My information was, that Sigourney wasn't asked to be part of the game, so she doesn't knew either, this failed on the communication with her agent.
But I felt upset, so I included her best lines in the fucking manual.

That’s probably true, I’m guessing that relatively small beans deals are usually handled by agents and never receive the attention of the talent.

Hopefully they will implement the mini-beacons on the ramps in the remake!

From a Facebook comment where they answer someone who lost $4000 by prepaying for an Alien (https://www.facebook.com/pinballbrothers/posts/661931024519754):

"We are sorry to hear that you lost money. We know exactly how that feels!
However, Pinball Brothers has no liability for the debts of another company.
If you are still interested in a game, please do contact [email protected] and we might be able work something out together but we can make no promises at this stage."

So, I also pre-paid for an Alien and never got it, so I guess I should contact Pinball Brothers and maybe work out a deal. However...

"Another company"? "No promises"? Considering the good ol' Heighway guys Roger, Cato and Mats are the directors of Pinball Brothers as well, that's a cheap, dishonest way of running away from the people who funded the previous attempt through pre-orders. Sure, Andrew is no longer involved, but he was not the only director at Heighway.

I have no doubt that the current directors also lost a lot of their own money in the previous attempt. I can sympathize with them for that, as starting a company is hard and fraught with dangers. However, based on the comment above I sincerely hope that their new attempt goes down in expensive flames, but that this time only those few immoral cowards lose their money, not customers, suppliers or contractors.

Puh. I feel a bit better now.

For some reason all these lame teasers are just pissing me off. Quit with the bullshit and just post details.

same here. i put down initial deposit then i got an email from andrew “the thief” heighway that my pin was ready to ship and i needed to make final payment. i sent an additional 2500 and told andrew that when my pin was on the skid and all shipping set up i would send the rest. well andrew disappeared after that. to me that was blatant theft. one thing for a company to go bankrupt. another thing for him to request money for pins that were never going to ship. everytime i see an alien pinball it brings back some harsh feelings. andrew is lucky there is a big ocean between us because it wouldnt be pretty if i caught up with him.

I was in the same situation that oyvindmo was in, and like that poor fellow in the facebook post, I contacted them. They were very understanding at first and promised to try and help me. But that help was just bullshit. They ended up up giving me an offer to buy a machine for more than full price. This was at a time when it was easy to get Aliens from Sweden both new and used. I tried to reason with them in a friendly tone to say that they could at least give me a discount, but no dice.

So you could say that my opinion on them has changed a bit. They seemed like nice people,at first, (and I am sure they are) but just do not expect any favors.

I have not been following their situation or Pinside posts about Alien for more than a year now, (I was refereed by a friend to check out this post) I just get in a bad mood, and who needs that.

But I think it is necessary to share things like this. If it can help one other customer, it is worth it. I am not saying, do not deal with pinball brothers, but be careful, and consider the history there.

Karl

When these guys start asking for money I wonder who is gonna pay up and ship their cash thousands of miles away.

You know they don’t have the money to just start producing and selling games so I’m sure it’ll be a new preorder adventure for those with nerves of steel and brains of jelly.

It was the whole idea of transferring the assets from Heighway to PB that now allows them to write this one line that 'legally they are not liable', which is true.
The current directors did not lose any money, they made plenty with this move. Do not forget they were selling NIB's or very nice specimens for 12-14K each for the last 2 years as Karl wrote. Just after the last one is gone they announce the remake (I see games popping up on the forums now fast; buyers want to sell them in fear of value drop). Coincidence? I think not.

Also it is not very decent to suggest you are getting some help if you lost money, only to find out later that this is just there for the public opinion.
Better then say nothing.

I heard 'someone' bought 200 cabinets from the UK company that produced the cabinets (Heard it second hand, didn't verify). I think PB will pay upfront the production of 20-50 games that are produced and can be shipped directly to avoid this preorder adventure that will hold back buyers. This money they can then use to continue production.

*Company that couldn't keep their shit together posts a few renders with basic changes.*

Pinside experts: it's obvious they have their shit together and a re-release is coming any day now.

