*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.

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.

I love how the early games get shit on. Yep, they have issues.

Wrong drop target opto board.
Needs updated alien head and boards.
Needs the tower leds changed out.
Updated computer is debatable. I am told the original computer could have run the game. Note, it is a different computer than ft which is an entirely different architecture and could never run alien.

Power supply was woefully inadequate throughout production.
USB cables were bad throughout the run.

I have been told the transformer for the 70v blows a fuse, mine never has. I also do not suffer from the flippers lacking power.

My gripes with the game's reliability at this point have to do with io boards, led design, and the induction switches. The induction switches themselves are dead nuts reliable. Their detection range requires them to be up next to the playfield, but their socket design does not keep them there. Full throttle suffers from this as well. A 3d printed spacer is on my list of things to try and should fix this on both games.

Thing is, after doing the work I'd put mine up against a later run. I'd expect they would both have the same issues. We still have plenty of chat in the alien thread about dealing with heat, making the usb as reliable as possible. These games are by no means as reliable as an AP, JJP, Spooky, or Stern. I doubt they ever will be.

Let's say PB are not full of it.
Ditch USB.
Upgrade the power suppply for 5v/12v.
Add capacitors for 70v or go back to a transformer.
Do not serialize the leds.
Do not use induction switches.
Break up the overly large pcb boards. FT uses much smaller boards which are much much easier to deal with. Maintance on alien vs ft is night and day.
PETG plastics.
Active cooling in the cabinet.
The beacons should be belt driven not gear driven. The beacons are obnoxiously loud.
Less fragile face huggers.
More reliably scoop. Balls hang up on both the early and later versions which has prompted a few different fixes.

As for removing the playfield lcd. I am against. It is one of the things that makes alien unique. The game ties into the playfield. If I was going to ditch a screen it would be the airlock. It is mostly worthless and under utilized. It could be made to be more useful, but you could just as easily ditch it for a couple indicator leds.

The additional magnet doesn't do much for me. The cabinet change is an improvement. I like the uniqueness of Heighway cabs, but they are heavy. They have very little artwork. I dislike removing the head for transport.

As for the mentions of sharing a codebase using optionals, doable, but a headache. Testing release candidates requires doing so on two different machines. It ads a load of work that nets the company nothing since they wont sell the original design.

Still waiting on a real whitewood, or a plan, or really any proof.

The research from the initial people was invaluable. The community and those have stood up to build parts that we couldn't get (timbandit's leds). All I have had to do is dig through threads and the only thing to hold me up is my own laziness. I have too many projects and all I cared about on alien is that I had the parts on hand in case they go out of stock. Right now I still need to mount the new psu permanently and relocate the mobo since the new psu is massive compared to the old.

Converting an alien for the most part is about money. Someone had a game with no backbox screen on here recently. For less than 750 you could change that. Parts are readily available. I have debated picking up a second alien several times that needed converting because once you know what to do it is straight forward.

That said, even if the game had none of the early vs later issues, its still electronically a flaming dumpster fire of shit. I saw this as someone who collects weird low production games. They all have their quirks. First time manufacturers especially. What is interesting to see what they do get right.

FT, electronically is mildly better than alien due to the smaller pcbs under the playfield. After that, alien is by far the worst game I have had to deal with from an electronics perspective. On the top side of the playfield, alien is a fairly straight forward design that is well built. Suncoast was the opposite. Cosmic Carnival was a fine game, electronically. Topside was a mess. Ramps that were paper thin. Wireforms that were needlessly small with piss poor welds. A game where the rails prevented the coinbox being removed when the playfield was down.

Reliability my ass. I have two Heighways, the displays are not an issue. Having a window in the playfield has been done for decades. It isn't an issue.

Congrats to the people who pre-ordered. Hope it is everything you want. Me, I am happy with my original. The pf screen is a dealbreaker for me so no reason to sell.

Do want to see if the remakes have backwards compatible parts. Curious if they bothered to fix any of the issues under the pf because they didn't remove the induction switches.

Think you missed the boat on that.

Lit cab? Not in a b/w. Lit side blades? Not likely. The el paper isnt thick, but the plastic is. They would have to do decal like some of the aftermarket options. It won't look the same. They could do the lit backbox.

Beacons, easy to do, but they are obnoxiously noisy.

Playfield screen doubt it. The screen would require a computer with 3 display outputs. Bet my bottom dollar they are not using the original pc. Its not a standard setup for an off the shelf piece. Need a different playfield. They already said they cant make it reliable. What they are going to backteack and say its fine now?

Playfield windows have been done since the early 80s at least. Its bullshit.

The beacons are cheaply made Chinese crap. They are incredibly loud when they rotate.

Sad thing is FT is not a bad game. I rather like mine. It's much easier to maintain compared to alien. It has got good flow. What does stink are the animations. It's hampered by an underpowered computer that can lag sometimes especially the first few minutes it's on.