Just wanted to drop by here and let everyone know that the Predator project is still very much alive and our prototype is almost finished. Anyone in the northern mid-west (or even further away, of course, if you're so inclined) is invited to come out to the Michigan Pinball Expo (www.MiPinball.com) from April 12th-15th in Oakland, MI to see and play the prototype first hand and play a TON of other pins for the weekend. Also, the website, www.skitbpinball.com, has been updated with some new pictures and a video or two so you can all keep up with the progress we're making with the game. Hope to see some of you at the show and play some games together!

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Thanks for all the kind words, guys!

@Blake: Look us up when you're at the show, we'll let ya get as many pics or videos as you like, just come find us. We're very hard to miss.

@BlackRose: This one isn't a wide-body, sorry As the game was coming together, it just didn't need to grow physically, as we were able to fit everything we initially wanted (and more) into a standard cabinet, even though at times it wasn't easy. We have a photos section on the website, but I'll leave a picture here of the whitewood so you can get an idea of the layout. There are a lot of things missing from this pic, so try to reserve judgement for when it is fully assembled I imagine it will have everything but ramps on it within the next day or two, and the ramps will be added hopefully within the week. Of course, we'll share pics here as they come.

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We don't exactly advertise much, so I'm not too surprised you haven't heard of this before. There's not a lot of reason to advertise real heavily, considering we are only making ~200 of these, so word of mouth and the appearances we're making at expos, conventions and shows should eat those up fairly quickly, we believe.
The website is as sparse as the concrete info we have at the moment. We'd love to post up the nitty gritty particulars, but we just haven't been able to land any exact monetary numbers or concrete dates. Candidly speaking here on Pinside is a bit different than official website postings, so I feel more comfortable sharing some tentative information.
Please read that a few more times: Tentative! Tentative! Tentative!
Pre-orders open on April 15th of this year (2012), either by email, phone or on the website itself. The site will be updated with all of the necessary information to get the pre-orders in. If you have a number you'd like to reserve you can make that choice, as well, assuming it isn't already taken.
Cost is a big deal, so we're working on driving that down with every decision we make. Right now, (please see disclaimer above: Tentative!) we estimate the end cost to hover in the mid-to-high $4000 range; something like $4500~$4750. We're doing everything we can to keep it under that $5000 mark.
As for the guys behind it, we are an extremely small company made up exclusively of life-long industry professionals and hobbyists. The names of the people involved are listed on the website under the crew section. If you're looking to see if we have any Steve Ritchies, George Gomezes or Brian Eddies, you won't be finding anything like that. The entire company is made up of fresh, new talent, eager to show off what we've got.

Playfield design and software is done by yours truly, Kevin W. Kulek.
Playfield artwork is done by James Dubay.
Assembly design and R&D is done by Aaron Klumpp.
All of our paperwork - both monetary and legal - is done by Kathy L. Kulek.

All of us are able to be reached directly by our email addresses on the website under the crew section. We are all also reachable by Facebook under Skit-B Pinball. We all have our own personal Facebook accounts which you can reach us at, but we kind of prefer using the company profile for this type of stuff. Conversely, if you want to just talk pinball or whatnot, by all means, go ahead and add us

The licensing and likeness costs and all that aren't really something we're allowed to talk much about, unfortunately. If you're wondering if certain characters will appear in the game / artwork, I can tell you that all of the notable characters are present in both.
I'm not exactly clear what you mean with the term "oversight." We haven't run into any qualms with anyone about how the characters are being portrayed or anything, if that's what you mean. I know there was a big hiccup with the Demolition Man over something like that with Wesley Snipes and they had to go through multiple backglass designs because of it, but we haven't had any issues with anything like that, so we're happy.

Depends on when NorthWest Champs is, honestly. I haven't been to Seattle in quite some time, and I'd love a good excuse to go back. We appreciate the enthusiasm, as always, now go change your pants.

We're on it, fellas, we really are, but it might be a few more days. We were originally going to take a video or two of the original playfield we had in it, but that was just too nasty to show and not everything worked as it should have, so we had to wait until everything was taken care of and the physics and trigonometry were all proper before posting up any real footage of the game being played. Luckily, as RGR has pointed out, we're near the end of the production cycle, so we're looking at getting all of that in line within a matter of days. I will certainly come back and let everyone know when the videos go up as soon as they are ready. Until then, thanks again for all the excitement; we sincerely feed off of it and it keeps us extremely motivated to make sure we make the absolute best game possible!

We are really loving all of the excitement we're receiving from you guys. We really can't get this done quickly enough to show it off for you!

Blake, email me at [email protected]. We can set up a time for you to come give the game a fully hands-on run with as many videos and pics as you can handle so you can relay them back to Pinside.

Todd, you live like 8 minutes away from my house... I'll send you a message in a few days and you can just come over and play the prototype Predator and spank me on my Shadow again. A day of grillin' and pinball sounds like it may be in order, what say you?

This is the magic of being a small, non-profit company. Not only does it keep the games more affordable, everything we get goes right back into the company itself as a direct investment towards the next game. Sounds like a system that works, to me.

We have to agree. While some extremely complex games out there are undeniably fun to play (Twilight Zone, Theatre of Magic, etc.), we tend to lean more towards a straight-forward design with deeper software to really bolster that replay value. The game has been designed with home users at the forefront of our minds, and we make no assumptions as to how many other games they have at home. In short, the game was designed to be accessible enough to allow someone enough excitement and fun from their first play to make an educated decision as to if they want to own one or not without having to explain intricate playfield mechanics, while still offering enough depth in the rulesets to retain that same level of fun and excitement at home for years on end, even if it's the only game in their collection.

Those are Photoshop mockups that didn't really account for the Governator's prestigious schnoz. The real cabinet will account for that. You may still freely boop the artwork, if you so choose.

We like Skit-B, though! Anyways, we may end up removing the company logo from the front of the apron and maybe even the backglass, but in all honesty we really dig how it looks on the side. Time and criticism will be the judge of that, though.