The bar for rampart speculation is so low. After 2 years you see jack all and salivate. No whitewoods. No information on how they plan to fund this. Just a couple hours work at most. Jpop put more work in.

Yes, but one has to consider... why?

These guys aren't doing this themselves... they are enlisting others. Why?
Why bother drumming up interest in a project you aren't trying to do?

The bigger question is always 'how' and the feasibility of their plan - not the money.

There is no payoff in getting a few facebook likes. So one has to root out their motivation and explain it.

You think they are just trolling because they are bored?

Fully agree

Pinball at this point has devolved into stern announcing and releasing 6 games a year, jjp announcing and releasing one game every year and a half, and 10 other pseudo-companies releasing teasers whenever they feel like it.

This pin exists thanks to preorder money. I don’t think it’s fair to completely ignore the original let down buyers.
It’s like you could produce something you almost didn’t engineered with all the rights...
they remove the LCD and create a scoop diverter. Just wow.

Why? Because they want an angel investor. They don't have the funds to relaunch the company. They don't even have the funds to redesign the game. If they were serious they would at least have built a prototype and be showing it off. Instead they show a few hours of cad work making minor changes and hope to generate interest so they can either get a cash infusion or a buyer. It costs them next to nothing to do this and maybe they get a payoff.

Was there a manual?

I think you're wrong there. I believe they have been shopping for a partner/buyer... not an investor. Which is why they were dealing with CGC, etc.

yes, it is chalk full of sigourneys quotes.

"look, i have one job on this lousy ship. its stupid, but im going to do it. OK". and when she sees the aliens for the first time, "theyre so cute" - gets me every time.

oops, sorry, wrong manual - this one is from barcelona.

manuel (resized).jpg

Decent summation except you left a couple others (Spooky and AP) out that do have a track record on delivering games.

So if final games were selling well and the design remains a widebody and costed out are the in-playfield lcd and lit cabinet panels. ... wouldn’t you expect the base model to be offered for $10k and maybe a snazzier model for $12k? I can see no reason to expect it would sell for any less $10k since originals sold much higher at the very end. Heck, I could see these being sold for $12k plus international shipping, practically $13k. We’ll see what the pricing soon enough.

This situation is sad for a number of reasons, primarily because Pinball Brothers is keeping their distance from customers and vendors who were screwed over by Heighway Pinball. Secondly because it is selling for much more than the original LE model sold, yet it has a lot less stuff. There is probably more cut that hasn’t been noted, such as the xenomorph. If that is gone, then this redesign is STUFFED.

If a new version cost $13k and you could buy a HUO original Alien in the market for $13k, choosing the original design with more stuff is an obvious choice. The old one is fantastic, so unless PB could produce a new, scaled back one for close to the $9k original version delivered, they will be shooting themsselves in the foot. Offer game at a fair price and it will sell more and everybody has good will.

So basically DP are going to build this.
Already setup in Europe, already making a wide body game, I believe that is their dmd/lcd display from TBL and that would concur from the side schematic tweet from Sunday they posted, people happy to spend 12.5k and wait 6+ months already for their current pin and I’ve read numerous times in this thread CGC isn’t going to be the manufacturer and this alien remake is going to be a boutique pin rather than an in stock item

I’m not a golfer but that about really ties them both together does it not

you are being kind i feel like i had shit for brains after getting bent over ! i am angry with myself.

Wow, Zombie Heighway + Dutch Pinball?

What could possibly go wrong if this dream scenario came to fruition?

As an aside, I wonder if anybody ever sent DP some cash to lock down a BOP 3.0 machine...

@Shmilder: Of course... look at IPDB, you can find it there, or search here - I have posted it somewhere. Latest version is 1.1.

Thanks. Looks like 1.2 is out

Yes, I wrote it... IPDB is not up to date.

Rulesheet_Alien_V1_2.pdf.pdf

this is then a second magnet at the chestburster shot? Then what was posted before makes it 3 magnets?

Yes I couldn't make sense of the 2nd magnet in that previous posted image ...

