AP needs to cruise into Expo with this;

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I'm not on the team. And you have great suggestions for game play updates. Should be : Rosh ... Ferret ... jeffspinballpalace .... and Garage Monkey.

LTG : )

Just found a Twin Mill in the collection!! We have our first hero car and don’t have the pin yet,

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We are SOO pleased to finally introduce this completely Custom Mod!! Complete the look of your Awesome Hot Wheels game with our Custom 3D "Shadow Box" mod! We are So very happy with how this turned out. EVERY fine detail we could fit into one shadow box display to make it Truly unique. Real Hot Wheels track, Real miniature Hot Wheels car, custom made Winners circle 3D sign, color art, hand painted API winner Trophy, even a mini labeled Hot Wheels track splice for nostalgia! All those mini details accented with a filtered Hot Wheels blue LED lighting setup makes it Pop! Plug and play design with instructions and clear door lense included. Absolutely a Winners Circle look!!! Available Now in our Website store or Pinside market place.

www.TheModCouplePinball.com

Note: Car may be different model than shown....

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Wow. You really out did yourself on this one ! Ties in great with the look of the game.

LTG : )

Dude. This shit is AMAZING!

Thanks so much. Really a game full of inspiration.

WOW! Now THAT is awesome! LOVE it!
Need a mini Biergarten now for Oktoberfest!

Introducing our First ever Custom Commemorative Mod to showcase one of the Greats of our hobby. Lloyd! For all he has done for this industry always with a smile we introduce the APe Hot Wheels "LTG Gorilla" custom Mod. Extremely fine detail from the ball grabbing gorilla to the Micro detailed car he grabbed off the track he is one cool gorilla!! Wouldn't be complete though without a "LTG" brand on the appropriate spot though....lol Fight your next Hot Wheels battle with the LTG Gorilla on your side! Available Now from our Website store or Pinside market place.

www.TheModCouplePinball.com

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Hello Pinsiders. I made a trip up to American Pinball's new factory and HQ in Palatine, Illinois just northwest of Chicago this weekend. My roommate, myself and API's sales manager Michael Grant spent some time on Hot Wheels.

I can say that while I have enjoyed and will continue to play Houdini and Oktoberfest, this is American's finest offering to date. It flows - think ToM with deeper, better, more meaningful modes. Probably the best and most concise way I can describe it.

Artwork is very faithful to the theme - the whole kit looks like a giant Hot Wheels collector case, pretty much. The cabinet and backbox on the side have what look like two HW track pieces linking together. That's pretty cool.

Much seems to be made of the offset screen and, to a lesser extent, the HW car rotating on the playfield. None are distractions or detractions. The car doesn't bother me any more than, say, the Mixmaster on Dr. Dude that's also constantly spinning up there.

Keep in mind, I don't have a pin at home and so this was my first non-virtual pinball in three-plus months. But I got to the track and loop multiball modes that implement the theme well. Scoring is a little higher than Houdini or Oktoberfest; more like the early-90s dot-matrixes from WMS. It has that same quality feel too. Eventually my roommate said it was time to go and I told him okay - after one more game.

I'll be back there for more soon.

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Im anxious to get my game so i can see what the new code does.

My distributor tells me that my game should drop ship sometime early next week, hoping it gets here by the weekend.

New code sounds great, a few tweaks and bug squashes it sounds like. I didn’t see the spinner sound change in the release notes; might have to wait on that one.

Have another idea about getting to see the >400 cars for more than a split second before they disappear into the case. And maybe there is no room on screen, but, here is the idea; have the collected car show up in the middle of the screen (like it does now, but with less distracting background please); instead of it going immediately into the case to never be seen again, have the cars line up near the bottom of the screen until 10 are collected across the bottom then the case shows up on screen and they go into the case at that point. It’s 10 cars for a case award right? Maybe on bonus screen it can show a few of them.

You know, something else no one is complaining about on this game, Le,Pro, and the price. This proves you don't have to release a game in different versions to be successful. Make 1 game at a great pricepoint like Balley/Williams and you will be fine. I have always liked AP approach.

I am really loving the game and just saw there is a code update. After I update with the new code, are there any settings that I should adjust to improve the game.

Game settings factor default, is for everyone. Any changes to setting after that is for you. It's your game make changes as you see fit.

Just installed 7/1/20 update ahead of the weekend. You can see which cars are collected now and the polish looks nice.

