What if ARA gets all the rights back, the license deal, the stock and can actually resume production ? The machine works, the code is good, it's far more advanced than all the JPop stuff and totally ready for mass production. So the R&D costs can be kept to minimal and investment can be made towards selling units. 100 prepaid isn't that much compared to the current sales potential of this machine so it could be absorbed as a loss by ARA.

I don't know how it works in The Netherlands but in France for exemple a bankrupt business can be bought for 1€, debt can be negociated as long as jobs are kept and that a valid business plan is presented to the judges.

Anyways 6 weeks from now, is almost tomorrow, so I'll definitely keep an eye on that lawsuit and cross all that crosses.

Absorb an 850,000 loss before starting? Don't think they would consider that business plan.

850.000 includes the profit margin, the real cost to absorb is the production cost since buyers expect a machine not a refund. It seems that some machines were boxed and ready to ship, something like 30 to 40 of them. Also from what I understand not all the 100 people paid a full price some made a partial deposit.

So that number could be much lower, maybe in the 400,000, which is realistic compared to the R&D costs attached to designing a new pinball from scratch.

Seems like a loosing debate but I do not follow your logic. The money is gone so the 100 machines Paid and Owed will need to come out of someones pocket. There is no profit in an IOU.

I agree with you there is no debate there, the money for the 100 machines is gone, delivering these 100 will be a loss. All I am saying is that the loss won't be 850.000 but a smaller number.

The cost to produce at ARA was around 6500 each including license . Then you have to get them to the customers around the world and pay import taxes and shipping. After that there was never going to be a big profit on this game.

6500 for an 8500 public price ??? Even worse if 6500 is € and 8500 is $. No wonder that adventure ended up the way it did. There is no way to build a sustainable business with margins this thin.

Those are the numbers given to me by a former employee

Or with business people who have no idea how to run a business! Or answer emails when in bed with the sniffles!

Just curious, are there really 40 machines in a warehouse? If so, what will happen to them?

I think every imaginative senario was covered in the 171 pages of this thread. None great for EA's

That seems to be the prevailing #, give or take. Most likely destroyed would be my guess after all litigation is over.

Since Dutch can’t pay for the built ones hopefully ARA gets the go ahead to sell them so at least more get out into the market ‍♂️

ARA would have to negotiate a deal with universal before they could do anything but destroy those games. let's see how it plays out, sounds like will know more soon enough.

I’m sure they could figure that out before resorting to destruction.

Let’s hope so.

These are high quality and very durable. Well done Yelobird. Great to have as a backup.

TBL pinball has reached the sought after ultra rare grade, not sure Universal would want to revert that now that the legend is built.

But still crossing fingers !

ARA isnt the pinball business, much less tech support for TBL issues.

Umm I’m just hoping these games get released for sale so they can be scooped up like Alien games were. Dutch is as dead as Heighway.

I was in Portland this weekend - last year I played TBL @ Quarterworld. This year it was gone, but they were playing the movie on their projector screen lol.

Those games are already paid for by Early Achivers(but not by DP). I can't imagine the double slap in the face if they get resold.

Rare
Did you play Seabeatles at q world?

What about BeaWitched!

Wonder why no one is mentioning the fact that the rights might be purchasable by another company? If dutch is bankrupt their assets go up for sale. If someone buy's the rights they can make the game without the need for the R&D. Now, the license with universal may transfer or it might have to be repurchased, but this seems more likely than a bankrupt dutch finding a new manufacturer and the funds to build more themselves.

LOLOL. Yeah I played it there & at C-Bar, too. You could hear it at C-Bar, so that was the better experience if you’re in Portland & wanna check it out.

It was what I expected. Not my type of game.

Great, love C-bar - going to have to make a trip North to check it out. I have a Seawitch & am really interested to see how it compares. The spinning disc in the center looks irritating though.
.

It's been mentioned multiple times over the last couple of years. Start at page 1, it's a ride that hopefully ends well.

Vultures (resized).jpg

Probably not, most licenses have time limits.

I would guess that licenses with seasoned players like Universal are also non-transferable (without the licensor’s permission). What you’d probably need to do is buy the design, software, etc. from DP and then get Universal to separately sell you the license to make more.

This is the least of anyone's worries and easily overcome a if a real pinball company or investor swooped in and purchased the DP assets. Roger Sharpe has intervened and "Ball Saved" this license at least once, if not twice, on DP's behalf.

There’s definitely potential there, and if DP goes into bankruptcy maybe you can scoop up their part of the rights for cheap at an auction. The rest just depends on if Universal is still willing to play or if they don’t want their property associated with this mess for the peanuts that a pinball license brings in. I’m sure they’ve seen it all though, and they do like money.

In the instance someone buys Dutch Pinball and successfully licenses TBL from Universal (big if’s) … they could build and sell TBLs. They would not have rights to the 40 built games nor would they be compensating EA’s who’ve lost money. They would be starting with a clean balance sheet (minus liability for their original investment and licensing deal). Still it’s not an easy task to run a pinball company and without expertise to manufacture the games, they too might flail in the wind and burn through cash.

The best outcome would include the new owner negotiating separately with ARA to buy the 40 built games at discounted $5k (each would need to be opened, inspected, tested, repaired, boxed and shipped to their warehouse) and to sell them for $10k. If ARA is owed money on the built pins and DP doesn't pay, they won't be willing to sell their games to the new Owner. The Owners should also negotiate with American Pinball to build TBL’s. Someone with an existing factory who will contract manufacture a few hundred pinball machines. Don't build a new factory - that is a total waste of money unless they expected to sell thousands of TBL's, which is not the case here. Every scenario points to EA’s being left out of recovering lost funds, but the games would get made.

