As a member of Team Alien US let me say that this channel and this announcement are the real deal. The names of the Investor Group would not be of any use to you. The members of the Investor Group are passionate about pinball and specifically the Alien Pinball machine. The Investor Group is made up of smart gentlemen who have not jumped into this without thought.
This is real and this is happening.
I couldn't be happier. I want to see all my children get into the wild and thrive.

ddt

in the first post I read this to be a clear statement:

The new management is very committed to doing what it takes so that all the existing games become fully functional as quickly as possible.

This was expressed to me as a high priority.

ddt

I have spoken with the Roger who is leading the charge and he is determined to establish a viable production line and produce Alien and other pins as soon as possible. He understands and has planned to do the right thing to earn back the reputation needed to be a viable pinball manufacturer.

At some point the only thing that is going to convince people is a NIB Alien pin showing up at their house and at their distributor's warehouse. That is fine, that is the intention. Till then, thrash-on.

ddt

I can't let this post stand as it is nonsense.
Yes most of the existing delivered machines have had a fault with the Xeno mech. The mech was not tested sufficiently before shipping game number one and in the wild HP discovered that it had fatal flaws. New companies make mistakes, big mistakes. However even without a working Xeno mech the game plays and plays well. The Xeno mech has been completely re-implemented and a small number of the lastest machines have been shipped with that mech. All existing machines will be upgraded to the new Xeno mech I have been assured.

Nonsense once again. AH customer service has not always been great but it has been there, Helmut and others have been making the best out of a bad situation. HP customers have had support and new management will make it much better.

There are hours and hours of Alien Twitch feeds from pins in Wisconsin, Indiana, England that show people playing delivered machines. More Alien pins are in the hands of customers than Magic Girl and at least you can see the entire LCD when playing Alien!

I mostly lurk on Pinside and rarely engage but this comparison irritates me. The last Magic Girl video I saw features mainplay and ..... Alien has AlieN and AlienS mainplays, 8 modes, 2 mini-wizard modes, 5 multiballs, >15 possible combo shots, 5 Gun play modifiers, 5 skill shots all implemented with full production AV assets. To compare it to MG is ludicrous.

Not true. The first Alien pins don't suffer from a collection of cobbled together parts but rather a lack of testing of the selected parts. Pushing the pins out the door to keep things going hoping that everything works as it has in the factory was a mistake. Moving forward this will not happen again.

I understand the frustration with the production of Alien Pinball by Heighway Pinball. The developers share that frustration. However, I will not stand by while nonsense is posted based on that negative energy.

For what it is worth and I speak for myself I am very hopeful that the new men at the helm of Heighway Pinball have the energy, acumen, and resources to fix the problems at Heighway Pinball.

Yes long before I was associated with this project there was nonsense foisted on the pinball community by Heighway Pinball and it may be fair that some of that is being pushed back.

Finally Alien is green Magic Girl is purple. Not at all alike.

ddt

As long as you keep your torches and pitchforks at bay I will be at the NWPAS all three days this weekend. While I am represented by four games that are in some stage of production at NWPAS I will be at Tommy's Nitro booth (as I haven't had a lot of time with a real Alien pin so far) and I can answer game questions. I don't know the detailed plans of the Active Investor Group so don't ask me. I do know quite a bit about the rules and the enhancements that remain to be done. After about six hours at a show I will be show fried so if you have suggestions it is better that you post them here.
As it stands the Alien package is 97% feature complete (just a few AV assets to be attached to the grand wizard mode that nobody has gotten to yet). The AIG is committed to getting machines in the hands of all the US developers ASAP and the final enhancement and testing of the package will hopefully be done before machines ship in quantity. That would make me happy as I am old school and like to see completed machines shipping.
So if you are in the Northwest and go to NWPAS say hello.
ddt

Tommy and his crew from Nitro were great at the show. Day one the volume wasn't up but that was fixed for two and three and it was "Let's get it on" as Hudson would say.

....progress....

Nitro graciously loaned me the Alien that was at NWPAS. I'm testing the s*** out of it. There are issues that are being fed back to Wales to insure that when production resumes these games will be robust. Of course I am having my first chance to review the sound package while flipping. I made some good judgments and I missed a few (first try). This is to be expected. I will be addressing these as fast as I can. While doing that I am also reviewing and testing the entire package and giving notes back to the team. This refinement stage can only be done with a machine. In the very near future all the dev team will have dev machines and this will speed the enhancement process.
If you have liked what you have experienced so far we expect that you will be even more pleased with the finished package.

ddt

good catch

yes I noticed this at NWPAS. keeping everything in sync is like "like nailing jello to a tree" sometimes.

it will be fixed.

ddt

Yes it does, by design. I added a sub-woofer to the studio Jan 2016 and both Alien and Dialed In have content that use it. It is a little more effort to get the bottom octave right than to ignore it. There are some swoops and punches that are a lot of fun if you have it. At around $100 it is a good addition.

ddt