Don't worry guys, we'll all see the game eventually.

The incredibly low expectations are arguably a good thing for them. It'd be worse if there was a bunch of pomp and circumstance before he shows off a a whatever game with meh art, meh code, with a giant screen playing random clips of the movie above a DMD with the actual game info because Mike couldn't figure out how to marry the two into one cohesive design or pay someone to do it. I'm ready to be blown away if it's a moderately competent game!

Also I love he put the logo on the leg bolts. That's some JPop-level silliness.

“Homepin will not be releasing any information on the finished machine directly as we are leaving all of the promotion and sales to our sales agents.”

This reads like a free for all to me. If HP is going to spoon feed distros marketing materials, then say that. You aren’t doing direct sales, that’s fine, many companies in this hobby don’t. Control the narrative or prepare to be entertained.

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Anyway, how bad could it be?

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OMG. How about just concentrating on making a passable pinball machine? Homepin explains why they stamped their bolts with the Homepin house - it's because they're metric, non-standard bolts and he wanted to make sure people could tell that on sight...rather than just using INDUSTRY STANDARD, CHEAP, WIDELY AVAILABLE PARTS.

Here's what he posted:
"I had an email this morning asking me "why we have leg bolts made with the Homepin logo - why not just get on and build machines, surely this is a waste of time & money"?
The answer is very simple. Our machines are built using the metric system. This means our leg bolts are also metric. We decided years back to have our logo stamped on the head to differentiate between our leg bolts and "standard" pinball leg bolts so people wouldn't try and force the wrong leg bolts into a machine."
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ohh you're still here chasing a reaction are you ? ok fine ... theres just no pleasing you is there little fella?. typical arrogant "theres no world outside usa" yank.

heres the rest of it you so carefully omitted <quoted from facebook / not my post> (homepins) entire machine is metric because it is made in Taiwan. The entire world is metric apart from the USA. Having anything made here that is NOT metric costs twice as much. Buying parts in from the USA is cost prohibitive with shipping/taxes etc. <quote>

ill highlight the important bit for you

T h e e n t i r e w o r l d i s m e t r i c a p a r t f r o m t h e U S A .
T h e e n t i r e w o r l d i s m e t r i c a p a r t f r o m t h e U S A .
T h e e n t i r e w o r l d i s m e t r i c a p a r t f r o m t h e U S A .

making *ANYTHING* 2inch outside usa requires "please make it 50.8mm" .. and thats how it is usually done but custom thread cutting for a couple thousand bolts? lol no.. clueless.

ill see if i can get mike to post a pic of the cardboard box they come in so you can whinge about the color of that too. it wouldnt matter what it was.. pick pick pick pick..

im glad you dont like it.. you're a vexatious little pest.. go work on your own little business hey? glass houses.

oh and before the other virtue signalling clowns start whining.. i dont work for homepin .. i work for me .. you can say i called you a (whatever you like) but it was me .... not homepin.

happy now?

Grow up

I’m not sure how you think this helps anyone Doug? You now come across as the troll and you are better than that.

Okay.

The PINBALL world is by and large not metric, especially for the commodity parts. If you want to make your machine-specific assemblies metric, great.

To make COMMODITY parts (like leg plates and bolts) that are widely available and dirt cheap as a result custom and non-standard is hubris and hurts the machine long-term. That stuff is ALREADY made in China, so he wouldn't be shipping from the US, he'd be shipping from a next-door neighbor, at worst. I deal with Chinese manufacture all the time and am working with 8 factories right now on various projects, so I have an idea about costs there. Maybe his logo-imprinted bolts would cost more, but plain imperial measure leg bolts that are THE STANDARD FOR PINBALL do not.

If he just wants his logo on the bolts, just be honest and say that. Don't blame pricing on a part that is dirt cheap and likely made for the US pinball manufacturers in China, right next door to him, already.

