In Nordmanite I trust.

I have given this some considerable thought lately, Is America Pinball even really American Pinball now, other than in name? Those guys were the soul of the place, and frankly IMHO what made AP great.

however he clarified he’s a contractor and is not an employee. A small but important aspect. From the write up by Josh, ferret’s already on GTF. It sounds like AP’s lineup is another Nordman game and then Barry O’s (rip) game. Can I be so bold as to ask Ferret if you are actively contracted to code on either or both? I hope so as I love you, baby Are you the only rules / coder left or are there other contractors that can be hired for specific games?

Nordman is a huge get. AP was going nowhere with their games before he came on. When each title sells half what the last one did, that's a recipe for oblivion. Nordman comes in, they get LoV in the interim before his first game, and suddenly things are looking a lot brighter for AP. The fact that Barry came back from JJP (after leaving AP earlier) to handle the tech support again is also a great sign.

Thanks for the love, I appreciate it! I am indeed contracted for the next couple games, and there are also a couple in-house people working on code.

Wonderful. Also that alleviated my fears (the deep and dark kind). Also breaking news - ferret rehired at AP. Haha just kidding but it really is great news.

I wonder if I can ask for a raise after the career roller coaster y’all just put me through.

Ferret is the MAN. Miss ya bud.

Mike F

Thanks for sharing rosh . Crying shame you were let go, especially without any real reason being provided. From your posts here, it's clear that you are obviously very passionate about pinball, working in a team environment to achieve great playing games. Hopefully you find your way back into pinball with another company and once again we can enjoy your hard work. Best wishes for the future.

We know there will be more information in March. Does anyone know if it we will see a release before TPF?

If you don't ask the answer is always no.

With so many posts I was hoping for new info, but it's the same old stuff. Regardless, I see Nordman joining AP as a huge positive and can't wait to see Galactic Tank Force and the game after that.

The other thing AP needs to work on though is getting more of their games on location. It's really hard to find AP games to try out, and a lot of us don't want to buy machines we can't try out first. Hopefully they can do something with the GTF release to incentivize arcades to pick them up.

I hope he's successful. That would be good for players and potential new customers, if they can see it, play it. Maybe even get a peak inside.

Pinball shows don't cover enough of the potential market out there.

LTG : )

Yes hopefully games are in arcades the day orders open up, just like Mr Fix did with Legends of Valhalla. That was a fun day to see people play the game and order it. I think there were 10 or 12 arcades that had a game to play on order day.

I haven't had one since Houdini, but they definitely need to make their service menus more operator friendly. Operators don't care about cute, themed, slow-to-navigate graphical service menus that are poorly organized. They want to get in, make adjustments or manage audits, and get out. Houdini's service menu and 6 month audit reset bug that made the audits worthless is the reason the operator I worked with got rid of the machine.

I can understand a bug making things difficult, but I find AP menus simple and easy.

I would submit that American Pinball's service menus fare well against many competing offerings ESPECIALLY in the area of managing audits, since AP's audits make full use of the HD screen to display relevant info -- you can view a lot of information on screen without having to press the +/- buttons a zillion times.

Haven't seen one since Houdini, and it had awful menus for route operation. Looking forward to checking out the awesome one in GTF.

Yours must have been different to mine, i didn't have a problem.

We had one of the very first Houdinis on route for about 12-18 months (don't remember exact time it was out). Don't know if it was improved later as it was sold when the audit bug wasn't fixed for 6 months that made audits impossible to clear without crashing the game.

Looking forward to seeing the service menu improvements when I get GTF (even though no more routing).

So strange... I feel like AP has the best menu ever, i mean it shows all switches at one time ? Stern simulates a dmd on a lcd display ?
I remember changing speech and music on my Gotg... I had to watch a youtube video of deadflip to get the settings right, also finding the right music / speech attenuation ? I was looking for Speech volume and music volume...

Stupid me

But sure it's personal preference as always...and i never used audits. Because homeuse only...

JJP's are currently the best (assuming APs service menus are still similar to Houdini).

Yeah, home and route use are quite different. Audit menus and functionality are king on route.

The only significant change to service mode since Houdini was a new improved pricing screen, that was first introduced for hot wheels and I was porting back to okto and houdini. I don’t recall if/when those were released. Dave was testing them when I left.

There was release made available with the audit bug fix and some pricing changes, within a few weeks of it being reported. It was not an announced release, but one service could provide to those who were having an issue. There have been few releases of that kind typically when new currencies were required.

So it was always pretty much the same interface from release and it was one of the best out there not the worst?

Sounds right to me.

Not true. I told Barry, the technical/service contact, about it repeatedly for six months and it still wasn't fixed when we pulled it from the route. He said you were told personally and gave some more detail about that interaction I will not share publicly. I have no idea about the ins and outs of internal politics at AP then, but the audit crash definitely was not fixed within a few weeks of when I reported it, not 6 months later when we pulled the machine from the route for that reason.

EDIT: I looked back and I had forgotten I actually emailed you directly June 12th of 2019 about this audit crash bug after it had gone on for almost 6 months and Barry didn't seem to be able to get a fix to happen. As of July 18th, 5 weeks later, when I emailed you directly again to check on it, you confirmed still no fix available. At that point the OP I worked with was done with the inaction. Houdini was pulled from the route and sold later that month. I'm sure the home user I sold it to loved it (I still like it, actually), but the operator support on such a critical issue was atrocious.

Ok, who is Ryan?

designer at American Pinball. Creator of the Sonic homebrew game

https://www.youtube.com/live/FZB43Uhs5Dc?feature=share

Since Nordman is designer on this game...Is Ryan supporting programming? Mechanical?

He did it all on Sonic, and it was very impressive. I was chatting with him, and he had basically zero programming experience prior to Sonic, and what he put out there was nothing short of amazing. Plus all of the toys...Really impressive! So can only imagine what he will do with a whole support team around him.

Hopefully after they go public at TPF American Pinball take it to the Midwest Gaming Classic the very next weekend.

Yeah I am really looking forward to checking it out at MGC. Hoping its there!

Can't wait to see it, especially after the disappointing reveal some other company did this morning

That was really just a theme reveal / teaser trailer, hardly a reveal but yes, I'm still very much interested in seeing GTF.

I know it is hard for some folks to wrap their polarized head around, but I am excited to see GTF and_ Foo Fighters soon.

GTF will be at both Texas and Milwaukee shows.

I agree. The more options the better. I like different. American pinball does not need to operate just like stern.

You must choose! It’s not possible to like pinball machines from different companies!!!!

Zidware, Deeproot and Skit-B are the only ones I like!

Yes but add Vonnie D pinball and Suncoast!

L M F A O

and this classic...

lastly...

Where are the GTF pics

Those are awesome!

I’m going to Milwaukee!

I wonder how long it has been since 4 (possibly) pins from different manufacturers have been announced so close together?

Wonka, Hot Wheels, JP and R&M??

If memory serves correctly they all came out summer of 20’ I believe

I have plenty of sterns and am looking to branch out. HP would be a compelling first JJP and I’d be interested in some Nordman space tanks.

This. Had heard there was a leak but maybe not?

Is this true? I was under impression GTF was going to be playable at TPF