We need more alien threads!

well he may have access to a computer there, and hopefully some sorta connection.. hot spot ?

his last post was in the rebirth thread..

i think he owes a statement to the buyers in this thread... just tap out, and thats it?

Part of the process of Andy leaving will be the handover and changing of passwords to any social media accounts that HP have.

To those that can't understand the business sense, come'on, think sensibly. This is the way the Private Equity investment firms are able to make money:

Take a business that has difficulty due to business process and such. Turn it around. Profit.
NOT: Take a business is operating efficiently, pay market value, contribute nothing in terms of process improvement. Make marginal return.

The value (opportunity) is in turning around the business, the modular IP, and the Alien license. While there is risk of the investors losing money. There is also huge possibility of significant returns. Simple case of risk and return. It's not a dumb play by investors in any way.

Although he was overly harsh on occasion, in all fairness, his suspicions about Alien production turned out to be justified.

And I thought a lot of PE firms work by gutting the company to make the books look better to the next sucker with a fist full of dollars?

#bluehorseshoelovesannacottsteel

A broken score wheel digit is right several times per game.

I'm not so sure about that. The PE deals I've closed were about buying into the revenue stream (even if the investment was masquerading as a loan). They also all retained the prior owner / management in some (usually substanital or meaningful) way.

I've never seen a PE come in on deal that was not generating revenue. Im not saying they don't do it, I've just never seen it.

Yes, but Kaneda was right 24 hours a day. I get a kick out of how so many on this board are simply following, pile-onners. It's fun to pile on to people with unpopular opinions. Look at Whysnow for example. He could not be more wrong for the last 5 years and still, his wild speculation is more respected than the opinion-turned-facts from the one whom shall not be named.

THe problem really is prevalent through all social media. We must protect our echo-chambers at all cost. Whenever someone's ideas don't fit our pre-conceived notions, we must attack him relentlessly until they fight back. At that time, we call for a ban -- echo chamber saved once again.

I'm hoping Kaneda will be unbanned, but I doubt he would come back here to do more than gloat after how he's been treated by a pack of thin-skinned spoiled babies. I'm somewhat sympathetic because when I told the group what should have been obvious, I got the same treatment. In fact, when I observed JPop was demonstrating mental illness several years ago, I was shouted down and banned from the thread. I'll await your apologies by PM....

I think we've all learned that doing research in a company is absolutely valid. Andrews final failure was heighway pinball.. You guys didn't want to hear it.

Laughable.

I don't know, man, Whysnow routinely collects double-digit thumbs downs when he gets going. Say what you will about him but to my knowledge he never made duplicate accounts to get around a temp ban.

... said the thin-skinned pile-onner. But still I don't see any examples of where he was wrong. He may have been wildly unpopular, but he's been right more than most on this board.

All this crazy speculation has been tainted by self-interest. People with "skin in the game" have often been unwilling to accept reality until it is too late. It's like in medieval times when a foot soldier would run back to tell the king they were being overrun and the king says, "Take this traitor's head!" It's always easier to attack the messenger than reassess our own errors in thinking.

How about when he signed on as Jpop's PR guy? You're trying to retcon him into some kind of pinball Nostradamus and the facts just don't fit. He wasn't a villain either, of course, just an attention starved guy acting out on the internet, happens all the time. If he hadn't repeatedly made multiple accounts he'd still be here today.

You guys that think K was just misunderstood in the beginning are as nuts as he was. The guy was off the rails everywhere he tried joining. Got kicked from a good many forums and FB groups.

Guilty pleasure admission though... I do listen to his webcast once in a while and I have actually enjoyed it on occasion.

Whats the best way to pre-order alien if i pay in full?

Call Andrew, He'll take your money. Plus he will put you at the to-p of the list.

Strawman. I'm saying that if you take an unpopular position on this board, guys will feel free to do a big pile-on. If you go out and defend yourself, you get a ban. As soon as your banned, these pile-onners will feel so emboldened by your absence, they blather on like the neighborhood kid who kicks a dog through the kennel wall. I'm not making him out to be Nostradamus. But I understand wanting to do a fake account after the comments you were banned for turn out to be 100% accurate and the guys that get you banned continue their assault while you are forbidden for posting. It's just pussy behavior. Such is the "socials".

