Nothing official from American Pinball yet. And their contract building might include pinball.

Time will tell.

LTG : )

I stopped thinking about the next 60 days of AP’s life, but will always think of AP as the maker of the beautiful Houdini machine and the earnest passion for it we saw in Josh. I’ve never felt that level of personal connection to any other machine. I happily gave them my $5400 to get my NIB machine 5 or so go years ago.

LTG, have they even kept you in the loop about anything?

Has anyone had any real contact with anyone from AP?
I placed an order with them a few weeks ago and it got damaged with UPS and so they never delivered it.
I tried calling and emailed every email I could find. No response at all. I have ordered other things from them and they have all been delivered.
So if anyone has a secret email or phone number for them please let me know.
Thanks

About the same as Time Warp would be my guess.

Yes. Not on recent rumors on Pinside.

LTG : )

Houdini was close to being my first NIB. I couldn't even play it a show due to the line on the one machine they brought, so I waited on purchasing.

GTF was very close to then becoming ny first NIB. But the unveiling lost me.

I ended up with a GZ instead.

So, I wanted to own/support American Pinball twice, but both times, was let down.

Don't have good news for you,
I have a few e-mails in on some parts as I've went through my GTF (Tank targets, ramp, and aura light). No response, I posted about that on their FB announcement and Ronald Lindeman (American GM) reached out via e-mail to let me know they'd touch base with me tomorrow. That was on the 18th and haven't heard anything since.

I took the Aura light apart last night and found a broken solder pad on the led strip, moved the wire up to the next join and soldered it in - totally repaired now. After going through it if I really wanted to I'd just buy some strip RGB LED lights of Amazon and replace the lights inside the bar.

Just gonna order the tank targets off the web site and live with the ramp (it's not super damaged, but cracked at the support right behind the tank toy on the play field. It's more than well supported.

I don't think you will see huge sales of discounted BBQs, they did not build a ton of those. On GTF, despite me telling them 100 max of the tank cabinet, given that most would not want it since it pretty much requires being at the end of a row of pins if you are going to put the head up and down (I did push for a motorized head version, but never got any traction on that), but I guess Fix decided to with 700 between LE and SLE and I guess he was so confident that everyone would want that version, that they then built some huge number of them. Add that to the terrible rollout and it seems clear that left AP in a precarious position.

Funny thing is when we parted ways, Fix's plan was for Deluxe to have same Art, which I kept telling him made no sense, it would look stupid without the treads, so at least after I left and from what I heard at the 11th hour, he saw the light and had Franchi crank out a package for the deluxe, which is pretty great. His art for the tank version I also thought was amazing. Had they done more deluxe and less LE and SLE to start, things might have gone differently. I'm sure they were happy I was gone, so they did not have to hear me say "you should have listened to me"

Of course the plus side to Fix's decisions is now a bunch of folks are getting the SLE and LEs versions at a very deep discount.

I think the tank cabinet really lost some of its gravitas when they changed the tire tread width, which was also I after I was gone. Sounds like they had issues with fabrication and concerns about the weight, which was significant. Not that this version would have sold 700 either, but it looked cooler, imho. This image is of Dennis and Paul's first prototype:

IMG_5361 (resized).JPG

oh, and here is a bonus photo, of Captain Kyan with blue hair, while this style reminded me of the woman on moonbase in the old UFO show (a few of you might know it), it did not really capture the look we wanted for the character, and Jack ran out to find a red wig.

IMG_6039 (resized).JPG

I guess that's why I didn't call them "budget". I said "value priced" - meaning you got a lot for the price. And you did, at a price point that was in line with the market, or even below. Hot Wheels in particular was very aggressively priced. Houdini as well.

buahah.. I didn't know credibility could be less than zero, but you just proved it.

I sent them a few emails regarding making a bulk purchase of GTF machines and haven’t heard anything back. I used the website’s contact form and then also sent emails to the addresses I could find. So far, just chirps.

Enjoy BTS stories like these, and welcome all you are willing to share (even if only via dm - I have a 100% record of maintaining confidentiality for those who want it!)

Do you have a distributor you normally work with? They tend to be heard a little louder/sooner and can often get better results.

Yeah, I placed an order for one of those AP shirts with a few other items and someone in their shipping dept sent me a text telling me all shirts with the exception of the BBQ one were sold out.

They asked if there was a substitute item I wanted, and realizing a partial refund would likely take an eternity, I just asked for a BBQ shirt and pint glass. Figure the BBQ shirt can be worn as a gag anyway. lol

I was told that AP will be at Pinball Expo under “Orbit Games”, and that they will have Polycades, a few (likely existing) pinball games, and some new “LARGER” game(s) on display.

I’m guessing the larger games are just FEC nonsense the likes you would see at Dave and Busters. I remember that old Flying Dutchman game they showed off, but it was kinda lame at the time. Hopefully these newer efforts are a bit more impressive.

I was told the next pinball game was in the works but that it was looking “very tight”, and this was just days before the Knapp Article was posted. I’m guessing some final approval didn’t work out.

Anyway, It seems pretty obvious at this point they are moving away from pinball entirely, but who knows…

I wonder how will this move will work as they’re going to be going head to head with another local game company already killing it in their niche, Raw Thrills. I’d consider pinball to be niche as well, but the polycade and redemption arena is SUPER niche.

Polycade is not a new product. Its actually not an API product at all and is owned by Tyler Bushnell (son of Atari founder, Nolan Bushnell)

Raw Thrills is just one of many arcade manufacturers. Several in the mid-west. Off the top of my head - Sega, Namco, Incredible Technologies, ICE, Coastal Amusements, CGC, Adrenaline Amusements, LAI Games, Play Mechanix, Retro Arcade, Jet Games. I'm probably missing as many as I mentioned.

Video arcade/redemption companies far outweigh pinball manufacturing. That's not taking into consideration other coin op companies in the claw, crane, coin pushers, air-hockey, pool table, juke box, photobooth, boxing, vending, exc.