As many of you know at last weeks Amusement Expo International in New Orleans, Hot Wheels Pinball machine made an appearance. We know this caught many of you by surprise as APIs past reveals were at pinball shows. As we are committed to growing pinball on location, this was an important audience to promote to that Pinball is alive and well. We had plans to have a big reveal at the Texas Pinball Festival, and while it was probably not realistic, we were hoping to keep things on the down low so as not take away from our TPF reveal, but this was a show pinball needed to be at and we felt it was important to have Hot Wheels™ there.

I’m sure you have noticed we have been slow to reveal details of the game, and there are a couple of reasons for that. First, we planned to have the official reveal at the Texas Pinball Festival (TPF) and for a while we wanted to hold back until then, second, given this is a licensed game, we needed to have all the necessary approvals before we could share content. While we have approvals for the physical machine, cabinet, art and playfield, we are still in the process of submitting game content (animations, voice calls, etc.). Since the playfield and cabinet have been approved we can share images of the machine at this time.

We are very disappointed we will not be able to give the game the reveal we had planned at TPF, we had a lot of cool stuff planned. In addition to a dozen games in our both, we had plans to include two life size Hot Wheels™ cars and a giant Hot Wheels™ track for kids and adults to play with.

Unfortunately TPF is not the only show that has been or will be cancelled, and since we won't be able to offer 'show specials' over the next couple of months, we are going to offer everyone a 'virtual show special'. For a limited time, all games leaving the factory, including Oktoberfest and Houdini, will include a shaker motor. Details will be posted soon on our website.

Obviously we have seen the various comments on pinside and elsewhere and we find some of the conjecture to be quite humorous. Now while we can't comment or respond to everything that has been posted, either for sake of brevity or things we are not yet able to talk about, we did want to provide clarity on a few things that have been brought up.

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1) Whats with the offset monitor?

Despite some suggesting we did that since we had to fit it into the provided art, I can tell you that is not even remotely close to the truth. It has been our goal to integrate the game display into the backglass when possible, in this case as a jumbotron or digital billboard. The team also felt we could do more with the backglass if we could create a larger canvas for our artist. We did testing of playing the game with the offset monitor and found that it takes very little time to adjust to the different position. After a game or two you don't think about it being offset. And we do believe that the larger canvas allows the theme of the game to come through, even when the machine is turned off.

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2) What's with the dinosaurs?

Thankfully there are still toys in the world that encourage kids to use their imagination. And over the years Hot Wheels™ has expanded its' universe to include playsets that allow kids to explore different worlds with their Hot Wheels™ cars. Using your car to battle dinosaurs, gorillas, sharks and other creatures is the norm for many kids now playing with Hot Wheels™. Given our goal was to capture all the different aspects of Hot Wheels™, collecting, track building, racing, the stuff may of us grew up up with, we also felt creature battles should be a part of it.

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3) What's with the spinning car?

Without context it easy to see how the spinning car seems a bit out of place. The car does respond to what is happening in the game. And while I won't go into a lot of detail on that in this first post, I will say that we are still adjusting how it is used in game play, regardless, there are settings to control how much it is used, a little, a lot or none at all. So for those who really don't like it, you can just turn it off. I will say that when you actually play the machine, it is not as distracting as it might look watching a cell phone camera video of game play, and it can be quite helpful in knowing when the tach value is dropping -- you will soon learn why this is important.

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4) What's the price?

Each of our games has been priced, based on what is in the game. Hot Wheels™ has a lower price than either of our first two games, with an MSRP of $6,295. This price reflects that the game has a little less in it feature wise. Also, as I indicated above, we want to grow location play and operators need a game at a price that works for them, so it was our goal on this machine to make it a little lower priced to better serve operators and to get more pinball on location. Given what is going on right now, there is little doubt that collectors won't mind paying a little less for a great new game.

Even with this lower price, the game is still loaded. Multiple ramps, drops targets, a vuk with loop ramp, a front facing kicker, staggered stand-up targets, real direct printed backglass and tons more. The game is 100% RGB LEDs for inserts and general illumination, using over 140 LEDs, including multiple LEDs in arrow inserts to allow better illumination and lighting effects. Cabinet inside art is included, the first of its kind, 3D Lenticular backpanel is included, art on the front of the apron included, powder coated rails included, and as mentioned above, for a limited time, the shaker motor is included. Oh, and the rules are designed to give you a lot of different objectives to pursue, which will keep this game challenging and entertaining for a long time.

