Jersey, that builds licensed "2.0" conversion kits — new games, code, and hardware for classic Bally and Williams machines. Founder James Cardona, an electrical engineer, spent years writing free rule rewrites for existing machines as a hobby; around 2020 his homebrew Battle for the Green ruleset for Williams' 1997 No Good Gofers caught the attention of Planetary Pinball Supply, which controls licensing for classic Williams and Bally titles and licensed him to commercialize it. The kits replace a machine's electronics with a new boardset, backbox display, and translite on the FAST Pinball hardware platform, keeping the original playfield and the original game as a selectable mode.

No Good Gofers: Battle for the Green shipped in February 2023, followed by Black Rose: Skull and Bones, for Bally's 1992 Black Rose, in August 2023, and Fish Tales: Ultimate Fishing Challenge, for Williams' 1992 Fish Tales, in April 2026. Cardona writes the code, rules, sound, and animation himself, and a fourth licensed kit was in development as of mid-2026.