# Joe Balcer and American Pinball

**Source:** Pintastic New England  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2018-07-16  
**Duration:** 49m 52s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXNkmXcp_EM

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## Analysis

Joe Balcer, legendary pinball designer with 40+ years of industry experience spanning Midway, Data East, Jersey Jack, and Stern, discusses his career trajectory and his current work at American Pinball. He details the company's challenging early history, their successful launch of Houdini Master of Mystery in 2017 despite a compressed 4-month timeline, their commitment to avoiding long pre-order windows, current production capacity (~35 games/week), upcoming facility expansion, and plans to unveil Game Two at Pinball Expo in October. He also highlights the design philosophy and team composition for American Pinball's production.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Joe Balcer started in pinball in 1982 at Midway Manufacturing after being laid off from General Motors — _Joe Balcer, speaking at Pintastic New England seminar, describing his entry into the industry_
- [HIGH] Houdini Master of Mystery was developed and shipped in approximately 4 months (November 2016 sketch to December 30, 2017 shipment) with only 2 games ready for Texas Pinball Festival 2017 — _Joe Balcer detailing American Pinball's aggressive launch timeline and execution_
- [HIGH] American Pinball is currently producing approximately 35 games per week and has outgrown their 12,000-15,000 sq ft facility — _Joe Balcer stating current production capacity and facility constraints_
- [HIGH] American Pinball has procured a larger building (approximately 3x current space) to be shared with another Amtron company — _Joe Balcer announcing facility expansion decision by ownership_
- [HIGH] Game Two is planned to be unveiled at Pinball Expo in Chicago in October — _Joe Balcer stating American Pinball's near-term release plan_
- [HIGH] Joe Balcer designed or laid out approximately 13-15 pinball games across his career — _Joe Balcer listing games he designed including Apollo 13, Baywatch, Space Jam, Star Wars Trilogy, and others_
- [HIGH] American Pinball philosophy is to avoid multi-year pre-order windows and maintain honest communication with customers and distributors — _Joe Balcer explaining company's core business principle established early in American Pinball's turnaround_
- [HIGH] Houdini Master of Mystery was the first pinball to use a 26-inch monitor fitted into a standard cabinet, RGB LED lighting, and RGB LED GIs simultaneously — _Joe Balcer describing Houdini's technical innovations_
- [HIGH] Josh Kugler is working as a programmer/rules designer at American Pinball on Game Two — _Joe Balcer identifying design team composition_
- [HIGH] Early production Houdini Master of Mystery games have not experienced catastrophic issues and location operators report good performance — _Joe Balcer describing field feedback on first-generation machines_

### Notable Quotes

> "I've been in pinball for quite a while. I started in 1982 at Midway Manufacturing. I was a mechanic at a garage, auto mechanic. I was laid off from General Motors, it seems like a hundred years ago."
> — **Joe Balcer**, Early in presentation
> _Establishes Balcer's entry point into pinball and career foundation_

> "It's all lines and circles... that's really what you're doing on that initial playfield layout."
> — **Joe Balcer**, Mid-presentation discussing design methodology
> _Reveals core design philosophy for playfield layout work_

> "I went to my boss at the time and said, I think I might have made the biggest mistake of my life... He talked me off the ledge and I walked out of there and said, you know, this is not me. I did what I did and we're going to take this thing on."
> — **Joe Balcer**, Discussing American Pinball's negative early history
> _Shows Balcer's commitment despite learning about AP's problematic past before joining_

> "We wanted to be a company that says whatever we say, we're going to do it. We're going to be truthful. We're going to be friendly with our customers, our distributor base."
> — **Joe Balcer**, Describing American Pinball's core values
> _Articulates company philosophy directly opposing long pre-order models_

> "So we went about our business. We worked a billion hours for that three or four-month span. And we actually made it to Texas Pinball Festival with two games."
> — **Joe Balcer**, Describing 2017 launch effort
> _Emphasizes intensity of compressed development timeline_

> "The big part of it was, can we keep them running, get it through the show, and get people to see who we are and what happened here. And it worked."
> — **Joe Balcer**, Reflecting on Texas Pinball Festival 2017 outcome
> _Shows success despite technical issues during public debut_

> "This time, Jeff was able to do this. This is his. So, I mean, that was the word to him while he was doing the project was, it looks good to me, Jeff. This is on you."
> — **Joe Balcer**, Describing artist Jeff Bush's creative freedom on Houdini
> _Illustrates design philosophy of trusting individual artists vs. corporate constraints at larger manufacturers_

> "We're not looking to raise our price, but we will have add-ons that could be as an a la carte type order."
> — **Joe Balcer**, Discussing pricing strategy for Game Two
> _Shows American Pinball's approach to monetization without price increases_