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5) What's with the stop motion animation?

Mattel has created a youtube series called Hot Wheels City™ and when we watched it, it just grabbed us. We loved the world they created and just watching it makes you smile. It is about having fun and that is what pinball is supposed to be about, so after much discussion, we decided that we wanted that to be part of the game and our friends at Mattel were willing to let us do so. You will see we mix that bit with some other animations that we feel better capture other aspects of Hot Wheels™ that some of us grew up with, such as track building and car collecting.

This is already getting to be pretty long for a post, so I'll wrap it up here and Ferret and I will share more details soon.

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We obviously looked at putting a loop d loop in the game. Joe Balcer spent a lot of time trying to figure out a way to make it work. @vdojaq is very much on track. The size of the loop is pretty key, although does not have to be as big as a hot wheels loop, but it has to be big enough to work and to look right, and it does take up more space than you would think. Given the height requirements it has to go in the back portion of the machine, but then you have issues with flipper strength, so then you look at other ways to do fire the ball through hit, but then it is not a shot, it is gimmick, and then you find even trying to make that fit, it totally messes up the flow and speed of the game -- which was a priority. Also keep in mind, when a ball does not make it around it can end up in all sorts of places, airballs are not the friend of operators, so that was a consideration as well. There were other factors as well, so it was disappointing to all of us, but the best course of action was to not include it.

Obviously the whole world has been turned upside down. Our plan has been to start shipping games to distributors, for their show rooms and shows (not that there are going to be any of those for a while), the first week of April. Customer games would then start to ship two weeks after that. Normally those would be targeted for locations, but hard to know how that might be adjusted.

Now keep in mind, while we inventory a huge percentage of the parts, there are some parts that we get on a "Just In Time" basis. So, while right now things are on track, we could seee things outside our control mess with that.

As previous mentioned, we are still submitting content to Mattel for approval. They have been great to work with, and usually very quick to respond, but very hard to know how the virus is going to impact their operations and work flow.

As you can see, games are rolling down the line . . .

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Now that it is a summer show, I guess there is a shot. Hard for anyone to predict what will happen between now and then. I know we have a couple of great distributors who do that show, so if it happens, I'm sure we will have games there. I've been to that show two of the last three years and it is one of my favorites -- part of that is my love of Taco Mac's buffalo wings, having survived on those back in college. Just to show how old I am, back then we could get 50 wings delivered, for $9.99, of course wings were not nearly as popular then as they are now.

Thanks for all the comments and questions, I'll do my best to answer.

Not sure the newer ones are quite as robust as the old ones, but at $1 piece . . .

What I worth noting on this, is that the cars that are mounted in the game are done so with a click-lock type of velcro. This will allow you to easily swap out any of the cars in the game for ones in your collections or that you like. This was one of Balcer ideas from the start. Also, you will only find Hot Wheels originals in the game, as any thing else would require a separate license.

This is the old building, I guess impressive from the standpoint of how we squeezed everything in to be able to build machines. The line is being set up at the new location, but not sure how much the virus is impacting that, I've been juggling a million things and have not taken a trip out there to see. We have been moving stuff over there for a couple of weeks now, but not sure when they will make the big switch. I'm sure almost everyone will be happy when we move, things have been cramped here for a long time. I say 'almost' since for a few folks it will be a big change in commute time (for me it will be cut more than half)

I did upload the flyer yesterday, so it should be not he machine page. However, they do reduce the resolution I think on uploads.

Not every game is for everyone. Those who have played Houdini and Oktoberfest know they are very, very different games and Hot Wheels™ is very different from both of those and obviously was designed with families in mind. Our focus was not only to create a fast and flowing game, but a rule set that is very friendly to novices, with achievable goals that can be quite satisfying, but there are then the more challenging objectives for the enthusiast and advanced player.

We have not announced an event yet, but we are actively working on a few things to show off the game and talk about design, rules, features, etc. These were things we were originally planning for after TPF, so, we have had to adjust our plans. Also, as I've said previously, we are still submitting content to Mattel for approval, so that is factor in our timing. I would suspect that sometime next week I will have an update on when some of these things will be occurring.

I do want to mention that the machine that was at AEI had almost none of the music and basically no voice calls or SFX.

I'll post a high level overview of the rules shortly.