When CPR first started the "art team" they offered the new artists to work on pretty much whatever they wanted (within reason). CPR could Not "tell" the artists what titles or projects to work on as the art team were Not "employees" to be told what to do and they were doing this all for the love of their pinball machines. Well, and you can see this coming, pretty much all of the artists (including myself) chose to do projects for games in which they owned and needed repro parts for > pretty selfish, but there it is, we are all guilty of it. It also made good sence, however, in that we already had "source material" to work from and didn't need to go looking for it.
This is how stuff like the Hang Glider plastics got made, Sexy Girl, etc.....it was NEVER about getting rich...it was about making parts for "our" games that "WE" needed and here's the kicker > CPR Never set out to make parts for the general public, they made them for themselves and then decided that "hey if we make a few more of these we can sell them and 'maybe' break even & it not cost us much for our own stuff".....so they started making runs of projects and selling them to the public. CPR did not just decided one day to become a Pinball Parts manufacturer, it just kind of ended up that way. The original idea was to buy the equipment they needed to make a Fathom Playfield ( Mike needed one really bad & could never find one), and then once the project was done > sell the equipment to make their money back....Well, then along came the Centaur PF and then another, and so one.....
Mike has said it a 1,000 times: It's about making parts that we need, it's not about making money, and it's a "hobby" for us Not a business.....and when we say "we" we mean the people directly involved in the Artwork and Production....We do not let the general public or even distributors dictate what projects we are going to take on.....
We do know that the Taxi, Whirlwind, etc. projects pay the bills, but that is not as important to us as getting the parts we need for our machines > What ever the title is!
Consider this: the general public is very lucky that CPR even exists at all, and I'm very proud to be a Partner in CPR and to aid in helping other pinheads get the parts they need for their games as well.
I have a very long list of projects that are either being currently worked on or are reserved for the art team artists, but we can only produce so much in any given time frame. We will never be able to please "Everybody" with every title we release, but also consider this: For every project that we release that you don't want > 100 other people Need! This is why we do it.....
Stu
Quoted from Hellfire:I am kinda curious though if there are rare titles like spectrum, Miss World, and sexy girl stuff being reproduced how much demand was there to justify them for reproduction?