What I can't figure out is how did Pinball Brothers acquire all the assets from Heighway (IP license, playfield design, artwork, game code, etc) but none of the liabilities (customers paid in part or full and owed games)? I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's not how it works. To say "Pinball Brothers has no liability for the debts of another company" is misleading at best. I think they need to address this question head on if they want to be taken seriously.

That first view with new magnet on the left was a view from bottom of plaifield. Reverso. Same exact position. Only the two magnets been shown so far (original Xeno and Chestburster, no 3rd magnet has been shown).

Same magnet, just from underside view. No 3rd magnet. Someone even put an under playfield photo alongside drawing, a couple of posts later, so people had some reference.

I think all these strange Monolith sightings all over in Utah, California, Russia etc. will be known as a publicity stunt by Pinball Brothers for Alien.

https://www.cnet.com/news/mysterious-monoliths-in-utah-romania-and-california-everything-we-know-so-far/

7E34EC09-5FC7-46DE-8EEB-DA105AAFAE7D (resized).jpeg

Yes that I understood, BUT I am also referring to an earlier post:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/is-cgc-going-to-manufacture-alien-pinball/page/18#post-5980281

Apparently in a very first desgin there was a magnet to get the ball out of the right orbit to feed it to the right upper flipper; I thought it was that.
This magnet just sits above the upper flipper and can't do much more than stop the ball when trying to make the chestburster shot?

The way I read that, same second magnet, but had to be moved because of interfering with slide, and so second magnet could not any longer pull from the orbit. I seen nothing in that post that suggested a Thrid magnet, just that the second chest burster magnet could not go where they wanted it to so that it could divert from the orbit.

From experience I can say it is very easy.
A company can just sell anything, this means IP (patents), products, rights, assets. As long as it is not claimed by another party as well you can do it without problems. You can sell the things for a bargain and get away with it easily legally speaking.

Entities who had contracts with Heighway can not claim anything easily, because it is dissolved.

Now where it becomes maybe legally interesting: they may now re-use artwork and design from people that were never actually paid.
Depending on how the contracts were it may give room to start a claim.
However, this is costly and you need to find out under which governing law you can do this (UK, Sweden?).
Individuals will quickly give up in this case; too expensive, too much risk to get nothing.

PB probably realizes this so they will give things a slight touch up so it looks different making it more difficult.

About the (theoretical) behavior of that Chestburster lane magnet:

Ah, but you have to do it profitably. That eliminates AP. A little over 1000 games TOTAL sold after 3 tries out is not a company long for the world.

Looks like their plan is to add the weapon status on the playfield instead of the playfieled screen. that could make sense...

They're going to learn, no matter what their "legal" obligations are, if they are going to proceed to market with a game that has left many of our community screwed, it will be radioactive, not unlike the zidware titles.

Code and boardset might be interesting, for original Alien owners. They did take on support for the original games.

Interesting to see what unfolds here, around cross compatibility.

Except losing the playfield ambush effect and hypersleep MB etc. ... removing the immersion becomes a big loss I rekon.

This is awesome and how I had it somehow in mind. Technically, I could invent a technical solution that could do something similar that can go on the game and that can be retrofitted (probably without drilling holes); I have to think of an appropriate mechanism....

However, that would require the code to be release by PB so that programmers (paid) can add it to the gameplay, or I would need to make a something standalone. Some simple rule that it enables for example when you make the orbit and one of the lights on inner loop or hypersleep are lighted.

Crazy idea that probably won't make it, but that's a big part of the hobby for me

Yes, but most places have rules against "company stacking".

For example, Fred starts "Company One" and goes into business building up both assets and liabilities. Then after a year, he sells the assets to "Company Two" (also owned by Fred) for 1 dollar. He then declares "Company One" bankrupt (after all, it now has a bunch of liabilities and no remaining assets).

Company Two now has ownership of a bunch of assets and does not owe anybody anything.

Depending upon how (and where) this is handled, it can be legal or illegal.

Couldn’t agree more if your a new start up with zero baggage tease away but when you have the stench from years of lies and stolen money lingering your best off cutting the bullshit and showing your hand in full.