> "If you guys want to come and talk to me about it, this is a whole other half an hour of just game rules to kind of talk about it."
> — **Joe Balcer**, When discussing Houdini rules depth
> _Reflects complexity of modern pinball rule design_

> "I mean, if you weren't here, we're not building pinballs. And that goes, you know, it's everywhere. So, you know, my thanks is always to the customer base and you guys that are supporting pinball and supporting these companies."
> — **Joe Balcer**, Closing gratitude section
> _Shows appreciation for community and acknowledgment of industry interdependence_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Joe Balcer | person | Legendary pinball designer with 40+ years of industry experience; began at Midway Manufacturing in 1982; worked at Data East, Jersey Jack Pinball, Stern; now lead designer at American Pinball |
| American Pinball | company | Chicago-based pinball manufacturer founded/revived with Joe Balcer as early employee; currently producing ~35 games/week; expanding to larger facility |
| Josh Kugler | person | Programmer and rules designer at American Pinball; known from homebrew ramps and playfield features; working on Game Two rules |
| Jeff Bush | person | Art director and artist at American Pinball; designed all artwork for Houdini Master of Mystery; brings steampunk aesthetic to the game |
| Jim Thornton | person | Engineering team member at American Pinball working with Joe Balcer; spent three months quality checking every game on production line in early 2017 |
| Matt Reister | person | Sculptor who did all sculpting work on Houdini Master of Mystery; mentioned as incredibly talented; associated with Back Alley Creations |
| Houdini Master of Mystery | game | American Pinball's first released game; features 26-inch monitor, RGB LED lighting, steampunk theme; shipped December 2017; uses color-coded modes with RGB LEDs to guide players; includes Seance and Trunk multiballs |
| Midway Manufacturing | company | Employer where Joe Balcer started in 1982 after GM layoff; located in Franklin Park in large facility; early work on Grand Alligators and other games |
| Data East | company | Employer where Joe Balcer did mechanical design work; worked with Joe Kaminkow, Gary Stern, Sam Stern; first full playfield design was Baywatch |
| Jersey Jack Pinball | company | Employer where Joe Balcer was first hire; designed The Wizard of Oz and The Hobbit; also worked on Star Wars Trilogy as first major release |
| Stern Pinball | company | Previous employer of Joe Balcer; worked on Space Jam, Starship Troopers, Striker Extreme, South Park, Pinball Party, and Star Wars Trilogy |
| Texas Pinball Festival 2017 | event | American Pinball's public debut with two working prototypes of Houdini Master of Mystery; machines experienced issues but showed proof of concept |
| Pinball Expo Chicago | event | Scheduled venue for American Pinball's Game Two unveiling in October (year unspecified but appears to be next upcoming occurrence) |
| Amtron | company | PCB manufacturing company based in Palatine/Streamwood area; parent/support company for American Pinball; facilitating new larger shared facility |
| Joe Kaminkow | person | Legendary designer at Data East where Joe Balcer worked; negotiated major licensing deals |
| Gary Stern | person | At Data East during Joe Balcer's tenure; decision-maker on Striker Extreme re-theming; leader in pinball industry |
| John Norris | person | Designer at Data East who worked on High Roller Casino; Joe Balcer relaid out game after his departure |
| Mark Ritchie | person | Referenced as designer; associated with legendary pinball design work |
| Pat Lawlor | person | Legendary pinball designer; Larry DeMar Godzilla referenced as collaboration |
| Michael Jordan | person | Met by Joe Balcer during Space Jam pinball development; licensing figure |
| Patrick Ewing | person | Met by Joe Balcer during Space Jam pinball production; licensing figure |
| Pintastic New England | event | Pinball community event where this seminar took place; hosted Joe Balcer presentation |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Joe Balcer's career history and design portfolio, American Pinball's company recovery and business strategy, Houdini Master of Mystery design and technical features, American Pinball production capacity and facility expansion
- **Secondary:** Pinball design methodology and playfield layout principles, Game Two development and October Pinball Expo unveiling, American Pinball team composition and hiring
- **Mentioned:** Industry history and evolution of display technology in pinball

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.82) — Joe Balcer presents a narrative of overcoming adversity and building a successful company. Despite acknowledging early challenges and skeptics ('I was full of that'), he maintains optimistic, proud tone about American Pinball's accomplishments. He expresses gratitude toward customers and community. Minor frustrations with marketing awareness mentioned but framed as solvable challenges. Overall tone is confident, reflective, and focused on future growth.

