Hot Wheels -- Challenge Accepted!

Hey there Hot Wheels family. DeathSaveArcade here. I finally got my Hot Wheels in yesterday after a terrible experience with freight shipping. UGH, I hate freight. Anyway, I absolutely love this game American Pinball. I am a pretty good player skill wise, been to a few wizard modes on JJPs and sterns etc throughout my time with games I’ve owned and obviously streamed at one point as well. I must say, the game is addicting, fun, exciting and the variety of gameplay objectives is fantastic. Nothing feels linear and you are always making progress which feels great. So far my best game has been 1.7 billion with gear 3, all epics running at once, look crash with boost, a mode or two done and the various MB’s.

What a thrill.

Out of the box I set up the game as recommended both on here and from the instructions. I placed legs all the way in and leveled left to right. I personally don’t know how anyone can play with the game setup like that. It feels like an old EM. So so floaty and slow. After adjustment I made about 5 full turns on each back leg and now the game plays like a fast paced monster of a machine. I have kept the flippers at normal strength and slings+ 1 which has really woken up the game.

Out of the box, with the leg adjustments I have no issues out of the pops 90% of the time, when it does come down the center a little nudge can save your ball. I do have rejects frequently from the right flipper to the left saucer and my ball goes through the right saucer frequently even with the legs up making it a tad slower to reach the saucer on normal flipper power. I would love to see a fix for both that doesn’t involve a floppy disc spring.

Not sure if anyone else experienced this but out of the box my upper right speaker had terrible feedback. Unfortunately due to the design I couldn’t get at the speaker to check it, but I did turn most of the amp levels down, and it removed a lot of the static and feedback I was getting from the speaker and the game is still plenty loud. The bass and treble were nearly maxed and the others were near max too. With the volume on the game up but the gains on the amp much much lower any unwanted sound effects from the speakers were removed.

Regarding the flippers, they feel great with the exception of after a MB, and for my personal machine, it’s only been affecting the left flipper. Randomly after a MB I will get weak flips but it usually goes away. After reading through this forum I would love to know why the issue of “overheating” is such a problem with this build as the ball times, even on my 1.7 bill game were fairly short. I own a WoZ, hobbit, lotr, wonka, Deadpool, etc and those games can literally go on an hour or more straight and I never have any weakness or overheating issue. Why would coils overheat in a 15 minute game? Seems like a poor choice of parts if that is truly a concern, but it seems like something else to me, but not sure what.

After going back through this forum and catching up. I just wanted to say, With the previous things aside this is my favor American pinball games and I loved Houdini as a player that enjoys a hard game, this one is addictive. I can’t wait to see the progression of the code and the fixes of the mild issues on the saucers and ramps.

Here are some things I saw and personal ideas for the future:

I sent a few bugs I found to Josh and Michael, as well as a few tweaks.

I’d love to see a “race only game mode.” Hold both flipper down before hitting the start button, select race only, and then begin a game. Allow it to be Rpm and shifting for additional points and then only the race positions and a timer. If you shift gears it obviously increases the score but also removed 10 seconds from your race time.

Another thing I’d like to see is the increase in scoring if you finish a race and move on to race 2 in a single game. Make it worth double for each rank you improve on your second race.

The redline mania soundtrack is way too low during that mode and general sound equalization throughout the code would be beneficial.

I’m not sure if it’s just my game or what, but I’ve hit 50 cars collected and didn’t get car crash multiball. Not sure what number of cars I need I’d like to eventually see that mode.

After getting a super jackpot in redline mania 2 with all the epics running beforehand, my car collection froze and stuck at 1 car remaining for the entire game. Just an fyi.

I know this has been a long post, but overall I am super happy with my purchase and I look forward to seeing all of you guys continue to enjoy yourselves and this title. Way to go American Pinball!
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