It was API's original involvement with pinside that convinced me to buy Houdini and Oktoberfest. They really seemed to be working with the pinball community and had a genuine interest in supporting the games and the people that bought them. It has been sad and disappointing to see the decline over the past few years and I wish you all the best in tuning this ship back on the right course.

But those property taxes in TX - oof!

And the power grid is more reliable in IL.

Sorry, where can MDHR’s side be read/ heard? Outta the loop and was really hoping for this game to come out.

Does the OLD AP own them $$$ for not makeing the game?

Congrats on the purchase. Early Houdini owner here and still own it.

So with you being in Tx and AP being in Chicago, how will you manage it long distance?

And exactly how did you go about mentioning buying a pinball company to the wife?

Yeah, I completely acknowledge that from a support standpoint, it's a risky move; I've been there before, someone reports a bug to support, and after troubleshooting for days the user casually drops "I made some changes to the software, do you think that might have caused it?". That can be somewhat mitigated with image hashes in logs provided to support to know if it's a custom or official version.

But on the flip side, having the community be able to help with code commits may help a ton; I'm a big believer that "more eyes on code results in better code", faster and more reliable bugfixes, which would allow the hired software engineers to focus more of their time on new products. Also adds a longevity to the game in a worst case scenario where support does get dropped; I know my local spot has a custom rom for our Theater of Magic for better competitive play.

I'd totally understand if AP didn't want to go that direction, but as a big open source advocate, how often do I get a chance to talk to the owner of a company and pitch the idea?

Came here to ask…
Please save Cuphead.
That is all.

Yeah, I certainly am sensitive to property taxes (as someone who was born and raised in the upper Midwest). I can’t speak to Illinois’ power grid superiority, but the property tax in both IL and TX are among the highest in the country. At the very least, TX offsets some of that by having no state income tax.

And now, back to our regular scheduled programming!

If you're into open source pinball my suggestion would be to find a way to contribute to https://missionpinball.org/

There are so many reasons a commercial company would not want to open source their code, a lot of them really good ones, but first and foremost it's probably a non-starter for most license discussions.

Mission Pinball though is totally open source, and is an awesome way to be involved in coding games.

So White Water 2 is essentially White Water 1, just you are shooting to the right in the upper playfield, rather than to the left like it was in the original...

GENIUS!

you can have modding hooks like other games and for support they can say does the game crash when mods are disabled?

I think AP also has an way to load local location ad's. So you do have ways to add custom stuff to games in an code safe way.

Good interview on Flipnout podcast with Bryan. Time will tell of course but sounds like a genuine dude and didn't get a bs vibe from him.

I'm not sure about the custom options though. Sounds like a nice idea for customers (apart from the additional wait time this would be sure to add) but a bit of a nightmare for a manufacturer and more work for a distro, not just to make sure everyone gets the right games and addons but also not knowing whether to order games into stock or not. Should they order 10 basic models or will they be stuck with them because everyone wants to customize their order? Nice idea but I'm not sure it works in practice.

As I said time will tell but overall this feels positive so far. Good luck to Bryan and his team!

Maybe Iceman can give you pointers on how to invest in pinball? He has an impeccable track record!

I saw a game designer position, but who is going to be programmer at new AP? There are only a handful of people that know the AP framework and if there is someone new, who will train him/her?

I can't wait for your parking lot reports!

This is a page literally ripped RIGHT out of the old Deep Root playbook. It's a terrible idea and no serious pinball company should be attempting this.

Advice to new management: revisit the Deep Root thread. If any of your ideas happen to be similar to those put forth by the owner of that company, reconsider immediately.

Here's an idea: Plan, design, mass produce, and sell ONE pinball machine. It's a really good start. You don't need to have 6 games in production at once. You don't need to have 3 games in production at once. Just do one. Focus on making one game that some people will like, instead of trying to make a bunch of different games (and custom to order!) that everybody will like.

Show us you can do it. Show yourself you can do it. And we can all go from there.

Building pinball machines is a lot different than the LED business.

I mean, are you, you know, busy right now?

“Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it."
-George Santayana

"I'm too drunk to taste this chicken"
Colonel Sanders

Spot on.

It'll be hard enough getting one out the door. Custom stuff, different tiers, assembly drawings, testing, perhaps different jigs on the production floor - all add another level of complexity that is a burden on essentially what is a new startup. It would be a huge time sink that wouldn't payoff.

And while I'm on a roll...you don't need to hire four different washed up pinball designers off the street, and then have them leading teams designing four crazy pinball machines.

Just hire ONE washed up pinball designer, and see how they do getting one reasonably normal pinball machine out the door.

It's all there in the Deep Root thread. Just don't do all the crazy shit that they did and you are already way ahead of the game.

Full color LED displays instead of LCD? Could be pretty awesome looking.

Hell you don't even need a washed up designer, Ryan McQuaid is around, he already did one and knows the software! He can even help with getting Cuphead out the door.

I listened to the Flip N Out podcast with Bryan and read Ron Lindeman's answers to 14 questions on Kineticist. I like what I am hearing from both Ron and Bryan and while time will tell, pinball is hard, etc. etc., I do not like the comparison to DeepRoot for a lot of reasons but here are my primary ones:

* Bryan built a successful manufacturing business from scratch that he built over 20 years and sold, presumably for a tidy sum;
* The business he built made custom, one off or short production run signs (and large runs too - he said they buy 50,000 power supplies a month for outdoor use) - he knows this kind of manufacturing;
* American actually delivered pinball machines, multiple titles, and there are people there that will remain with the company;
* His stated goals are reasonable - one to two machines the first year, and they will be likely be licensed which is key to success as we know;
* Bryan is a pinball enthusiast, this will be a labor of love for him;
* It appears they have already improved customer support from folks posting in this thread; and

First and primary, this is Bryan's $$$, not an investment trust/pyramid scheme. This alone makes this NOTHING like Deeproot/Robert. I am looking forward to seeing their first release and glad that it appears American Pinball will be an ongoing concern for at least the immediate future.

For starters, they aren’t taking investor $$$ and defrauding people.

We’ve had a lot of stupid people fraudsters come along the past 15 years.

The common denominator was they got away with taking deposits and other peoples $$$ 1st. Those days are long gone.

A lot of common sense goes into being successful at anything. Start with making games we want to buy!

Spooky is on a roll, they just got better and better. They aren’t stupid. Same with BOF

GL new AP!

Spooky has brilliantly laid out the playbook for how to create and scale-up a new pinball company. They should be the blue-print to follow. Don't try to do too much at once or scale-up too fast. Their first game should be limited to 450 units or less and then built-up from there if successful.

I just recently got into pinball...was mainly an arcade collector before. I know nothing of the AP history but I have been interested in writing software for a pinball company at some point. I have a full time job now but I do a lot of software in my free time. I've spent 10 years helping write xLights that folks use to create those big Christmas light shows like on the Great Christmas Light Fight. So I'm also a bit of an LED expert since I have 1000's of them on my house every December...lol. This is what my house looks like:

I agree with this take.

Having been behind the scenes at one of the painful operations I can tell you that a lot of problems come from always trying to stay one step ahead of the money. Always a smokescreen, a new milestone, an excuse, anything to not be accountable to the investors or the people who put deposits down.

It's a toxic mindset, because it poisons every part of the process. You cut corners and skip steps and rush things to keep meeting the short term goals. In the end everything takes longer because there's no foundation or long term plan.

Pinball is hard, but it's not *that hard*, it's just that too many times we've seen messy operations make it all worse than it needs to be.

However many mistakes Old American Pinball made, they shipped a bunch of games pretty drama free. Heighway was a shit show, but I've worked with Pinball Bros on four different titles now in one way or another, and it's been night and day.

I honestly believe if you're not trying to pull a fast one and have a plan with the money not being tied to fooling anyone that it's much different. Every horror story we remember was pretty much the opposite.