### Signals

- **[business_signal]** American Pinball facing marketing/awareness challenges; community unaware of company identity and game origins despite positive reception among informed players (confidence: high) — Joe Balcer: 'we've got some marketing challenges ahead as a company to get the name out there... I've got so many people come up and like, well, where did this game come from? Who are you guys?'
- **[business_signal]** American Pinball actively recruiting for design, mechanical, and electrical positions; indicates growth planning and need for team expansion (confidence: high) — Joe Balcer: 'Anybody out here real interested in working design and working mechanical, if you're electrical, you're looking to get into pinball, put a resume together... Because we're looking for people that have a passion for this industry'
- **[business_signal]** American Pinball facility expansion decision indicates confidence in production scaling and market demand; moving from 12,000-15,000 sq ft to approximately 3x larger shared facility with Amtron (confidence: high) — Joe Balcer: 'ownership has moved forward with that, and they procured a building that's going to give us about three times the space we have... to possibly have a second line running, to possibly move into some redemption pieces'
- **[design_philosophy]** Color-coded RGB LED modes in Houdini Master of Mystery designed to guide novice players through rules complexity; game includes accessibility features for rule learning through visual feedback (confidence: high) — Joe Balcer: 'So, say on some mode you'll have a light blue... if you don't understand the rules, the colors as you're working your stuff through the game, and it'll start to explain itself as you're playing'
- **[design_philosophy]** American Pinball prioritizes artist creative freedom and ownership; design philosophy contrasts with constraints of larger manufacturers requiring licensing approval or corporate direction (confidence: high) — Joe Balcer on artist Jeff Bush: 'This time, Jeff was able to do this... the word to him while he was doing the project was, it looks good to me, Jeff. This is on you'
- **[market_signal]** American Pinball currently at production capacity of ~35 games/week with planned expansion to support 50+ weekly production and potential second production line (confidence: high) — Joe Balcer: 'we're pushing around 35 a week. we wanted to get that number to about 50, but we're kind of running out of room... to possibly have a second line running'
- **[personnel_signal]** Josh Kugler transitioned from homebrew/custom pinball community to professional role as programmer/rules designer at American Pinball (confidence: high) — Joe Balcer: 'Josh Kugler... a lot of you guys know him from kind of homebrew ramps or similar playfield features. He came in and has been a great programmer for us'
- **[announcement]** American Pinball Game Two officially planned for Pinball Expo Chicago unveiling in October; layout development reported as progressing well (confidence: high) — Joe Balcer: 'Our plan is to unveil this at Pinball Expo in Chicago in October... we're feeling good about the layout and how this thing is going to come together'
- **[product_concern]** Early Houdini Master of Mystery units experienced technical issues during Texas Pinball Festival 2017 but game stability improved significantly post-production; current field units reported as performing reliably (confidence: high) — Joe Balcer: 'We had some issues... The big part of it was, can we keep them running... to this day, we're not having any catastrophic issues with it. We don't have a lot of people jumping down our throats'
- **[business_signal]** American Pinball explicitly rejecting long pre-order windows and emphasizing immediate availability; company philosophy driven by negative experiences at other manufacturers (confidence: high) — Joe Balcer: 'We didn't want to have that pre-order hanging over our heads. I experienced it and it wasn't a good place to be... We wanted to be a company that says whatever we say, we're going to do it'
- **[technology_signal]** Houdini Master of Mystery represents significant technical innovation in pinball: first to combine 26-inch monitor in standard cabinet with RGB LED lighting and RGB LED GIs simultaneously (confidence: high) — Joe Balcer: 'this was one loaded pinball that I do believe changed the course of how pinball was done after this game... It kind of phased out that matrix that brought in RGB LED light'