That sounds great. Really looking forward to getting this game. Once this game was announced and I saw the DeadFlip stream I knew that this was the car-themed game I was looking for. I did my due diligence with the other new-ish games out there, specifically #TMNT. I watched the streams of that as well, and for some reason it just looked cramped, overly packed with stuff, especially in the upper half. In my opinion it makes #HW stand out being a bit simplified (read: not overly complex and cumbersome). What a refreshing idea, you can see the ball make the orbits .

Can someone please twitch stream more gameplay, I want more ideas for strategy?

My game crossed the finish line in my driveway today. Finished setting up a little while ago and have updated to latest code too.

Played a few games and got a Red Line Mania - that was very cool - light show really neat. A bunch to explore.
I like seeing the cars collected on the display. Game is colorful , flips fast and will be fun.

Good to hear, how do you think it will hold up in your lineup?

It's a really nice game. Just played a handful of games and experienced a few different multiballs, etc. Liking the animations, lights, overall feel. Plays fast.

Everybody should like this game, and I think it would be , or IS an exceptionally good choice for families.

If it's on your radar, do not be afraid to order one. I think the greater majority that play this are going to like it and enjoy it.

I’m back and have some additional ideas. Maybe they are already in the works or can be added to the list.

Hot Wheels car wheel storage case holds 30 cars and always has. Therefore it should take 30 cars to fill a case in the game and collecting 4 cases can still trigger the multiball. So the only switch is to a 30 base system.


While we are on the subject of displaying cars at the end of each ball, you currently see a screen with all your cars and then a calculation of score. This flashes by pretty fast if you wanted to spend time looking at your car collection. Currently it shows all the cars collected and varies how many cars per row and how many rows by making things smaller. If you collect 100 cars, things get pretty small. Instead, limit how many cars are shown on this screen to 30.

This allows you to fix 30 positions on the screen and allows for some consistency. It also matches the 30 car case rule. The car name still needs to be added below each one, but with defined real estate, the display will be more uniform. What happens after 30 cars are collected? Well these 30 cars are part of a case, so why not start a new case and make car 31 the first new car shown in case 2? Then you have a link between 30 cars per case and cars shown in the current case.


But let’s say a player wanted to see what cars he had collected during the game. He currently can’t do that. Well if there was a jukebox type feature that started by holding right flipper in, he would be in business. When a ball is in the trough, hold right flipper in to launch the case screen. This is screen holds 30 cars and would cycle between cases every 10 sec. Now you could see your car collection in a respectable way and with each car labeled, you know what you have. The case screens could be used to feed the end of ball score screen. As an added benefit ..... In attract mode, a player can hold the right flipper to start jukebox and see cases of 30 cars and flip through all 432 cars.

So all cars could be viewed in attract mode or the current car collection between balls with the right button jukebox feature. This may not be easy to do but I don’t care.

Spare no expense and stick AP’s best men on it until the solution is found.
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Some pretty good ideas; I'll add the following...

Figure a way to include Treasure Hunt (TH) and Super Treasure Hunt (STH) cars in the mix. If you don't know what these are, well they are limited production cars that the Hot Wheels collectors seek....http://www.hwtreasure.com/how-to-identify/

These could be hidden in the game (either awarded randomly, or as the last car in the case for instance). When you get a TH car a special call out and light show could happen and perhaps some special scoring, maybe it advances the tach a few spots? These TH and STH cars could feature a 360° rotating version of the car. This would add to the excitement for collecting HW cars, just like in real life, . Do I dare say that Mattel could design a STH car that is only offered in the game?

Sorry about my wild imagination...the sky is the limit on this game.

boom! Let’s take it from a top 100 game and shove into the list around 40, bitches. Only way to get this done is polish, polish, polish.

RikV when you are looking for another game, consider Houdini, you might love it.

Has anybody noticed the stiff pops ,it’s no biggie but my pops are hard to energize,I have the switches as close as can be but the skirts are just hard to push down,more action in the pops would be fun,maybe they will break in but I don’t see how.

Love the game though

My pops works fine, maybe adjust your switch gap. Pops could benefit from adding an led strip per each and connection to game. Awaiting HP guidance and direction here.

By the way, I have seen numerous ball hangs. What is the recommended slope? At 6% and rear legs in, I get quite a few balls that stop and can be shaken free, especially @ the top left pop. What is recommended angle? BTW I am drunk off my ass.

Ok the 2 ton gorilla in the room is that occasionally inserts will become lit a specific color and stay that way for entire game. For every remaining ball in the game you will notice it and this carries over between games, so you will see it forevermore, unless game is cycled off. By turning game off for a few seconds and then flipping it on, it will 100% fix the issue. Without a cycle it will 100% not fix the problems. Ideally after each game a check could turn off all unlit bulbs. Even better is to check at the end of each ball.

