On Saturday afternoon, American Pinball hosted a seminar at the Texas Pinball Festival. During the presentation David Fix announced that the art on the company‘s next pinball machine will be done by the well-known pinball artist Chris Franchi.
The company also announced that it has created official inner art side blades for its latest game, Legends of Valhalla. All owners who purchased a Legends of Valhalla Deluxe Edition and registered it with the Company will be shipped the new blades for free. They will be available as an optional purchase on the Classic Edition.
American is currently Beta testing a new March code update for The Legends of Valhalla at its booth at the Texas Pinball Festival. The company’s new employee, Steve Bowden, contributed to the newest version of the game’s great Frank Gigliotti code.
American Pinball provided a production update. It is currently running two lines. On its main line it is committed to finishing up its entire run of Deluxe Legend of Valhalla machines before it begins to run Classics. Pricing has not yet been determined for the lower-end version. On its other line it is finishing up its current run of Hot Wheels. When the Hot Wheels are complete, the company is switching that line over to produce Oktoberfest, probably in May. It will produce 200 of the Deluxe model. After Oktoberfest they will run 200 Houdinis Probably in July / August. When the Houdini run is complete it will make another 500 Hot Wheels on that line. Legends of Valhalla will continue on the line through all of 2022 and most of 2023. American stated that is is going to start up a third production line “shortly.”This leaves open the possibility for a new title to be announced.
Whew. Got all that? That certainly is a tremendous amount of transparency. Kudos to AP for that. I’ve always wondered why production numbers were considered by some manufacturers to be such a proprietary trade secret.
The company stated that it has upgraded the subwoofer, coil system and power system in Houdini from the original games, but the gameplay itself is exactly the same other than code improvements, such as team play. Team Play has been added to Hot Wheels as well right now. It will be added to the code for Oktoberfest shortly.
There was talk about potentially selling a stripped down version of Houdini for operators and consumers who want one at a lower price point. This version would have certain mechs, such as the ball-launching Milk Can removed.
Another interesting bit of trivia that came out of the seminar is that prior to getting the Hot Wheels license that game was going to be “Poker Run.” In my opinion, the company made a fantastic decision to switch the pin to the Hot Wheels license.
Lastly and perhaps most importantly, American Pinball is planning to manufacture Barry Oursler’s last game, which was developed in conjunction with Steve Bowden on rules. AP hopes to have the game complete and ready to show by next year’s Texas Pinball Festival. I wonder what game that will be? Food Truck perhaps? There was buzz at Deeproot that it was actually a pretty good game before the company fell apart. We’ll see…
