(Topic ID: 106728)

ALIEN PINBALL - Game Over, Man, Game Over

By HeighwayPinball

9 years ago


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  • Latest reply 6 days ago by TomDK
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Topic index (key posts)

53 key posts have been marked in this topic, showing the first 10 items.

Display key post list sorted by: Post date | Keypost summary | User name

Post #9151 Insight from Alien's programmer on tournament mode Posted by Ferret (7 years ago)

Post #9234 Update on distribution Posted by HeighwayPinball (7 years ago)

Post #9660 Here we show you a short clip from the 'Ambush Multiball' mode Posted by HeighwayPinball (7 years ago)

Post #10128 Photo of Alien at UK Trade Show Posted by unigroove (7 years ago)

Post #10230 game play video from EAG UK tradeshow Posted by Join_The_Cirqus (7 years ago)

Post #10231 game play video from EAG UK tradeshow Posted by Join_The_Cirqus (7 years ago)

Post #10914 Alien ships Posted by ZenTron (7 years ago)

Post #10916 Alien ships Posted by HeighwayPinball (7 years ago)

Post #11230 Key posted, but no summary given Posted by ezeltmann (7 years ago)


Topic indices are generated from key posts and maintained by Pinside Editors. For more information, or to become an editor yourself read this post!

You're currently viewing posts by Pinsider woodworker.
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#4248 8 years ago
Quoted from PinPatch:

I also think Ellen ripley should be on there somewhere, as well as the respective crew of nostromo/sulaco. When I watch these films I care about the humans not the xenophobe.
Love the bottom third, love the icon work, planets not so much. I actually like the comic alien.
I hope Aurich wasn't scared to put humans on the playfield so to avoid the photoshop actors comments.
With the plastics etc it should look pretty good.

I wouldn't hold your breath for any actors anywhere on the machine:

Quoted from Aurich:

Yeah, the art on Star Trek is blaaaahhh. Nothing worse than actor headshots all over the place, no thanks. Whole reason I made a new art package, I didn't want to stare at them. I love Greg Freres, designed some of my favorite pinball art packages, but Star Trek was a whiff. Licensed PR shots, lazy bevel/emboss grid, just not a looker at all

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/last-non-licensed-original-game/page/2#post-2519475

1 week later
#4547 8 years ago
Quoted from dmbjunky:

Do you think if you pushed harder and had more time for back and forth or paid more for the license, they would grant the ability to do hand drawn art for a movie license?

The license SPECIFICALLY doesn't allow for hand drawn art?

#4550 8 years ago
Quoted from spfxted:

That would be strange....

Agreed. That doesn't make any sense to me.

#4555 8 years ago
Quoted from The_Dude_Abides:

No I imagine it is because hand drawn art tends to incorporate a lot of the artist's style that takes some leeway from the typical look of the license. The license holder already has art that the studio wants to represent to movie and it's assets. So I imagine it is much harder to get the okay for hand drawn custom art work for a movie license. Could be totally wrong but that would be my guess.

I agree with this, but "much harder" isn't the same as "doesn't allow". That is why I asked.

1 year later
#11101 7 years ago

I have been following this thread for almost two years and I've mostly just been silently lurking. Mostly.

I wore out my VHS copies of ALIEN & ALIENS when I was younger. This theme has grail written all over it for me. I watch these gameplay videos and I don't see or hear major moments with the actors. It looks and feels very generic to me. Where is Ripley? Hudson? Hicks? Vasquez? Gorman? Assholes and elbows? How do I get out of this chicken shit outfit? Where is the Alien popping out of Kane or Ash malfunctioning? I just keep seeing cut scenes of MU/TH/UR and the monochrome computer screens, or a black silhouette of Ripley looking for her cat.

Great examples of what I am getting at are GB & TH. They are absolutely RIDDLED with quotes, music and moments from those movies. Alien pinball does not appear to have this level of movie content. For nearly $7K after shipping I expect more. I played it as much as I could at Expo and hoped it would flesh out more since then. And these "two week" delays are just not adding up anymore. There have been so many promised dates missed for too many reasons at this point. That is my 2 cents.

2 months later
20
#13176 6 years ago
Quoted from Manimal:

Without mentioning names, I think the pot may have been stirred by our famous and so-called "reformed" podcaster who stopped short of making accusations that games would not be delivered, but led folks down that path with his "special edition" podcast. His defenders are going to say he just stated facts, but we all know why he laid out what he did, and that was to stir the pot so he could sit back and watch this thread.