A bigger problem with a resolution is in the new Owner not realizing that the game should be refined further BEFORE production. This was a mistake HP Owners made - they assumed Alien was ready to go and started to make them. With Xeno heads needing further testing and improvement, some circuit boards being prone to failure and alignment issues during assembly - no one was responsible for engineering fixes, qc’ing the design nor bulletproofing the game.

We already know about issues with TBL’s toys - bowling alley, car and rug needing adjustments. These should be fixed before starting production. Upgrading the software with code already developed and further polishing the software is also needed to make this game sing. Any new Owner needs to be prepared to pay to play for software development. Odds of this project proceeding and the above happening is maybe 1%.

I got to play TBL today! I Dropped by the Alamo Drafthouse in San Francisco and I was so stoked to see that it was up and running.

It played pretty well and it was loads of fun! I didn’t get to test out too many features as I’m not that skilled / I’m on my honeymoon and I was just happy my wife was happy enough to go play it at all haha. But still, I managed to go bowling once; I picked a hard one where one pin appeared at a time as if it were strafing left to right and back, I also got the Jesus multiball, the nihilist fight thing and started rug mode a couple of times and advanced one scene where The Dude gets his head dunked in the toilet.

One time I got to select the beat up The Dude’s car mode and as that started, the ball didn’t make its way up to the top play field and I had to nearly tilt it to get it to reappear down on the regular play field. That was the biggest issue I ran into.

The rug is looking very beat up. It’s super easy to hit the rug with a shot from either flipper and given that and it’s public location, I think it’s probably why it’s looking so worn. Even still, it functioned as it should, no effect on play, just worth noting here.

I wish I could’ve dropped $100 in it and played all day but we had too many other things to see. It definitely hasn’t done anything to squash my desire to own one someday! It’s super fun. Everything about it is fun and ties in to the movie so well. It’s such a damn shame about all these problems.

712EAEA8-9E7B-43C1-A833-FB762B5182B0 (resized).jpeg

Wow, that rug is pretty beat up!
Sounds like a good honeymoon to me! Maybe next visit drop some more coin in TBL.

Snoogans138 thanks for dropping by and playing my TBL - yeah the rug is super beat up but does function. I am happy that people can get to enjoy the game and hence why I operate it. Sorry about that hangup from the upper PF - the subway is getting beat up as well and I'm working with someone I know to build a new one so the ball won't get hung up any more.

That's actually one piece of input my operator (who does most of the maintenance on that machine and owns/operates most of the rest of the machines there) gave to Dutch before they started their second wave of machines so I know they had implemented several of the things he recommended to them.

I should see if I can find the rug sticker thing to reproduce so the rug mech doesn't look so bare...

genex So nice of you to leave it to the crowd. I didnt expect to be able to play it one day, then I found out a TBL was 5 minutes away from my work. I dont know how much it makes but a fair portion of it happily comes from my pocket !

Reproduce a sticker and I’ll buy a couple. Barry is sending me two, but I’d like a couple more in reserve.

genex thank you! It really made my day. I’ve been wanting to play this game for a long time and so I really appreciate you having it there.

Since there isn't much else to talk about...

Does anyone know if there is a "Pinball-Browser" for this machine? I think it would be cool to either grab some of the animations from the machine or swap in/out songs.

Any of you that got your game tried this?

Can recall that the programmer once told me that the songs have no special protection, just WAVs. If this is right should be easy to swap out songs without any special software.

In regard to a pinball browser working on PROC, no idea. Don’t think so however one exists.

yeah you don't really need a tool. it's a linux box, if you attach keyboard/mouse to it can escape out of the game. then you have Ubuntu desktop and can go poke around the folders.

has anyone replaced anything in it so far? I like what they've done but played a TWD yesterday that was really sweet with a different sound and callout package

When hell freezes over.

I'll take one.

QSS

Check your email new NSL just hit the wire.

I will only post one bit of good news and leave the rest for the EA’s...

“PS Jaap’s cancer is gone! The radiation- and chemotherapy were successful and Jaap is now working on his recovery.”

Personally, I view this as positive news for Barry, Japp and the early archives. If the EA's want me to no longer post content such as this, let me know but I don't see the harm in sharing. In fact, I think it helps the cause against the "know it all" critics.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Dear Kim,

We found out that lawsuits take a lot of time in the Netherlands. The story with ARA goes on and on and is still not finished. Here is a recap of what happened:

We (Barry, Jaap and our attorney) were invited to a court hearing on December 5th and we and ARA could both tell our side of the situation. This week, we received a temporary verdict. It says that the court advises ARA and us to sit down and discuss to see if we can come to an agreement.

The Dutch words are (quoted from the courts letter):

“…tot een gezamenlijke afwikkeling van hun samenwerking te komen. De rechtbank wil partijen daartoe nadrukkelijk oproepen en in de gelegenheid stellen voordat een eindbeslissing wordt gewezen.”

(Maybe Google translate can help you to understand what the Dutch court is saying)

Our next steps will be to investigate if we can come to a settlement. We hope you will understand that we can’t give any more details. As soon as we have a final verdict or a solution we will let you know.

We never realized that we would end up in a courtroom when we started to design the most beautiful pinball machine and we are sorry that we dragged you into this situation. We are very, very grateful for your continuous support!

If we have news that we can share we will let you know.

Regards, Barry and Jaap

PS Jaap’s cancer is gone! The radiation- and chemotherapy were successful and Jaap is now working on his recovery.

Interesting. I didn’t get the NSNL this time around.