Only one.

I got dibs.

LTG : )

I'd be happy to do some horse trading with you LTG on that

Aimtron/American Pinball is about to pull a Capcom with Big Bang Bar move if they pull the plug on Cuphead.
Someone needs to get in front of the decision makers and show them what’s actually happening. If they have money to support one last attempt, they should get some talent back, code Cuphead right, release Cuphead, and bring in a real leader who can run a tight ship.
They’ve got good products, and more importantly they can actually produce machines at a seemingly decent pace. That’s more than JJP and CGC can say right now.

should not made bbq an main line game / in front of other games in the pipe. Just like capcom makeing that football game.

But is the code ready?? Tank force and BBQ code buggy.

You're missing that the reason the company failed - is still there. The owners that didn't know how to hire, manage, or have the willingness to invest properly.

All the people that actually bootstrapped the company, who had the knowledge, and the competency to do it practically are all gone and split with burnt bridges.

What you're saying is "you can have a pinball company if you actually built one, got the right people, spent all the startup money needed, and kept it fed... because of cuphead".

Meanwhile, the folks there don't want to spend the money. That's the core thing here. The need to spend money to make money. They let people squander the little money they did let go and then cut it all off. What could possibly convince them to start all over? They know cuphead and what people are telling them about it. It wasn't convincing enough for them to just replace fix and keep spending more money.

AP games were always value priced - it wasn't enough to shift the market to their favor. And their cheapness always held them back from promoting the games well enough to actually get in front of more buyers.

Visit AP, they will let you at least play it if you are curious.

I agree with everything you said with one exception: GTF was not what I'd call "value priced", the SE was "what have you been smoking" priced.

I've seen people mention that somebody should pick up this IP/game and make it themselves so I'm just going to toss out a wild idea: What if Turner Pinball did just that? I don't think any of the bigger companies would waste their time with this game. For Turner though, it kind of makes sense. He's been known to buy existing games that were abandoned and build them. He makes a quality product. This would be easily his most appealing theme to date.

Just a thought, maybe even wishful thinking if you really would like to see this game be available one day.

He would have to secure the license from studio MDHR. Then he would have to buy the dev from AP. I don't see that happening.

I don't either. But which company makes more sense than Turner in the unlikely event that it does happen?

No one is taking into account that just maybe that the Cuphead IP owner's had enough of A.P. and their ways of doing business?

How dare you speak any truth? They were cutthroat cheap bastards and showed many the door and left them unpaid.

Live a little.

I was just in Chicago, too! Wish I had known.

You didn't hit me up? wth??? Also I could have set you up with a cheap gottlieb the games to rescue

One of the reasons that Stern is successful IMHO is they have built foundations. They use standard mechanical PF design guides, they use a standard software platform that all of their engineers know, their manufacturing tools and test jigs all work as expected with the right connectors that mate, their sales and distribution model has been implemented over many years, etc.

For one pinball manufacturer to 'pick up' an mostly completed game from someone else would mean they need to build up all of this previous knowledge and foundations from scratch and would force them into having a bi-furcated business... a tall order for a small company.

DPX did it. Turner is working on doing it. Spooky did it when they were much smaller. Look...again..I don't think any of this is likely to happen. I was just giving the guys who kept mentioning that somebody needs to pick up the pieces and make this game happen something to chew on and hope for.

JJP / BOF may be better able to pick up AP games as they use X86-64 PC's. Unlike sterns ARM + custom node borads.

One cash grab move at the end isn't what sank the company... that was just stupid move #255 downstream of the already critical choices that really mattered.

Ooh.....node broads? Where can we find those?

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DPX didn't take over any finished game or platform for aiw - They took drawings of a PF and worked from that.
TNA was a big of a anomaly. You have a game built by the guy who is also the engineer for your primary supplier, whom you have a tight personal and business relationship with... and the game was a homebrew, not a production ready game. Basically TNA was taken in as the design, not a finished good.

The closest example is LOV - where AP took the completed prototype and was able to onboard it into production with manageable changes.

Everything the prior poster said was true. Everything from parts sourcing, software, parts selection, documentation, quality requirements... these are things you design the product with in mind when designing the game. Doing it after the fact basically leads to redesigning much of the game.