If games were shipping in large numbers 2 years ago, 1 year ago, 4 months ago, etc. as they were repeatedly promised, no podcast in the world could gain any traction against Heighway. It would be a non-issue. Andrew keeps promising shipping deadlines and missing them over and over and over again. Calling somebody out for doing that is just fine. It really is. Especially when they have taken full payment for said product. Every day that goes by means the games cost more to make because of overhead. We can't just keep patting everybody on the back. He should be held accountable for what he said.

What I don't understand is why there aren't HUNDREDS of Alien games done, sitting in the factory waiting for the "new Xeno boards." They promised to ramp production up to a hundred a MONTH before Christmas. He said he hired a new workforce over 5 months ago. Andrew has said he has all of the parts. What are all of the factory employees doing for 5 months? If I had hired a full workforce to build games for me, they would be building games. Endlessly. Otherwise you are just pissing all of your money away.

And he can't ship games because of the Xeno board, yet there are 3 more games on a truck. What about their Xeno boards? So it's OK for THESE games to ship with the supposedly bad boards, but everybody else has to wait?

Or how about promising that a hundred LE's would ship in January but they only got LE artwork approved this week? And now the recent hand-drawn art thing makes me scratch my head too. It was one of the few questions I asked in this thread well over a year ago:

Quoted from woodworker:

The license SPECIFICALLY doesn't allow for hand drawn art?

I thought we were all told by Aurich that this wasn't in the cards. Now there is a hand-drawn backglass for the LE?

I just fear that when Stern's Star Wars launches on the rumored May 4th, everybody will yank their money from Alien and this whole thing will collapse. Best of luck to the rest of you that are waiting. I truly hope you get your games. I am just going to buy this Mr. Potato Head Xenomorph instead:

http://bloody-disgusting.com/news/3434427/well-finally-happened-xenomorph-mr-potato-head-coming-soon/

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3 weeks later
25
#14065 6 years ago
Quoted from Whysnow:

Why dont you fly over to Madison and we can hang out? I can lift up the hood of a bunch of new games and walk you through the things that show the quality of the build of Heighway games relative to others. I think it would be eye opening to you to see with your own eyes and get a real understanding of the value and quality comparisons in both the engineering/design and actual build out.

That's what I did, but it turned out that your Alien machine has some problems you aren't disclosing here. Of the times I have played Alien at Alt Brew, you were only there once by coincidence. Because as I told you in person, I think you come off as a complete asshole on the forums.

When I was there the game looked really dark. I mentioned this and you explained that several of the RGB LED light boards were broken and that is why it looked so dim. So did they fix/improve the light boards on your machine, or send you replacements yet? Are new boards in development? Is anybody else's Alien having light board issues?

You also mentioned that the playfield holes for some of the LED's are too small and are causing failures. You said Heighway is going to have to make those holes larger to increase reliability. Do the current games being shipped out from Heighway have the original size holes, or the newer larger ones? It seems unlikely they would be new playfields as they probably haven't gone through 25 playfields yet, and Andrew has said he ordered hundreds. Maybe they're drilling them out or something.

And of course the Xeno head is still not working. You did cycle the machine off and on for me to see, and that made the mouth extend. It wasn't very fast, but it did move. During gameplay it didn't function or move at all.

I wasn't going to say anything about my visit or the state of your machine. I changed my mind after you tried to call out Ted by touting Heighway's design choices while simultaenously failing to mention that your machine has light board issues and other things that don't work properly. That doesn't seem very honest to me.

#14074 6 years ago
Quoted from Astropin:

You've got to be kidding right? He's disclosed all of those issues in this very thread. And talked about being sent updated light boards. The Xeno mechanism will also be updated (if it hasn't been already).Sheesh. I don't like him calling out Ted and making a mountain out of a molehill...but let's keep it real on the retaliations.

My bad. I skim through a lot of Whysnow's posts here because he tends to fly off the rails, so I obviously missed it. It turns out a lot of guys had no idea that this was an issue on his game either, so it's all good.

