Curious what your plan is going fwd -- 2023 seems kinda way early to launch anything / take $ when you don't have a final prototype cut and running at the correct size with switches, plastics, lighting, final wire harness design, and some assets / coding done ? I guess UL listing isn't required unless you sell internationally maybe? Is there testing that has to happen to certify this before selling in the U.S.?

But more I am curious about manufacturing as you work a day job - is your plan to continue with this in the next couple years on top of your day job or are you picturing a transition to do this full time? As a one-man operation, hand assembling each game.. even if not as complicated and pretty as a Stern.. that's a ton of work per game. Are you picturing full light shows, a lot of sound effects, LCD animations going on? Or something more on the simpler side in regards to coding/modes & assets? With your background it sounds like you could do some cool coding on it, presumably fairly quickly. At your price point though, hand assembling.. it seems like you'd never even cover your man-hours of assembling each game, let alone parts. But you say that's figured out, so if you meet your quoted pricepoint per game delivered and make money, that's pretty impressive I will say that.

I think what you've done so far is really cool - really impressed that you got all the music licensed and the work on the mechs is neat, as is all the engineering on cutting costs. At the same time, I think it's hard for some (myself included) not to also be skeptical every time someone enters the arena saying they are going to cut costs in 1/2 (or more, in this case) and that everything can be done cheaper.. especially when they are fairly new to pinball. Building the prototype is generally considered the 'easy' part and you've got a ways to go to get to the final one... it's kind of impossible to know how many production hours it will take per game once you have a final proto, and can time an assembly of a second one.

Curious to see what 2023 brings - As-is, it looks like a cool homebrew that I'd be down to play. I'd really like to see the final production CNC version with inserts/lighting and code. I'd add a piece of feedback which is that I see the market for these maybe more in homes for families, and there may not need to be a coin door at all. Even the idea of shops/businesses having one to play, seems like it should just be a fun thing on freeplay rather than about making money.

Hey Adam,

Thanks for the video covering all the questions, that was great! Where can we get more Metal shred videos of you tho?? haha, I enjoyed that - looked like some mad alternate picking? - I've played music as a hobby for a long time as well but never got in the practice to learn to shred. If this idea takes off, you may need to do your own music for one!

Guess at this point we just have to see how much and how far you can go in 2023 towards getting those 5 production games put together. Would def. work out a lot of the code beforehand - just because it could end up impacting your layout and particularly # of and placement of inserts.

I like how you lit up that drop target in your example above -- but also want to point to the importance of inserts as an indicator to the player not only of game progress but what to shoot next, what shots are tied to what mode at any time, etc. Moving lights off the playfield may simplify the underside & wiring but esp w/out an LCD as an alternate way to talk to the player - you're down to using audio callouts which often get lost in the music. It all depends on what you're going for of course, but what is going to make the game 'fun' likely now involves a good deal of not only coding and goals to achieve, but in getting information across to the player so they know what's going on in the short-term and long-term progress of the current ball and the current game.

Hope 2023 is a productive year for you! Hope to see some code & gameplay early next year

3rd flippers .. yeah non-pinball people almost always miss those it's very true. But for them, indicator lights are also pretty much a loss.. I was shooting more for someone who likes pinball enough to buy one - for which I'd expect they are familiar with 3rd/4th flippers and generally that "flashing shots are good". I'm with you in that today, I'm generally not going to read thru a full ruleset.. I prefer to explore a game and figure it out on my own maybe with a few tips along the way. Maxing out points tournament style tho is much less fun for me vs. just trying to finish all the goals and get wizard mode.. but that's just me.

Anyway, those lines you are showing - are you saying they would be drawn on the PF or they would be mini lighted inserts, like Dialed In has for the 2 shots back to the flippers where the game shoots back at you or even smaller, say like the GnR mini inserts on all the map cities? If you could make them all lighted ones so you can flash them in sequence w/out it being cluttered that would be pretty cool vs large inserts for the shots. Hard to imagine it wouldn't get cluttered tho if you wanted to use them for every shot.. thus why larger inserts closer to shots traditionally I think. Sounds like whatever you go with, you're def. thinking a lot about communication to the player about status and what's going on so that's good.

I like that mini bumper nest idea where they go down when hit. Sounds like a lot of mechanics to fit in a small area tho. Seems like games are leaning a bit towards the use of a well placed pop vs pop nests..if not entirely eliminated.. at least in some cases.

Very true about innovation and new ideas in pinball.. so many of these ideas are realllly old and sometimes mostly forgotten.