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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Here's a quick six minutes or so on the #1 prototype table at American's facility.

I don't play very well with a regular tripod and camera in front of me, my arms straddling it to the flippers. I better invest in some proper pinball podcast stuff

It really is a blast. It's much more readily accessible and casual-friendly than the previous two API games, but has enough depth to challenge hardcores. It flows and flows fast. And while it helps to know the rules, this is a game anyone can walk up to, make a shot or two and make something happen.

The skill shot, "revving" with the left flipper and then touch-plunging, then completing it with the left orbit shot may be one of the better skillshots ever. It's also an example of how well the theme is integrated.

A NIB copy, but otherwise yes.

Maybe? I've bricked track shots hard enough on that same table in games I didn't record that airballed straight into the right outlane. It's more that on some of those shots I don't shoot them flush, and honestly it's not bad to ease the ball up to the RPM targets for a "kiss" rather than a hard shot that creates a drain hazard. Kinda in the way that shooting the trolls in MM full speed is dangerous.

There we go. A worthy goal for me when I go back for another session. 750Kish.

447,843,310 is my personal high so far. The one time I got a big RPM boosted score in a battle mode where I hit all the shots to win/score big. Having played no live pinball since March other than these visits to the factory to play HW, I was proud enough to have pulled that off.

Having seen Michael get a little deeper into the game than I have, I can say that multiplied EOB bonuses can get significantly large once you've collected some Hero cars, along with all the regular cars/tracks/loops etc. to have been racked up by then. I could see a future game in league on this getting decided by a couple of our top flight players on who tilts.

This time I was able to really build one up, to 25M. I had another good one in another game that I lost on a tilt. Big risk, big reward....in the Hot Wheels zone.

Also around 7:25, it's a Track MB and I shoot two balls in succession into the track loop lane, trapping the second behind the drop target, then hit it Dirty Pool-style into the saucer.

Thanks again to Michael and the whole team at API for having me up, breaking my quarantine pinball drought with an excellent new game.

Totally tubular, dude.

Get the boost, start a mode, hit the lit shots and watch your 50-70M score turn into 300M in a hurry.

Really, while I love this pinball it's hard to put it in any superlative category except for one thing.

That skill shot.

Help me out here, is there any other pinball that, on the plunge, asked as much of the left hand at the same time you plunged the ball with the right? I've played it hours on end now as if I owned it, and I can't think of another game that did that.

That stuff is why pinball is great, and how silver balls and solenoids have lived on in a digital world.

I noticed that the only time I'd see it happen on the machine at AP was when it kicks out of the track lane. Never when you shoot the ramp on the right.

Suppose the VUK that kicks it into the track loop could be putting some kind of funky spin that a foam stopper would probably correct. Noticed that a simple nudge just as the ball reaches the inlane worked too.

That's going to have a bit of an upward curve with some understanding of the rules. For a middle-of-the-road player, shoot billion-plus and get there with some mastery of the skill shot, which will likely get you to Red Line Mania quickly on your first ball, picking up the Rip Rod to drive your EOB bonuses going forward, and then hitting the turbo boost only in multiball or some other mode to max out your scores from it.
I have not been on HW since summer at AP, but I remember one thing about some early, low-scoring games when I was just walking up to it for the first time shooting shots and reading more later:
Do not ignore the tachometer and <i>do not go over the redline on the skillshot.</i> That's a score-killer before the ball is even in play. When your score multipliers are low, you're not getting very much to show for your shots, in or out of a mode, and it takes shots to build it up when you had the chance to save those shots - and the attendant drain risk - right out of the shooter lane.
Even revving the engine lightly with the left flipper and getting it to 5 or 6 off the plunger is going to make a positive difference on every switch you hit, as opposed to starting at 1. I try to aim for 7 or 8.

I liken HW's turbo boost a bit to the 5X multiplier in WH20, except in that it comes as a random whirlpool prize and you can only hope it comes up when you have two balls locked and can quickly start multi and hit the jackpots with the stacked multipliers. HW has this, but it's not random. You only shoot that kickback with turbo lit in the most productive situation possible.

It's been a few months since I played HW, but optimistic that it'll be on the circuit when league reopens summer-ish. Can't come soon enough.

It did seem like if I overshot the 10 on the tach before plunge on the first ball, that I had more shots to make to get RLM.
I do remember the first time I hit the boost in mode and the score went from ~70 to 250M a few shots later, and then I realized what I need to do.
While on its face that seems rather unbalanced, it's a product of skill, shotmaking (and receiving that kickback without draining) and you earn every point of it.
If I ever play FT or CFTBL in league I can just shoot for Monster Fish or Move Your Car ramps/center lane and forget all the other drain-risky stuff on the field, no need for other modes or multi, and if I'm dialed into the same two shots then I can make a that looks nice on the leaderboard. HW makes it a little more involved than that, yet it's easy to understand after a bit of playing.
It's good game design on the part of the rules and software team at AP, if they're out there reading this.