A couple of days ago I wrote an article here about potential new pinball companies that may begin producing games later this year. We received an update from one of the companies that I mentioned yesterday, Pinball Adventures. Today I'm going to talk about the new "mystery" company that plans to enter the pinball manufacturing space.
A big clue about this company's existence was right under my and everyone else's noses at this year's Texas Pinball Festival and none of us picked up on it at the time. When he walked up on state to accept the award for "Favorite Homebrew Machine" during the TWIPYs at TPF, the creator of the outstanding homebrew game "Elf," Bob Nies was wearing a shirt that said "TiltBob Pinball."
I didn't even notice the name while watching the show, but yesterday when I asked for information about new pinball companies Paul Fusco of the TampaTech YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUfgq9Gn8S041qQFl0C-CEQ) pointed it out to me, so I reached out to our friend Bob (we wrote about Elf in March and August of '22) to see if he would be willing to share any information with us.
Bob is setting up a pinball Company called "TiltBob Pinball" in Florida. He currently has a small team of people, including Paul, working with him and an investor. He plans to do all the work on his upcoming game(s) in-house, including cabinetry, mechanical, software, playfield production & printing. He's particularly focused on producing his own playfields because this is "probably the biggest area of complaints in the industry" right now.
TiltBob Pinball is currently working on building a pinball machine with an original theme and it has a "potential license" for a pin as well - No it's not Elf. Their initial focus will be family-friendly comedic themes. They are planning to have three or four prototype pinball machines ready for next year's Texas Pinball Festival, which takes place March 15th through the 17th, 2024.
TiltBob currently has a working whitewood of the game, but it's still a little early for them to share pictures with us. The game supposedly has a lot of cool mechs in it that have never been done before. They hope to start showing some teaser images of the game and their shop "in a couple months."
Very cool news. I'm looking forward to following along with Bob and the TiltBob team as they work on creating their first game. Below are links to my previous articles on Bob's Elf pinball machine for anyone who missed them:
The Awesome New Homebrew Pinball Machine - Elf
Is a Stern Pinball "Elf" Machine in the Works?
A picture of Bob wearing the TiltBob Pinball shirt during the show
Pictures of the award-winning homebrew game Elf and a link to a short video of it in action
