We created a prototype of a head-to-head machine with two full size playfield. The theme is good vs evil. We brought the machine to the Dutch Pinball last year and Jack Danger did a cool stream:
A lot of people enjoyed playing it (at least our impression). The game is fully playable without major problems such as ball traps or missing modes. Obviously there is a lot which can be polished and we are working on that. Also we will probably redo/overhaul the artwork when doing a final playfield revision. However, we now reached a point where we are wondering if this should stay a one-off or if we should build a few machines. Is there interest for such a machine? We would probably build like 10 machines.
Major downside: It is huge (220cm or 7.25 feet) and will be expensive (at least the price of two machines obviously). On the upside the concept is unique. Even older head-to-head machine such as Joust have a different type of rules. In Joust it is about keeping the ball on your side to get the maximum score. In this machine it is about keeping your lives by not loosing any balls and at the same time shooting balls to the other player so that he looses balls quicker. Last man standing wins.
Most stuff is already in CAD and we also produced most parts at commercial manufacturers. So this could be produced. The build progress is documented in a German forum: https://www.flippermarkt.de/community/forum/threads/head2head-pinball-im-eigenbau-good-vs-evil.160338/ and also slightly on Pinside: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/head2head-custom-pinball-machine-good-vs-evil.
What would have to change for a small run?
- New artwork
- Professional printed playfield (current prototype is a decal) at Mirco (current playfield is also by Mirco)
- Laser all plastics (currently 3D printed)
- Some more sounds/call outs
- DMD animations
- Laser a new revision of all ramps and rails (mostly minor changes such as adding more tabs for plastics)
- Change from 80V to 48V PSU for easier certification
- FCC/CE certification
What do you think? Price would probably be in the range of $25k to $30k (because of small quantity).