Reading between the lines....

I think it's fair to say, I wasn't far off my guess. You made a promise to give your thoughts, good/bad.

You had an agreement to provide audits etc

Just feels like most who received had more to the fact than just simply being a pre-order or paying in full.

<Just feels like most who received had more to the fact than just simply being a pre-order or paying in full.

Exactly. Very shady.

At Expo, hanging with Andrew, I dont remember anyone NOT offering a review, write up, blog, podcast, league,
show etc, to get one faster......including me!

Fair enough and to each their own.

However, I don't believe I should have been offered free shipping to provide last minute cash flow. I had no deposit and wasn't paid in full. Why should I receive before full paid or partly paid customers? I sure as hell don't think a guy patiently waiting for years should be jumped because you have a blog, YouTube channel, league etc

I'm anxious to see how the new HP will run, cut through the noise and get to brass tacks.

Okay...we can now see that what was happening was getting pretty shady........but WTF does any of it have to do with the "Rebirth"? New people are taking over. I think we can at least hear them out before we totally shit on them. It might come to that...it might not.

Only one who can pull this company out of the abyss is...

http://www.cnbc.com/the-profit/

images (resized).jpeg

6-valuable-lessons-on-how-to-turn-a-profit-cnbc-marcuslemonis-theprofit-46-638 (resized).jpg

I've kinda wondered about that. You go to the extremes to become a hype man and tend to get your machine before/if anyone else. You have a good track record: Alien, Wooly. Predator didn't work out, but cant win em all.

Im in for 2 more weeks. If i still dont get any communication im out.

I am a passionate and out spoken proponent for pretty much all things pinball. You should try being positive once in a while and see what comes of it. I am not sure what is to wonder about anything. I often take the proactive steps to support new pinball, convince my partners to buy in and take risks on buying new games, and then put those games on route for people to beat on and have fun. It is usually pretty easy to convince any manufacturer to send you an early game when you are willing to pay for it, put it on route, give feedback and audits/be a beta=tester/early adopter so they can get good feedback to make improvements prior to full production

My passion is not a ploy or made up like you tend to be. I genuinely love pinball and sharing pinball. If that means a side perk is I get to help pay for and debut new games then that is great. Lots of risk with passion, but all worth it to be able to share new games with the community. Heck, I was on route today and met 2 completely new to me couples while loading in a game and fixing another. Talk about putting a smile on your face when you see not 1, but 2 couples out on a Sunday afternoon enjoying a beer and each others company over some games of pinball! I like to think that their Sunday activities and that experience is all worth dealing with the people like you in the larger community.

You seem to still be uber butt hurt over something but I am not sure what it is all about. Does all this hate stem from when you wanted to scam your way into the MGC afterparty and got called out on it. You did not want to play by the rules then and ever since you have this real pent up teenager type angst against me and many other WI pinheads. I honestly suggest some deep reflection on what has you so tweaked at life and realize that it is only pinball and it is supposed to be fun. Stop looking for some ulterior motive or trying to paint everything with your brown colored glasses and you may just see that pinball and the larger community is made up of some great and passionate people just trying to make it all happen.

Let me know when you want to swing by Madison for some pinball and beers. First round is on me.

side note: we will have some more fun and exciting games to debut early in production runs in the coming months so you may want to time your visit with one of them.

Says the guy who goes out of his way to rate phenomenal games with absolute dogshit numbers. Hilton - the "H" stands for HYPOCRISY.

I was going to just laugh at the exact section you quoted, but your way of saying it pretty much covers it for me.

sorry I dont like the same games as you bub.

I know you are hurt that I dont like Family Guy, but what can I say it is just not for me. I know we are all supposed to have the same opinions on games as the all mighty RareHero, but I guess I missed that episode.

Searched for it, this was it.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/alien-pinball-official-game-thread/page/141#post-3301083

that had nothing to do with why he was perma banned. The posts are still there (albeit edited or some deleted) and occurred months later The reason for being permabanned relatd to this.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/alien-pinball-official-game-thread/page/168#post-3401181

They appear edited/missing the core of the content that was out of line. I just point this out because I dont think any Pinside staff were trying to protect or hide anything. They were banning for other and appropriate reasons so no need to rewrite the narrative.

