This afternoon Rob from The Electric Playground and Davey from Stumblor pinball mods interviewed Melvin Williams from the new division of Dutch Pinball, Dutch Pinball Exclusive (DPX), on their YouTube channel "In Before the Lock." Kudos to them for getting such a timely interview, fresh on the heels of DPX's official announcement that it is going to reveal its upcoming first pinball machine "Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland" later this year.
Below are my notes from the very informative interview. The three of them went into such tremendous detail about DPX and Melvin's journey to get there that I can't do it justice here. Make sure to use the link below to watch the entire thing.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is probably 70% - 75% aesthetically a JPop game, but the gameplay was completely redone. John Popadiuk is not involved in the project at all and is not getting a dollar from its sale.
Freek van Haagen, the artist who did the art for Dutch Pinball's The Big Lebowski, colorized Zombie Yeti's original Alice art and added to it. The game isn't dark like people think, it will be very colorful. The sound for Alice will be done by the same person who did it in The Big Lebowski.
The machine will have a four flippers, subways, sculpted, interactive topper, powder coated trim, RGB lighting, art blades, 8 to 9 custom hand-painted sculpted plastics on the playfield by Lior the Art of Pinball, anti-glare glass and a shaker motor. Melvin tried to cram everything he could into the game.
It runs on the P-ROC system with programming by Team Pinball. The Big Lebowski used Mirco playfields, but Melvin is in the process of "trying to do something else" for the Alice playfields.
Alice has a screen in the playfield and an upper playfield with magnetic flippers like Twilight Zone but with more stuff. The player plays as Alice.
Not in a rush to develop the game. Plans to show it in two or three months. Production will begin somewhere around November / December 2024. Melvin will "Move Heaven and Earth" to try to have several games at the upcoming Pinball Expo.
The game will be limited to 500 units, just one model and priced under $15,000 USD and not just a dollar under, hopefully significantly so.
The game code will be finished from a mode standpoint from Day 1, but they will listen to feedback from owners and implement it if necessary in future updates.
Starting next year Dutch Pinball and DPX are hoping to build between 800 and 1,000 games per year with its recent expansion. So a 500 unit run of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland could take 8 months.
Melvin is focused on getting Alice perfect before even considering whether he will make any of the other games that he has acquired the intellectual property for, such as the Capcom, Zidware and Deeproot games.
Melvin previously made a Big Bang Bar pinball machine prototype for "a certain company" that was almost finished.
According to Melvin based upon the files that he got from John Popadiuk's computers in the storage locker auction. JPop actually founded American Pinball in conjunction with Aimtron.
Kudos to the In Before the Locks folks and Melvin for the outstanding interview!