Sorry, I when you slipped into yet another woe-is-me snowflake rant. I like you better when you're railing against the Dutch monarchy.

I'm not sure I see the "strawman" in raising an eyebrow at your claim that "Kaneda was right 24 hours a day." But my allergy to nonsense like that is probably just another indication of thin skin. I'll be sure to discuss it with my doctor.

Pinside - so good right now

Imagine if new court related audio was posted in the Predator thread? The top 3 hottest topics would be pinball manufacturers "stealing" from Pinsiders.

Why do I feel like I am on an AOL Political thread?

its one thing to be negative, another to be wrong and yet another to be cocky. Dont be all three...ever again http://cointaker.com/products/aliens-standard-pinball-with-27-backbox-lcd

good call. I ordered four. One for each of my houses and one for the cottage...

Probably because you're an "oldpinguy;" not many of us know what AOL threads are like

Has this already been posted?

http://www.pinballnews.com/news/heighwayexit.html

dang...

just dang...

alien-1 (resized).jpg

I don't put Andrew in the same class as Jpop.

John was a fraud from almost day one with ZERO ability to ever deliver a game

He did a really good job hiding it for quite a while and was riding the wave of a pinball resurgence and hype

Andrew built 2 pins. Much more than a box of blinking lights

That's why the "investors" see opportunity to develop what has started much further

Who knows whether it will succeed or not. With enough money it will, see JJP

Either way, it hasn't ended up like a lot of people thought. People that have paid for an Alien game are now more likely than not going to get one.

That is a GREAT thing.

Clearly Andrew was drowning for a long time. When the request for production payments were made and people like myself didn't send them in, it was pretty much game over, especially after expo

I'm sure he hoped to onesy twosy it and it just became too much

As for the "ramp" lies, surely anybody that was paying attention knew that was a joke

What would have Jack at JJP done? What did he do and say to limp along? I am glad they survived

I happy for everybody that Heighway pinball has survived for now and I feel sorry for Andrew in a lot of ways despite how it went down

All I know is I would very much like to buy an Alien kit for my Full Throttle cabinet. So, someone get their shit together and you can have my money.

Great post ice. Except I don't believe JPOP was being fraudulent from the get go. I think it became fraudulent; but in the very beginning I think he thought he could actually do it

Lot of short term memory about how f**ked up things were with JJP. Light boards and delays and out of order game shipments etc. They did what they could to survive, and then got investors in to take over, and Jack was removed from running the show. And now I don't think anyone has any confidence issues in buying from them.

I personally hope Heighway is going to have the same thing happen, some rocky beginnings, some shady shit, and then smoothed out processes and more sustained success. Maybe it take the right kind of crazy with a Jack or Andrew to get the ball rolling, and then a different kind of hand at the till to make it work after that. Pinball is a gnarly industry, that's for sure. Lot of moving pieces.

Who knows, just saying, we've seen it work before. Maybe that's why I feel like giving it a chance.

I think Heighway would have done much better had his first game not been an unlicensed motorcycle theme. U.S. is the biggest pinball market and motorcycle racing is barely a blip on the sports radar here. They simply didn't sell enough FT games to fund Alien production. Had he produced Alien FIRST, I think he'd still be in business now.

In my "Hindsight is 20/20" glasses, I wonder if the critical misstep was announcing Alien when he did. They he was committed. If it had been worked on internally, and things weren't coming together as they wanted, they could have bumped its release for something else. Get game #2 out the door, Alien could be #3 or #4.

Did we ever find out why Nordman left? Was it because of lack of payment?

You might be onto something there!

Too early back then for money troubles.

Dennis in his own words:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/dennis-nordman-leaves-heighway-pinball

I have to take Dennis at his word that he just didn't see it as possible in that tight time schedule, and turns out he was right.

A) you will need the new computer unit
B) no inner sideblades for early adopters like you and me, we got the old style cabinets which are missing the inner pockets.

And this upsets me quite a bit. I was promised that I would be able to drop games in as they are released.