Ah,.. the old Metric vs Imperial measurement debate,.. gotta love it.
Probs best to forget Mike drives to work in kilometres per hour, on the right hand side of the road, and heated the office using Celsius rather than Fahrenheit reference, via a 115 volt power supply.

Taiwan certainly seems to be sitting in the middle.

Forgive the leg bolts,.. he can use nails for all I care,… will the game play any good??

(It’s been a long night fixing software and data,… felt like a little Pinside, arm chair, and popcorn to wind down with)

The good news is - they won’t need that many.

Metric bolt sizes are standardized. They may not be your typical Pinball bolts, but they're easily replaceable. This wouldn't concern me in the slightest.
I'd be concerned about the more pinball specific electronic parts that may need replacing over time that are "unique" - and that goes for any boutique manufacturer, not just Homepin.

Which is why, for the long haul, every pinhead needs a good example of their favorite em!

But it's just like...why? There's a decades old, industry-wide, interchangeable standard, widely available. Why make leg bolts with threading specific to your machine only? It defies logic. I mean AP went with hex cap tops on their Houdini bolts for the steampunk aesthetic, but at least the threading was still standard.

Ever look at the auto store on how many different oil filter sizes there are? Why! There only needs to be 3! Small, Medium and Large! LOL

Apples and oranges. The auto market is fragmented with many engine designs. We're down to basically standard and widebody pins for pinball (well, and Stern's The Pin). Things like leg plates and bolts are standardized across all manufacturers...except homepin.

I get that the leg bolts are readily available and cheap but what about the leg plates that are more pinball specific?

Modern Stern has multiple types of leg plates (some are BARELY plates, but still), but they all have standard "pinball" spacing and threading AFAIK. Which is why you can "upgrade" a Stern spike with B/W leg plates and everything lines up just fine. JJP and CGC use B/W style leg plates from the factory with the same spacing and threading. The industry settled on it a long time ago.

Are we having fun yet?

I don't know if the aesthetic was part of it, but the cool thing about American Pinball's leg bolts is you can take the same Allen wrench used for the backbox quick-lock and use it to tighten the leg bolts. It's really convenient.

That’s a nice side benefit. And if you lose the bolts in a move, it’s still threaded for typical bolts. Win-win if you’re going to deviate from the accepted standard.

Which is why THAT kind of change is OK (and the steampunk aesthetic fit is cool). It doesn't affect the standard, and if you lose the cap bolts, regular leg bolts will do in a pinch. Not so with the deviations Homepin is doing for no good reason.

Who gives a fuck if the guy wants custom branded bolts and wants to use metric?

I personally hate imperial and would go out of my way to do the same... You might love imperial and want to be "standard." So what?

Wanna fight? Let's fight about buddy using "homopin" or something worthy. Putt'em up, asshole!

WTF is wrong with this thread? I come in looking for info on Spinal Tap, and find a bunch of man babies complaining.

Jesus Christ you guys are bitching because it has metric leg bolts!
Who gives a shit, I'm sure 8 will come with the game so there's no chance you need to get replacements. The chance of stripping is so low in a HUO environment what's the worry?
I think the logo in the bolts is cool looking.

It's this way because there's NO INFO on Spinal Tap. Another bad decision. I've posted literally everything I've found (you're welcome), and it's not much.

So we're discussing metric leg bolts.

Haggis = Metric = bloody good one.

Happy Australia day!

Who cares about leg bolts if they come with the pin? But thanks for collecting the info available so far. My expectations are low for this pin, but it could be fun.

I would agree, HomePin (not his distributors) released a teaser notice 4 months ago, and then went dark
anyone who has been in this hobby knows that in the absence of information, people will speculate
After the Thunderbirds $h!tfest, I would have expected a smarter rollout of information

That would be the global, industry wide, interchangeable, metric standard surely.

Actually I think a fairly good explanation was given. Don’t focus on just the leg bolt. There are 100s of screws, nuts, bolts, switches etc made to metric spec plus custom made parts that would need to be ordered in metric from local companies. Most non US companies in any industry would not make stuff in imperial unless they had a factory in North America.