I don't care that you don't like FG. Metallica isn't a fucking 1. You go out of your way for ridiculous ratings. Even games I don't like end up getting higher ratings than a 1.

I've said it before: Anybody that gives ANY pinball game a 1 simply doesn't like pinball.

Worst f**king game ever for me, I'd be hard pressed to go below a 3 or 4.

is this really where you guys are going again, lol.

We get it... you dont like MY rating system.

my.pdf

Alright, might be time for you guys to knock it off and take it to PM/separate therad. This is a HP thread, not a 'I like this game and you don't' thread.

lol, sure they do RareHypocrite

https://pinside.com/pinball/community/pinsiders/rarehero/ratings

rarehypocrite.pdf

Very useful information! That couldn't have been what did it.

I did that to make fun of you.

No such thing...

I posted this in the other Alien thread but I thought I would throw this out here.

Here's what I have a hard time understanding:

- Say there are 100 paid in full customers waiting for their game.
- 60 of them ask for their money back.
- So 60 x $6,500 = $390,000.

The new owners have to send $390,00 back and still they have to produce another 40 games at say $6,000 each so another $240,000.
That means the new owners would have to shell out at least $630,000 before they can even start to turn a single cent of profit.
They need to sort out the existing issues and spend hundred of thousands more for parts and labour to get new games done. Are these new owners willing to spend well over a million dollars to try and make this all happen?

I have a hard time understanding it but I hope they get it done.
QSS

Do you know for a fact 60 (fully paid) people have asked for a refund?

We don't know how much they are willing and able to throw at this. We don't know how much will be needed...we don't know. And guess what...we likely will never know. We will only know if it worked or not after the fact.

I agree to some degree... but also see the other side.
You can't expect to be able to build 1000 machines up front without some kind of "guarantee" that the pre-order guys are interested in a final purchase.
With Alien; it's probably a no brainer that you will eventually sell out of the machines you build.
With Full Throttle; there is no way I would have built more than a handful of machines. No theme = risk for sale later.

Preordering is a problem... but blindly building X # of machines is equally a problem.

Not sure the right answer.

Don't get into pinball manufacturing unless you have deep enough pockets to produce games and then sell them...and also be able to survive a miss fire or two early on?

Highly, highly doubt that many ( too lazy to post in both threads).....sleep time....

I'm sure it's nowhere near that many. Most people are not fully paid.

How many Alien pins are out in the wild?

If things don't work out and no more games are made, is Alien rarer than Magic Girl?!

The Simple fact that you have a game that was never made in mass quantities rated a 10 & yet have one of the better Sterns (Metallica) rated at just over a 1 is beyond ridiculous. When I've rated a games I don't like even detest they still had enough to get atleast a 3-5 rating. Your ratings are point blank embarrassing.

Sorry didn't read all below this post it looks like i'm just repeating what others think.

I have no idea at all. Just a guess on my part.

That's good news. Hopefully there's not that many people paid in full.

QSS

For a guy that says he loves pinball he certainly has some hate for some great titles. I don't own Metallica but couple friends do and it's awesome.

1.2 on Metallica, 1.6 acdc, 3 for Tron. He even scored medieval madness 4. Can't say I can take his Alien or Full throttle reviews seriously now.

Spot on (I did not thumb up Whysnow a lot in this subforum recently... here is a notable exception)

Mr68's thread ban has nothing to do with him providing the link - but I suppose that if one is really interested, one can directly ask Kim by PM...

Anyone could have googled "Heighway Pinball financial record" and get access to this public information anyway. I found this information too and provided the link in the French pinball forum some time ago (but no one cared anyway )
I also think I recall wcbrandes alluded to it in one of his posts.

