For such a relatively young company, American Pinball has quite a complicated history.
AP Version 1.0: Sometime in late 2016 or early 2017, Aimtron Corporation reached an agreement with the controversial pinball designer John Popadiuk to build a pinball machine based on the famous magician Houdini. It quickly became apparent to the folks at Aimtron that JPop was not capable of building a functional pinball machine on his own.
AP Version 2.0: This realization lead to Aimtron pivot and bring in veteran pinball designer Joe Balcer, programmer Josh Kugler and others to completely redesign the Houdini game. The team did an impressive job and they were able to quickly create American Pinball’s first production game Houdini Master of Mystery, which sold relatively well and was considered a success.
American Pinball 2.0 went on to build Oktoberfest in 2018 and Hot Wheels in 2020.
AP Version 3.0: At some point around Hot Wheels’ release American Pinball’s decided to pivot again. It brought in David Fix and let go of Balcer and Kugler. Fix in turn hired the veteran pinball designer Dennis Nordman.
The first pinball machine built under the Fix regime was built in conjunction with Riot! Pinball, Legends of Valhalla, which released in 2021.
Valhalla was followed by Dennis Nordman’s previously designed game Galactic Tank Force in 2023 and a game based on a concept created by the late veteran pinball designer Barry Oursler, which became Barry O’s Barbecue Challenge.
This iteration of American Pinball ended today with the departure of Fix.
AP Version 4.0: As soon as I heard the news of his departure I started asking around to see what was next for American Pinball. Will the company stick around to try to bring its nearly completed next game to market? AP literally just posted a Help Wanted Ad on its Facebook page this week, so it looked like they may.
The veteran arcade industry sales manager Ron Lindeman was brought into American Pinball in February 2024. Ron has been appointed AP’s Director of Sales and Marketing. AP is currently in the process of trying to bring back a number of employees that it recently let go, other than Fix, in an attempt to complete its next game, Cuphead, and bring it to market. It also has hired several new production employees.
It appears as though American will continue its recently established relationship with the arcade cabinet manufacturer Polycade (Ron used to work there and was instrumental in setting the deal up). In addition to working on getting the next game to market and other projects.
Prior to this research, I thought that it was a real longshot that Cuphead would ever see the light of day. Now I believe that there is actually a very good chance that Cuphead will not only be finished, but go on sale sometime in 2025. I’ve even heard that Aimtron is contractually obligated to bring this game and the next one to market. Is that true? It’s possible.
Can AP 4.0 succeed? We’ll see. It will be a very interesting situation to follow. As far as I’m concerned, I’m rooting for them. The more pinball, the better.
Pictures of the JPop Houdini, courtesy of IPDB
I owned Oktoberfest and thought it was a well built and entetaining game; unfortunately the theme missed for a lot of people. But I lost all hope for AP when they decided to release "Barry O's Barbecue Challenge'; what a truly awful theme! I do hope they survive.
Josh Kugler was actually let go midway during the development of GTF. He helped write a lot of the rules overview, the game script, and filming the video. And then they didn't pay him for his contribution and scrubbed him from the credits
Go AP 4.0. Good Luck 👍
Fix was a disaster...zero clue
Would like to see the original design of Houdini be made.