But even if I do spend the money on a new computer (and I have to as the one in my FullTh bricked my game) - I will have the sideblades missing which is unacceptable to me personally. All my games are tricked out, I turned my FullTh into the nicest one out there. To get the "too bad, so sad" from Heighway in regards to the sideblades and my cabinet sucks.

When I bought my FullTh i was told that the sideblades would be released shortly. I was even promised a free set as I was one of the few (only one?) who bought an LE - well....that never happened and now I know why. I was lied to at the time and that is that.

I also am glad JJP and Heighway are still alive. Some of the tactics to stall customers were wrong but in hindsight those guys probably were in a big enough hole that they were left just hoping to buy time to find a pathway to make it still work out. I still suggest being cautious with the new Heighway until they can ship games on an acceptable schedule and get ready-to-buy stock to distrbutor's inventories.

I suspect having a factory was a big selling point to make the business attractive enough to the investors for both JJP and Heighway. Dutch does not have such a luxury.

All I can say is that the before and after pictures tell the biggest story. Heighway obviously gave it everything he had. If they would have brought in an industrial engineer to figure out how to make due with their smaller space, I think he would have made it. Once the big overhead bleed got started, it couldn't be pulled back in.

I've always thought that motorsport themes were a bad idea, because there's something about them that really turns off non-fans. Like some themes might not be magical or special for you, but you don't actively dislike them and will buy them still. But racing and motorsports just seems to be real love/hate. If you're not into them you want nothing to do with them.

On paper it's a game with a solid layout, shoots fast, especially for a widebody, LCD display, RGB lighting, all kinds of stuff that was more exotic feeling at the time. The oft-requested hand drawn art and unlicensed them! If the theme was different I feel like everything would have come out differently. But people saw Moto GP and backed away.

The Circe's Animal House thing always felt a bit obscure to me, gotta really know your Greek mythology to get the name, but it could have been a way more collector friendly game. You can go after ops later, sell to the collectors first, that's how you build up a game library and a company. IMHO.

Stress man. Reason all the US presidents look like they age super fast. Obama and his grey hair and all that.

Andrew worked his ass off for this company and games. Whatever else happened that's a fact.

The animal/pub theme was just bizarre. A basic Greek mythology game, Alice in Wonderland, or another ufo game would have been a lot better choice.

Andrew also pissed away a good amount of time and money coming to different expos in the states when he should of got his factory line running.

Here is a theme that would be cool, Galaxy Wars, a futuristic theme where our galaxy and other galaxies attack each other with technology more advanced than what we have today.

He was busy setting up direct sales to sideline his distributor.
Chris and Melissa are way too good hearted. I would have stopped working with him right there

For me it wasn't hate, but definitely indifference. The game shot and flowed well, but it was all just "make shots to beat the other bikes" ... lots of motorcycle noises and some cheering; can't really remember anything else, and that's the problem.. it was just unmemorable. Never got any feel of animostity towards the blue biker, never heard any humor or fun quotes. For me it was a good game to play on location but I never considered buying one for home play. Compare to RZSSI.. "Let's go f*ck up some demons!" when you start a game.. Rob himself cussing you out when you mess up American Witch.. Captain Spaulding calling you an asshole and/or talking up his awesome fried chicken as you're bashing him.. the game just oozes personality.

I'm not into motosports at all but think they work okay for a theme.

For me, Heighway's misstep was announcing Aliens with such an aggressive production date before Full Throttle was even shipping. With their modular system it made more sense to buy Aliens first then add the less desirable Full Throttle kit after. As the Aliens date kept getting pushed out, so did the FT kit purchase.

2 things :

1)Sorry to see Andrew leave since it was his baby(Heighway pinball)

2) now with the right management Alien will be a grand pinball in many locations in the future.

Great thread to read two years later (and for the first time for me). Interesting to who got what right and how several things both wished for and feared came to pass.

True. Alien was announced Oct 2014 at Expo, and I received the first Full Throttle August 2015.

Some of this is real head scratcher stuff, and why Heighway is in the shape its in. There's no question mistakes were made.

LOL! I'd take a Full Throttle over that turd called RZ, and I'm no fan of Full Throttle.