Yesterday, the former American Pinball employee Josh Kugler, shared some details on American Pinball's (AP) upcoming game...likely called Galactic Tank Force. Kugler was heavily involved in the early development of the pin. According to him, the game's layout is different from most recent games, which will be very refreshing. Furthermore, he said that no corners were cut on it.
The game's initial concept was formulated by its designer, Dennis Nordman, and Paul Reno. It was then refined by Josh and Jack Hager, making it more "satirical," which I take to mean adding more humor.
As I mentioned in my previous post, one full prototype machine is now complete. The game will be definitely shown off at the upcoming Midwest Gaming Classic and probably will be unveiled on Friday March 24th at 5:00 PM Central at the upcoming Texas Pinball Festival.
Later on we discovered that as of last March, the scheduled lineup of upcoming games from American Pinball was Galactic Tank Force, the Dennis Nordman's second game then Barry Oursler's last game.
Another interesting tidbit from the thread is that the next AP game will have redesigned light boards.
Here's a link to the full conversation on the subject from over on Pinside:
"No corners were cut on this game, and it’s an interesting layout, that is unique and different from most recent games. I do think Dennis’ layout following this one is one of his best ever, and bummed I won’t get to do rules and code on it.
The games concept was Dennis and Paul Reno, but Jack Hager and I expanded it quite a bit and in a direction that was, well, a bit more satirical, and while not every one loved it at first, I suspect most are pleased with how it all came together. Regardless, sounds like you will see it soon and can decide for yourselves, as I said, it is going to give y’all A LOT to talk about.
jJP used Bader at one time, but then burned that bridge. I think spooky and AP are now using all of Bader’s capacity. Btw I hear the name pronounced wrong all the time, it is bod-er."
He went on to add the following:
"Been gone from AP for almost a year, but when I was there, the plan was GTF, Dennis game 2, and then Barry O's last design. Whether that is still the plan, your guess is as good as mine."
and
"End of last March, we parted ways, the only thing I was told was that due to a change in direction I was no longer needed. Not sure why I was not needed, considering on GTF I created the rules with ferret, developed the story with Dennis and Jack, wrote more than half the script, co-directed the actors, designed new light boards and had the rules and mechs coded. The game was totally playable at that point and we were waiting on assets to replace all the placeholders we had put in, most of which were storyboard images created by either Jack or myself during story/rules development."