And for the record, imperial parts are not always widely available outside of the USA.

That has been ignored for the most part by pinball for DECADES. The standards and overwhelming existing supply chain of pinball commodity parts is imperial, so this statement is irrelevant for this discussion about PINBALL established standards, and why going your own way to force a square peg into a long established round hole is a bad idea.

As I noted, most of this is being made in China and shipped to the US. Could just as easily be made in China and shipped to Taiwan, or Australia, or wherever.

But hey, we're officially circular in this conversation. Let's talk about something else. How about back to bad photoshop art on the playfield? The change to the art so it looks like he's stabbing Christopher Guest in the back?
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Original art...

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Is there a full playfield image anywhere? This little snippet is all I've seen of the pf so far.

Not that I'm aware of. I'm actually interested in the game (I know, setting myself up for disappointment), so I've been on the lookout.

Honestly, I’d love to be pleasantly surprised…. Love the movie, would like to see this theme hit a solid ‘11’ on the pin scale… don’t care about metric parts or Thunderbirds. Just don’t make me sad with this theme!

The reason we did it was that we could include one tool in the box that could do everything you need to set up a machine. It was something Balcer had wanted to do and we found them as an off the shelf part. The fact they look good and fit the steampunk vibe was just serendipity. We have used them on all of our games. We anticipated some folks would not like them but as pointed out, you can switch them out for the standard leg bolts. I recall one operator or dealer saying "but what if I don't have that tool" and our response was "then how are you going to lock the head in place?". Only real downside is if you use a power tool when setting up a bunch of games you would need a different bit.

Almost everything I buy is Metric as it from Europe or Japan. ATV's, dirt bikes, lawn equipment, tractors... I have no problem going down to home depot or ACE as they have a huge section of metric bolts. I think the same amount as SAE. What is the problem?

This little sub-thread about bolts is hilarious; idle time really IS the "devil's workshop", lol.

I don't think there is really a "problem" per se as most of us have both metric and imperial tools, so you'll simply use a different wrench to install the legs - no big deal, but irritating because it requires an extra step yet serves no pragmatic function.

I think the real issue is the fact that HomePin seems more obsessed with being the iconoclast manufacturer than actually competing on the basis of game quality, so they waste resources and energy putting out smokescreens like the silly bespoke bolts in order to distract us from the fact that there has been complete radio silence regarding the actual game for several months now.

Thre is also another decades old industry standard....EM score reels, yet you aren't suggesting they should stick around. And yes, some manufacturers have displays specific their machine now, so parts aren't interchangeable there. I think we can all agree progress is good with displays....so why not leg bolts and as mentioned, the 100s of other metric parts that are the international standard of measurement!

Of course there are things specific to manufacturers and machines, but the GENERAL PINBALL MARKET is using one kind of imperial measure leg bolt thread spec for the bolts and the plates, and has for a LONG TIME, so they're widely available and cheap. Like, EVERY MAJOR MANUFACTURER OF PINBALL. So planting a flag on metric bolts with a logo for your low-run machine is pissing in the wind and just making things unnecessarily irritating for future owners of it. This is not a complicated concept, is it?

But let's go back to talking about the terrible photoshop job with the art on the playfield. They LITERALLY moved the dagger up so it would be visible and looking like Christopher Guest was being stabbed. WHY?
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Let it go man

Old mate seems obsessed with it

They've got a decent logo, but I don't need to see it all over a pin taking away from the theme.
Cabinet art also looks like the Union Jack flag, basic.

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I don't mind that, but I do hope shots, rules and sounds will be good. If possible with nice animations, though I think the ones expecting a DMD for animations and a video that does nothing apart from playing along with the song that's playing will be right. Not sure if that's bad, but it does feel a bit strange to have both LCD and DMD. We'll see, maybe it's not bad at all.