Just listened to Bryan's interview with Flippin' Out. Sounds really promising for American. I'm happy they will be continuing on and correcting course. Prior to the last few Fix poor decisions in terms of games, I felt like American was making a solid product and heading in the right direction. Bet of luck to Bryan and the team!

Not sure where you got that. We are planning 1 title this year and 1-2 titles each year going forward after game 1. Customization is for trim packages on a machine. Thanks for your input.

I'm assuming the plan is to try to finish what has already been started, and not start from scratch with your first game.

Is Cuphead really dead dead? I mean these guys who make the game(Cuphead videogames) take ages to come out with anything. A delay can't possibly be reason enough to have the relationship severed forever. And if it's a money thing, a made game in production would solve that wrinkle... in theory.

Honestly I'm not sure why I give a shit if it's released or not. What little was released of the playfield wasn't earth shattering. Maybe just the thought of a American Pinball game without the ugliest stuff imaginable on the LCD is somehow enough, in that lowered expectations kind of way.

ignore Levi he hates any company not Stern...

Since he's going the full Rob Mueller community engagement route, you don't think it's useful for him to receive any input besides which 90s Williams sequels he should make or which unemployed industry vets he should bring in?

It's nice that he's a successful business man who didn't make his fortune by defrauding old ladies.

That doesn't give him any particular leg up on building a successful pinball company. It's a uniquely different business than selling LEDs, we've all seen that. I'm gonna assume he didn't build his previous successful business by letting an LED forum run it. If he's gonna let Pinside run his new venture, he should at least be getting different perspectives. As a successful businessman, he certainly knows that already.

But that only means he doesn't hate Stern, since "not hating" is as good as it gets.

Levi Heart (resized).png

Cuphead sounded so promising, and the Studio MDMR folks were the ones doing the custom animations and such. I heard so many amazing things about this game.

Maybe AP can reach back out to them and let them know the company is under new management now, perhaps they could be persuaded to give it another chance as the game was pretty much finished. There was even a working prototype of the game.

He says in the interview that he won't rule anything out regarding Cuphead but that is not the game they are planning to release next, which is apparently something they've been working on for awhile. Who exactly "they" are is unclear.

The game could be Masters of the Universe, HeMan. I could be totally wrong though.

Kaneda and a few other Podcasters have said that the Riot Pinball folks have had this game in the works for some time. It is, or was, being developed by them, supposedly.

We also heard the project was cancelled years ago, so maybe it’s something else entirely.

Is it possible they are contract manufacturing a game? Because none of the rumored other titles they were working on seem either likely or smart to do.

Whirl-O-PinBall?

Bryan said the next game is a license and that they are going to be staying away from original themes for awhile.

I love my GTF, but this is a smart move from a business standpoint.

Ryan McQuaid is not really an deep coder right?

Also the IP holders of Cuphead may be done with AP.

I mean, he coded Sonic himself, he has to have some knowledge.

Yeah, but a BBQ whitelabel would fit the mold of things they were working on and licensed.

I think that was more of useing an framework to code / config the game not any of the lower level stuff.

Cuphead would have been dead on arrival. It's a theme that no one was asking for. Hopefully they start fresh with a stronger license that also has great artwork. I suppose Cuphead could work if they decide to start small and limit it to like 250 machines as a way to prove that they have the chops to produce a small run. it's a strong enough theme for that.

Only hire this guy to fill snack machines but not manage a design team. Thanks in advance!

IMG_2332 (resized).jpeg

Ryan is working elsewhere now (can't remember where). In the interview Bryan is rather vague on the question of designers, doesn't say who's done the work on the next game and says he wants designers / employees that are willing to sleep in the car for a couple of nights and really pour themselves into the work. To me this translates to not wanting to bring in an established designer like Nordman (just an example) who is set in their ways. He did joke that if Elwin was listening and wanted to give him a call that would be great.

You come to work one day and find the soda machine has been exclusively stocked with

Orbitz (resized).png

The new AP could make a decent size run of a Capcom Kingpin. Licensing should be somewhat easy. Playfield layout is done. Just rewrite the software to work on the AP hardware.

I believe Ryan now works at Spooky Pinball.