In this pic the green P and the red 7 were always on, but should have been clear. FYI I have also seen it occur on rpm dial on the 1 and 5, but these eventually fixed themselves. Does AP staff have games to test now? If so they will catch and correct. Without testing physical games, it might not appear. BTW - this is a small issue, but an important one to squash imo.

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....wait a minute, wait!? What?? What does this mean!?! Does it mean what I think it means!? I’m a bit confused, should I be? I think I’m confused but not sure.

Ran into a little hiccup a little while ago. All was running smooth but have run into a little trouble at about 30 plays in with the upper drop target. Have sent in service ticket request.

Trouble with upper drop target. Popping up and down after ball goes into vuk. It will fire several times and will not engage in a raised position. After a number of trys the target is staying down and does not raise. Upper drop target does not seem to catch in the up position. However with game off and manually resetting it with playfield raised seems fine and latches. Game was playing fine until about 30 plays. Then problem started mid-game. Have inspected the target mech and it does not bind or anything, is nice and free and will latch by hand. However during game play it appear's not to be functioning correctly now.

Otherwise have been having an enjoyable time with no other issues. I would guess with some help from AP this will hopefully be fairly easy to rectify.

There is a switch test in there. Make sure the switch opens when the drop target goes up and closes when the drop target goes down. Might need simple adjusting. There is a tab sticking out of the drop target that pushes the arm of the switch. Switch might have come loose too. Check wires too.

LTG : )

once mine arrives ill be streaming it every other day for about a month in a head to head couples tournament I'm hosting.

LTG The switch for the drop target tests ok. Shows light green on the switch chart when down and when I manually raised it to a locked raised position shows dark green.

After testing switches and coils and thinking about it again I figured I may have missed something mechanical.

So I did more checking. When I was manually locking the target I was doing it by pressing on the end of the "paddle" under the coil plunger. I checked again and pressed directly under the plunger and the target would not lock. There is a nut that holds that paddle to the shaft of the coil. The nut screws right into the bottom of the metal coil plunger to fasten the paddle. That nut had loosed slightly. I tightened it up and the target again worked correctly during game play. However after a bit it came loose again. I tightened it again and gave it a tiny bit of blue locktite. If it works loose again I'll find a small star lock washer and add that to the equation.

Hopefully stays solved.

See photo - pencil eraser touching the nut that was loose...
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Glad to hear it was a quick and easy fix! Enjoy the game

I had the same loose arm on mine,glad you found it

Fix seems to have worked thus far. All appears good. Played about ten games already this morning.

This is a very fun game. I can see it will be one of my favorites.

Actually hit the super skill shot a couple times in my last handful of games. I have experienced several different multiballs and have done some battles of various nature.

Swapped out one car from the playfield to see how that goes and of course it's easy enough to do.

This game is a Winner.

Just a thanks to the API team. Code update looks great and worked seamlessly. Appreciate the continuous stream of updates and attention to feedback. Game is shaping up nicely!

One Goofy tech tip for new owners. After you cut those zip ties on the cars (you know you will!) you have to Squeeze those cars down into the Velcro to keep them locked in. After a dozen ish games I had a car drive off lol. Once you lock them down they are good and never move.

Yup - good tip. I had one car come off while carefully snipping the zip ties while setting up the game. Just squeeze the cars down and they lock in. Good idea to check them all and give them a squeeze when you set your game up. There are extra hold downs in your goody bags too.

Thanks for following up with the solution!
I’ll close your ticket.

Just heard that my NIB Hot Wheels is shipping Monday.

Color me happy!

Get ready to "Start Your Engines!!!"

Game looks awesome, but how are the physical cars attached to game? There is a post on FB where a car got loose and ended up in the track on a game on location, then at least 2 other people mentioned this issue. One guy said he drove 1.5 hours to play on location and was pretty bummed. I have NO firsthand knowledge, just wanted to share now that games are in the wild. Possibly something to look at. Im not even sure if thats a car that comes with the game.

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Update, I went back and looked at some playfield pics and I dont believe this car comes with the game. Of course I cant find the post on FB now to let them know this was possibly added after the fact.

Heard an interview where API said that the cars are shipped with zip ties for operator use in addition to the industrial strength velcro that should be fine standalone for home use. Sounds likes there's only an issue from random airballs. Not sure if the change was made after initial games shipped.

As I noted in my post. From the factory they simply set the cars on the industrial velcro and zip tie. You Have to squeeze the cars into the velcro and trust me they will Not come off!