This is why TBL faultered when they went from polished prototype to taking it to manufacturing. They had to go back and redo things as it would make sense for that manufacturer.. and they were only doing assembly. Not all the software lifecycle, etc like would be done here.

It would only make sense if the new company can adapt to what AP has already done. For small guys like Turner, they are trying to make things work by doing it differently.. meaning they would likely fall behind if building someone else's product.

I'm sure people are eyeballing cuphead -- but you have to expect AP is looking for a sale.. not a partner. Meaning someone needs to pay up front... that limits your audience quickly. And even if it were a royality model.. someone needs to believe in cuphead.

I gotta believe it's not as great as people believe it to be.. else someone would have done the hard steps to capitalize on it.

The controller is not the issue... both run commodity OSs. Games are designed with HAL layers -- and why companies like AP can design games on simulators running the same game code.

The bigger adaption is the hardware. AP used a PROC design, and then shifted to custom implementation.. presumbly close to PROC drivers. But they always had custom light system. Stern obviously has its custom node architecture.

Games are designed with the platform constraints in mind.. so changing that (like driver or switch counts) can have cascading effects too.

All of these discussions always boil down to the same thing... change is expensive. If it means accepting change, or redesigning to eliminate it. It's all time and money.

I ported LOV to use same basic framework used on AP games as the AP platform which is descendant from pyprocgame as is skeleton game that LOV was first built on. We did not totally rework it to take advantage of all of the improvements on the AP framework, but did some things like the service mode, code updating, led support, the improved AV system (but not the newest one introduced with Hot wheels, not like it needed it), etc.

LOV runs on Rpi4 and can run also run on in intel and fundamentally that is true of the other games as well, assuming sufficient processing power. Not saying it is plug and play, but not some massive effort.

Certainly a game built on a totally different framework would require more rework, having been built on skeleton game was one of the reasons LOV was appealing.

Actually Houdini used multimorphic PDLEDs, with custom light boards. We developed our light board system for Oktoberfest. Cheaper and less wiring. The original three Oktoberfest prototypes also used PDLEDs, which is why if they are updated to newer code they will be bricked. Prototypes were sold against my wishes. But i did do one code update after the code was complete that would work on those prototypes, but as i said any later bug fix releases will brick it.

How did that code updating hook into the base OS updates? How tied was the game code to the basic commodity OSs?
As is can you easily update the base os or did that need more an fuller image update?

I can confirm Turner was made aware of this situation and he did attempt to reach out to MDMR and/or AP regarding the game. I don’t know what will come ot this, or if Cuphead has a fighting chance in hell of seeing the light of day, but Don and others did bring this to his attention.

I think salvaging whatever they can from this existing design would be a huge win for anyone willing to take the chance provided they can also get Ryan McQuaid onboard.

MDMR created all new animations and music for this game. There was a ton of work already put into this project, including a playfield design with mechanisms that had never been done before. It would be a travesty for this to just end up in the dust bin of history, but other games have suffered similar fates…

Merlin’s Arcade (which is the next Turner game) was actually a dead concept from another veteran pinball designer (Jon Norris) who gave his approval to see it finally be created, so you never know. Cuphead would be a true step up from anything Turner has done up to this point if they can keep all the crazy stuff intact at a decent price.

While we wait forever to see if Cuphead will get a new life, a rousing game of Trouble is one way to get your dice mech fix.

TIL that a $9000 MSRP base model GTF is considered "value priced".

Labor day sale on gtf for the next week

7480 deluxe
7780 signature

Pretty good. Not as low as other models but substantial

I’m going to wait and see if it hits LOV pricing and then I’m going all in.

I'm a buyer at 5500

Lets be real here, AP had promise till the terrible botched GTF release. That was a joke. Then the finished product needed a lot of tweaking, had cheap 3d printed toys, and was still expensive.

That was a huge nail in the coffin.

Barry O's pinball bullshit was the final one. Cuphead didn't stand much of a chance.

Has anyone tried contacting AP to just make them an offer for whatever game at a particular price? Given the constant sales and how eager they are to get rid of inventory, could be worth a shot

That's fair. I might call them and see if I can buy like 3 GTF @ 5k each.

