I will buy a new pin in 2016. Not sure between Alien, TBL, Hobbit and Ghostbusters. Course if Star Wars gets announced, all in on that. Oh and Rob Zombie is a possibility too.

Dupe.

Did you see that bike? It's just sic
alien2_(resized).jpg

lol. is that what you have deduced from all that?

Oh boy, this Predator is excited about seeing the Alien motorcycle.

alien3_(resized).jpg

This is what it's like to work with Heighway Pinball:

awq1qena_(resized).png

You can't compare old games with questionable themes to new games with questionable themes. We're all buying old games used, which means a few things:

-Price is "low" compared to
new games

-Games are "retro", so we're forgiving of 90's cheese.

-Games have a gameplay reputation, which overrides bad themes.

People don't have much of a chance to play a new game like Full Throttle before buying, and the price of a NIB game is high - so theme and presentation matter.

Would we all buy a used FUll Throttle for $1500 like an Indy500? Of course! But that's not what we're talking about....we're talking about NEW. Theme matters 100% on new. Theme makes people drop $6000-8000.

I like acid burn videos!!!

That's awesome!

Good to know you've got it narrowed down.....

$100 bucks says not only do you not get close to what you'll want for your LOTR but that you won't buy any of the six games listed above

Um, that's exactly what you said.

With regards to theme desirability, Stern has 8 themes they are making at this moment. GOT, Kiss, WNBJM, WWE, TWD, Mustang, Star Trek, and Metallica. I am currently only interested in one theme (GOT), maybe two (WWE), if we are looking solely at theme. But I have no desire to own either one of the games when looking at the whole package. Heighway has two themes with FTH and Alien and it's true that on the surface Alien is the only theme I would be interested in but after playing Full Throttle, I'm seriously considering trying to make that my first NIB.

I like the idea of the Ghostbusters but this modular system where I could buy Full Throttle and then buy Alien at a reduced price is really intriguing to me. So looking at a theme to gauge whether interest will be there is a falsehood. A good pinball machine is the sum of the parts.

I believe they have 6 titles in the works at the moment.

If all goes well in 2016 Alien and games 3 and 4 will be released.

So you not only have the modular system advantage, but also some titles to choose from. Or own them all

Are the modules going to have cases and/or be able to stack say 2 of them under a game?

The playfield, art and software comes in a box. I believe one can be stored under the cabinet.
The rest of the playfield collection should be stored elsewhere.

Here you can see what the box looks like (see 1:01 mark):

Doesn't look like it will fit between the legs, so have to come in from side but I guess that's not surprising/expected.

Maybe they should sell a rack that takes up 1 pinball slot and holds 6 games or so

I love the modular idea! My Aliens LE will stand intact, my Full Throttle se will be swapped out with other titles.

Or a hanger that allows you to display it like wall art with a plug in to the wall to light it.

That is really cool, the swap. I think Highway Pinball is way ahead of Stern on connector simplicity.

i do understand your point on the price difference but i'm still not seeing what is wrong with that theme as compared to what stern is pumping out for NIB sales. games based on tv shows, rock bands etc. are automatically eliminated from consideration as a NIB purchase for me. why would I want a game of thrones when I have never seen the show? i don't particularly care for ac/dc or metallica either and to a far greater extent kiss. that stuff is just not gonna be in my gameroom. i think the original theme full throttle is far more universal and appealing but I might be in the minority. With regards to gameplay reputation somebody bought those old games when they were new

The reality is original games can sell. But it's a lot more work now.

Back in the day it was different. You had distributors and operators as the market. There were contracts. You came out with a new game, boom, you sold 3,000 of them because people took your new game. They were routed. Some bombed and created issues (Popeye, Circus Voltaire for examples) but generally speaking if you did a game about white water rafting you didn't have to worry about how many rafting enthusiasts were going to put the game in their house.

Now you have build demand with not just by working with a relatively small client base of industry buyers, but with the general public.

And for better or for worse a license sells a game. No one here knows what Alien will really play like yet. I can't wait to play it myself, I've only seen 3D animated demos or the same white wood video we showed at Expo that everyone their saw.

But we're excited still, because it's Alien. Full Throttle doesn't have that built in nostalgic awe.

I contend that it's totally possible to sell an original theme. But you've got to do the legwork and climbing that a license does for you to create awareness and excitement.

What would be really cool to see is if Alien buyers decide to try Full Throttle as a kit. I really want that idea to take off. It's so easy to change, I wouldn't care about swapping out my Alien LE. Why not? Even if I'm not rushing and going carefully it's a 10 minute job, we saw it done in 3 minutes flat.

Maybe Alien will be a trojan horse to give Full Throttle more of a chance. All we gotta do is make Alien great first!

It's nonsense. A super fast wide body with an original racing theme....vs whatever crappy movie license comes along with photoshopped pics of the actors on the sling plastics? The argument is just foolish and the guys making it are just doing the usual internet baiting because they are bored.

For me, full throttle is what is giving alien a chance. That is the game actively being built and getting the gears moving. Sure will be cool to see alien but without fullt i would not even be considering alien.

What i really hope is that we eventually see a wooly kit!

Or a kick ass Star Wars...

Yes! That would make my day!

Heighway should do The Running Man or Total recall next, Blade runner is another one that would be amazing.