12
#14084 6 years ago
Quoted from Whysnow:

This is funny. This guy is Kanedas buddy and was actively talking to him and apparently taking creeper photos of me at Alt Brew when he was there (seriously weird to have people send you photos they find on the internet and show you of someone taking photos of you while you are playing and doing stuff but unbeknown to you at the time!!! It was not till now that I realized this is the creeper that was taking the photos. Seriously dude, you have some stalker qualities).
He had a long conversation with a buddy and I that were at AltBrew playing, seemed like a decent enough guy, and then later in the conversation mentions he is Kanedas buddy and just there to do intel on the game. I told him that was cool with me and I would be happy to show him anything he wanted to see.
To my face when we were there he spoke about how well the game played and he was pleasantly surprised with the quality, despite the pre-production state of the game. He mentioned the game seemed dark and I showed him specifically where the GI was out and the inserts that were out and he even spoke how he saw recent videos where this was already fixed on later games.
I also went through the game with him and specifically went over the tweaks and adjustments that came out of the beta testing of a pre-produciton unit. The exact same tweaks that I have spoken about here. I also pointed out how the xeno mech worked on original code, but with updates it was specifically disabled until the new boards are installed/new mech arrives. He wanted to see the xeno tounge come out, so i power cycled the game for him to see it and even explained how it is different in a real game play (quicker, mag catch sequence, etc) I happily went through the things that have changed. I even offered to open up the hood and show him the underside, but he declined (I guess he did not want to see the quality construction or actually understand how the preproduciton boards were different from the current ones?)
He did go on and on and on about how he is building his very own game and plans to surprise everyone with it. Granted he spent alot of time talking about how the Alien design 'stole' the things he was going to do in his game so now he had to change it all up. LOL.

I drive up to visit my wife's parents in Madison a couple of times a month. When I have the chance I head over to Rossi's and play all of their pinball machines. I played Metallica, Star Wars, etc. for a while before I made it over to play Alien. When i found out that your machine was pretty close I occasionally went and played it. On this particular occasion you were there, but I didn't know if it was you. I took a pic of you and texted it to a few friends and asked "Is this Whysnow?" They all responded that it was you. That's why I asked if you were Hilton, remember? (Chris obviously had some fun with that pic.) i also took a pic of the Xenomorph and the playfield.

I told you I knew Chris because I figured you'd get a kick out of it. I could tell people that I know you now too. Chris has seen the game on several occasions at Allentown, Expo and Coin Taker's, so there was nothing to tell. There is no "intel" I could provide him with. I came to drop my own money into your game and play it. I promise not to make that mistake again.

You heard me say I think the machine looks nice. It shoots OK. It's all good. But you kept going on and on about how it has the best flow of any pinball machine ever made. I didn't comment. I don't agree. It really isn't that big of a deal because we all have our own opinions. I haven't posted anything disparaging in this thread about the gameplay. I have just asked about code and callouts.

Yes I am making my own game. And that is why I revealed nothing about it to you, no matter how many times you asked. The only thing I mentioned was how the left side of my playfield USED to look similar to the Alien layout, but with a couple of extra shots. My joke was that people would think I stole it from Alien even though mine existed before. I have changed the layout so it doesn't even matter anymore. How could Heighway steal from a game they haven't seen? It doesn't make any sense.

Your over-the-top response and attitude on here is why I sent that pic (before somebody had fun with it) and asked my friends if this was you. Part of me didn't want to talk to you because of your actions on here. I should have just kept to myself and not talked to you at all. You accuse me of taking "creeper photos" and try to intimidate me and paint me into a corner. Great. Lesson learned. I don't know who you think you are winning over with this macho over-aggressive attitude, but I can tell it is not working. You did the same thing in the Predator thread. Screaming and yelling and criticizing anybody who disagreed with you. In the end you were left holding the bag.

11 months later
18
#21508 5 years ago
Quoted from Whysnow:

My posting history on Alien has been pretty clear. great game, super fun, love the layout, built well. But DON'T PREORDER PINBALL MACHINES UNLESS YOU UNDERSTAND THE RISKS and take accountabilit for your actions.
DEspite some people being incapable of understanding that I learned from the SkitB fiasco and have been explicitly clear numerous times about why people should not preorder these toys... my posting history has been very clear for anyone to read without improper edits.

you-sit-on-a-throne-liar-meme (resized).jpgyou-sit-on-a-throne-liar-meme (resized).jpg

29
#21521 5 years ago
Quoted from Whysnow:

again, taken out of the context of when that was said and trying to twist me giving Iceman a hard time about putting a deposit down as me whole hog telling people they should go send full payment.

your fault (resized).jpgyour fault (resized).jpg

2 weeks later
36
#22059 5 years ago
Quoted from Hazoff:

I have to state this, if you can't name 3 Iron Maiden songs I really hope ur not wearing that as a badge of honour because its much more a case that you should feel foolish and have realized that most likely you enjoy crap music or ur an old geezer and then I'll give you a pass.

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