I bet a distro could walk in there and clean them out for pennies on the dollar. Aimtron's market cap is like $156 million, wouldn't you just wanna be done with the circus sideshow?

But I guess the answer is "no" since they rebranded to Orbit Games.

Yeah I don't think $5K is the number for 3 - maybe for 30 of them some absolute blow out of them all. You could corner the market and bankrupt yourself at the same time.

LOL I have 2 other people I know would take them at 5k so 5k is the figure. I figure for 5k it can't be worse than some other games I have.

As a fellow Illinois pinhead, I’d be interested in going in with you on an offer.

Lots of us would go in at $5K - that is why LOV is compelling at $5300 basically. Nothing sells for that but the crappy Costco Stern Home pins that none of us would buy.

If their desperate but I think they are not there yet....I was trying to even get a used GTF at $5500. I could not make a deal and I thought that was totally fair for a person who has an ad on Pinside (distributor who had the floor model) knowing we were going to see more discounts and place his DE out of line with NIB games. I get it he wasn't making anything but a game at a distributor is just like any of us, taking up space, sometimes you make money sometimes you lose a little. Buying 3 machines at a huge disount is not compelling - buying all of them or 20-30 of them is and then what... You will need to get a box truck to get them because it won't be free shipping but hey you guys live near by American. Shipping is a hard cost to them, discount and ship it...no one would do that.

Good luck - 100% serious. All of would be jeleous of that deal.

You never looked at the prices of Octo? or Hot Wheels? or the other titles?

When GTF came out, the deluxe model was still cheaper than a Stern Premium... and on par with editions from Spooky too. Scooby BSE was $8870. Rush Premium was $8999. GTF Deluxe was $8995 and on par with the mid-tier offers from other companies.

Hot wheels was $6,295 when launched. Stern premiums in 2020? $7800 (Pros were $6200)
Houdini was also priced cheap when launched too.

GTF of course had the 'reach for the moon' pricing on the two dumb editions.. but that was already after Fix had screwed the place up.

Man, this is sad if American is really leaving the pinball business. And it sure does look like they are.
The concept was great, as sort of a balance to Stern in the pinball general mass market.
Spooky is a boutique manufacturer, and they're great at it.
JJP is more upscale, and they're pretty successful at that.
CGC is something of a specialty manufacturer.
Who knows what BOF and Turner will work out to be.
But right now, no other company is really working on the mass market appeal games that Stern does so well.

I seriously considered getting LOV since the theme appeals to me. GTF looked great and I love corny 1950's scifi stuff.
Is it partially my fault since I bought AIQ, Rush, and D&D instead of LOV, Hot Wheels, and GTF? I'd hate to think of it that way.

On par with mid-tier offerings != "budget". You can say they were a good deal compared to what you get from a Stern Premium at a similar price point but that's not what budget means.

Now, a company like Turner Pinball who are offering MORE than what a Stern Premium does at the price of a Pro - that is a good deal, AND is a budget game.

Get LOV its a fun game!

This is what I was trying to say but I don't want to get into a back-and-forth with flynn, he's too good at it. A non-licensed theme being essentially the same price as the Stern Premiums with a well-known theme isn't budget priced at all IMO. Plus it has the 3D printed, non-painted ships that looked pretty cheap.

k

They put more of the GTF 3D back glass up for sale...

Man, Fix made a big deal about how hard these things were to source and that they were extremely limited. To me it seems they are selling the last of these from any unbuilt signature models.

The rumor was that only about 150 were put in boxes. Might as well grab the last of these while people still can…

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Spooky is no longer a boutique manufacturer

I wonder, when all is said and done, what the absolute bottom blow out price on BBQ will be?

That seems reasonable. If a manufacturer elects not to pay for licensed themes, it seems that those dollars can be allocated towards the BOM …

The AP/hype/etc threads have no shortage of people saying things like "I really like the camp of GTF!" "I really like non-licensed themes - they should sell great! Like the old days!" "I really want AP to succeed!" with a very small percentage of these people actually giving any $$ to AP.