They should do a music pin like Iron Maiden. We just saw what great artwork you can put on a pin. They have a whole collection of art and music that could scare the shit out of most. I like this company and personally very excited about Alliens. I like the theme. Full Throttle looks very well built and very complete, so Alliens should really be great. I pretty sure the art on the LE is going to be great. I own 3 of his pieces already.

Apologies if answered upthread, but what is the estimate of cost difference of a kit vs full game? (FT, or Aliens)

Having played Full Throttle, it's a stunningly great game.

Kits are supposedly going to be 60% of the cost of a full game.

.

I have not played Full Throttle since Pintastic and tonight I should finally get some real time on one at The Sanctum. I'm not a big racing fan but love the idea of Alien. I think getting a good feel of Full Throttle will let me know if the excitement level for Alien is going to go up. With the price saving of the Drop-In playfield the likely hood of Full Throttle owners getting Alien will be higher.

I agree with Aurich that it would be cool to see Alien buyers pick up a Full Throttle playfield afterwards just to have an extra game. This can only help Heighway's bottom line and show the game swapping model was a good idea to help sell the different games. But I wonder how often the swap will be done. I know owners of RFM that have the SWEP1 playfield and they never swap it in. I'm sure that fact that SWEP1 is no where near as good as RFM is the reason. But won't one game always be preferred over the other? Would a fan of Alien swap to racing often or vice-versa? While being able to swap is great for on-route games and could be good for home users I think the title choices will play a bigger part with home users.

I think that is a much bigger project to swap, correct?

It is not supposed to be. The old video has a woman pull the filed up, disconnect (I think 7) wire harness plugs. Then drop in the replacement pf and plug in. Last, swap the prism card and marquee.

That was the whole point of making Pinball 2000 so expensive. You bought the cabinet and computer system once and can now easily swap cheaper games on route.

Look at promo video 2 of 2 at 2:00 - slide of pf and 6 connectors.

Promo videos

i think the biggest problem with p2000 was that the second title was less desirable than the first, and that it ended with that one. So we'll never know how it might have gone.

In this case, title 2 is much more desirable.

Agreed. The Star Wars "title" was desired but the implementation was not. It was less pinball and more a bunch of movie clips with Jar Jar Binks making your life miserable.

As with any promo, it wasn't as quick and easy as it looks there. The physical swap wasn't too bad, but there was still the software swap. If you didn't have 2 daughter boards (or whatever they were called) then you needed a laptop and certain software to re-write the ROM to the new game. It took 10-15 minutes to load the new software, on top of the time to do all the physical swaps.

All this just compounded the fact that SWE1 sucked.

I agree, I had both the p2000's and really liked RFM but SWars wasn't all that great, If it had been based on the OG trilogy I think a lot more would have sold, that first Star wars movie stunk, I did like the third installment, great fights and much darker. What a great idea but they blew it with themes. JMO anyway. Surprised that no one has attempted to rehash that style, make the pin playfield full sized and with LCD you could have a much smaller bacbox, maybe even a widebodied game.

love the swap idea but from what I have seen and read so far i'm thinking/hoping that rather than have a spare 3600 kit laying around I might just want full versions of both games.

And that might still be cheaper than some games.

The original swap idea was for operators. For home users it might be room constraints. Having an apartment where only 1 game can fit yet having a spare game leaning on a wall in a closet is cool. Better would be a rack under the game that could stack 2 or 3 spare games.

Hi,
I have 2 questions:
- what do we know about clearcoated playfield? Several layers? Possible to add a playfield protection when ordering?
- what do we know about software, How many modes, wizard modes etc?
Thanks

Aurich, from what you just mentioned, I'm guessing that this article has played an important role in the design of these animations. If you guys are paying that much attention to detail, then you're going to make a lot of fans happy

http://typesetinthefuture.com/alien/

Heh, I've read that piece several times, at least half of them long before I was even on the Alien project in the first place.

This has been covered before, but Pinball 2000 was never meant to be 'swappable' in the consumer sense. It was designed to easily accept 'conversion' kits. This includes cabinet decals that were never meant to be swapped (this may have also included changing the back box MoBo - unsure). The idea being that you could buy a route machine and convert it one or twice at a cheaper cost than buying a new game each time (also easier repair as the video above points out). Subtle but important difference. Highway pins are designed to swipe out back and forth at will - art and all.

I would be fine with a generic cabinet that said Heighway Pinball or even nothing at all, Stern aswell, then I could change the PF and backglass and I have a new pin to play, I can't see the sides on most of my pins anyway, maybe have the option of removable side art but its not that important, I would love to have TWD and ST in storage then grab a GOT pre PF right now, play the shit out of it and easily go back to TWD, I would actually end up buying more games due to space saving and cost, not to mention the ease of trading and swapping with a friend. I think this will happen in time, I hope so. I tend to play the newest pin in my collection the most anyway, Heighway has the right idea for sure, lets hope the other guys catch on.

Mad Max!

I think that'd be an absolute killer for them .. though didn't someone say something about Dutch and Mad Max?

Do you think that is The end for original theme? Only licence will come for The future, whatever The manufacturer?

May depend on how Lawlor's JJP pin #3 does.

Full Throttle is an original theme
Though I believe games 2 till 6 are going to be licensed.