We did remove a few unverified "Heighway revelations" made by duplicate/anonymous accounts. The exact same information posted by a legitimate pinsider would have stayed, but we simply could not allow slander.

Moderation in this subforum has been (is still) a difficult exercice. I have been reported myself for criticizing Heighway... and even for thumbing up people criticizing Heighway!

Agree 100%....Anything he's associated with I pretty much steer clear of.

It's called a shill. Plain and simple. Do not listen nor pay attention to any rankings a shill makes.

How in the world can Metallica rate a 1?? The art alone is worth a few points, and the ruleset is quite well done with the special CIU modes, which were (and still are) pretty unique. By rating a 1 he claims it's worse than games such as El Toro? Such a score is insulting to Borg and Sheats.

Hilton certainly is passionate, but he goes about demonstrating his passion in all the wrong ways most of the time.

Heightasia is what they should call the new licensee of Alien and Full Throttle.

Moved to Whysnow Ratings subforum!

... more seriously: try to keep the thread on topic, please.

It's the same investors from the start so why would anything change I also read a post that they have been at the factory for 3 weeks so why have they not replied to any e mail
If they have been there for the last 3 weeks have they been overseeing people who where not on the aliens list rolling up and buying pins cash the whole thing absolutely stinks

Totally agree,though i feel you need to have sufficient cash reserves in case stuff goes south.

Anyone know if we are still getting the child friendly mode

A very positive article it help me to keep me in a positive mood.

This thread is pretty much dead to me until someone involved (the new investors) actually post some "real" information on here. All it is now is a bunch of little kids bickering back and forth......worthless!

Still trying really hard to hold out on my LE deposit.......

Brian

Understood. Honestly, I don't remember who it was that posted it. I do recall reading it and thinking at that time (9 months ago) that it was some serious information to consider if it was validated, no matter who the poster was or what the intent was. I have no interest in Pinside drama nor do I care on who the mods eject or don't eject. Got more important things to worry about.

The point is that history and someone's track record should always be examined and this community could do with a bit more skepticism on operations.

lol!

Would be awesome if there was an actual subforum for that! Then all the whiny babies that don't understand someone can have a different opinion on a game than them can go bitch to each other in one place.

I have wrote up many times why Mehtallica is one of the crappiest games ever IMHO, but they just cant grasp the idea that someone does not like their favorite title. I really did think some of these guys thumbs upping were a bit more intelligent and could #1 figure out that game opinions are entirely personal in nature and #2 that a ratings scale from 1 to 10 SHOULD actually use the entire scale. LOL, seriously... if Robin only wanted crappy games to be rated a 3 then he would have used a scale form 3-10. Damn geniuses I tell you.

these are the same people that rate everything a 3 out of 5 stars, expect teachers to only hand out As and Bs to their kids, and give green ribbons in track just for running the race. Some games just plain suck; those games get a 1.

Good read but could have used more quotes from parties involved and less opinions:

"There's no doubt Alien Pinball is an excellent game, with a great layout, amazing art..."

The sad part is, on more than one occasion ex-employees came forward to try and warn people what was going on, only to be labelled 'sh*t stirrers' or 'people trying to take down his company':

Remember these?
https://groups.google.com/d/msg/rec.games.pinball/dLymIc1UHB8/wsGLo5SDBgAJ
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/rec.games.pinball/heighway%7Csort:relevance/rec.games.pinball/suzzpuosLHE/pNKJkyzZBAAJ

These were the warning signs that he had no idea how to handle employees, which is why so many good people left HP over the years.

Here's an example of how clueless he was when it came to mass production. When someone pointed out in one of their videos they seemed to using hand tools only on the assembly line and why weren't they using power tools, he came out with this nugget:
http://i.imgur.com/0AsCe6r.png

I'd say that if your employees are ruining playfields, then the issue lies in the training, not with the tools being used.

Edited to add: Hindsight is always 20/20

Gotta have power tools to crank out games.. I recall some pics of Stern or Williams lines with pneumatic tools hanging from the ceiling. Can't go wrong copying the leader.