---

## Transcript

 So, one of those many new companies that Adam Rubin talked about in his one o'clock session was American Pinball based in Chicago, which is the home of pinball as we all know. And pinball is American as we all know, so the name like American Pinball is really getting to the core of it. And here's the guy with a long history in pinball, which I hope we'll hear a little bit about, but is doing great things at American Pinball, Joe Balcer. Thank you. Thanks, everybody, for coming. Ladies and gentlemen, hi. Hi, hello. Any questions? Okay. Can I get my screen up there? Let's see. Eric? Okay, there you go. Okay. So, you know, talking with Gabe for a while, trying to put something together for a seminar, he was talking about this kind of, talking a little bit about myself, who I am, kind of introducing myself to everyone here, if you don't know me. I've been in pinball for quite a while. I started in 1982 at Midway Manufacturing. I was a mechanic at a garage, auto mechanic. I was laid off from General Motors, it seems like 100 years ago. And I just had a customer that had a nephew that's, you know, I was working as a toolmaker, model maker. And he said, I got a, my nephew, he'll set you up. And so he gets me a job interview and I go over to this gigantic white elephant building in Franklin Park. And there's a bank man out front, look, look, look, going across. on a sign, it's Midway Manufacturing. I wasn't even following that. I wasn't a video guy. I mean, I knew all about Pac-Man, but I was not there running Pac-Man nights or anything. So I got in, and if you remember the old boards that they had out with the white letters, they're kind of in grooves, and I'm a kid, I'm 23 years old, and it says, Midway Manufacturing welcomes Joe Balcer. And I walk into this gigantic festival, and I said, you know, that's me. and I was amazed. Got in there, got the job in the tool room and everything kind of went from there. So I started making fixtures for production, sample pieces for engineering, started to kind of get into the whole pinball side. One of the first pinballs I worked on as far as fixtures go, let's call it production support, was a little video pin called Grand Antigators from 82-ish. And it kind of got me real interested in how this thing works. And, you know, it took years to get up into engineering, but I started doing some mechanical technology classes, things like that, kind of picking up on how to draft, because we still had drafting boards and pencils back then. And then, you know, as it progressed, I moved down to a couple different companies as time went on. Came out of Bali, got laid off there, went over to Wicco Corporation. Wicco did one pinball, and it was a one-and-done called Aftover. I don't know if anybody remembers that. I was still in production support doing fixtures for the line, fixtures to run the game. That kind of ended up in Premier Technology. again in the tool room model maker doing that but I was learning more and more about the layouts because at that time you'd take a paper drawing and we had to re-etch it out on a sheet of aluminum while it was steel at the time and you would just glue it up and I would re-etch it out and do spotting fixtures after you kind of re-laid out the whole game so I got a lot of time in on kind of laying out pinballs that were already laid out, but I was able to do it in a symmetrical way, understand how things are working, understand how it all goes together. Premier was about seven years, and that kind of ended when Premier, you know, took a slide and they were done. And then I got picked up over at Data East. Data East at the time, Joe Camico was there with, you know, of course with Gary Stern, and he put me in engineering, so I had an opportunity to start to do the design work. do mechanical design, and, you know, as support for the guys that were doing games. First game I ended up able to lay out myself, as far as the play field layout design went, was Baywatch, and that's the first full-size game I was able to do, and it just kind of springboarded from there. I mean, I've designed about 15 or so games, actually 13 games, I think, that were really my design or my layout. And then it's a complete team effort. It's not one guy doing this. It's not how it works. It's the whole team that puts it all together. If I go here, these are in alphabetical order, but I can kind of bounce through some games that I did. These were games that I actually worked on the layout. So Apollo 13 was an incredibly fun game to do. We came out with a 13-ball multiball on the game. If anybody has not played it, it is ridiculous when it happens. You go into a single ball, one ball at a time for five balls on a play field and all at once, eight balls dump on your flippers, and it's just chaos. You get to hear people scream playing pinball. It was unbelievable, especially on test. So I just picked up some things online, kind of put together some slides of some of the games I worked on, or the games that I worked on, actually. Apollo, there's some, you know, pics of Apollo. Baywatch is the first layout, like I said, that I did the playfield layout of the bird's eye view, making it all happen from that point of view. Baywatch was fun loaded, a lot of ramping got to really start to understand how this all works lines and circles it's all lines and circles and we joke about that but that's really what you're doing on that initial playfield layout and you can see there's a lot going on at Baywatch, I don't know if I saw one out on the floor but it's a fun game to play it still is, a lot of people out there really enjoy it to this day Godzilla, another game I did at Cigar. Another fun game, gigantic plastic ramp, one of the craziest plastic ramps. That whole green plastic ramp that you see there that runs all around, that's all one piece. It's gigantic. Had some great sculpting going on at the time. Really brought the thing to life. It was a good game. the movie kind of knocked it out a little bit, but it was a pretty good shooting game. High Roller was one that I kind of relayed out after Jon Norris had left. We moved it to the production floor and kind of relayed out the game and got it ready for production. I did some of the mechanics on the game and did the production layout that went to the floor. When I moved on to Jersey Jack, I started there as first hire for Jersey Jack and was able to do the initial layout for Wizard of Oz, and that was an amazing run. I did the layout for Hobbit. When I left the company, the game was pretty close to a finished game. They did some other work on Smough and on another upper right part of the play field, but the initial layout still stands as what we worked on from the beginning. Just some slides. There's the white wood as we were shooting that just to prove out the ramping. One of the original shots of the play field. Some artwork that really didn't make it. Some did, some didn't. shooting the white wood seems like a long time ago it really hasn't been that long it was a good shot of the white wood as we were bringing it together get the ramps working that's the stuff I do that's the layout stuff that I do that bird's eye, make it all fit make it all work Irons and Lloyds, what's up It's on the Pinball Database as a design game. And it was. It was trying to make a golf game out of a pinball-sized play field. It never went to production. It was just one of these projects that really kind of fizzled towards the end. But it was put into a novelty-style cabinet for tickets. Pinball Party was the last game I worked on at Stern. had 90 something percent. It was pretty much a finished product. There were some things that were taken out for cost and other reasons that other things got moved around but it was basically the same layout when I left that the production model came out to be. There's some sketches. Some shots of that game. This was a great, fun game to do, South Park. I don't know how many people have played it. It's a simpler game, but it's a fun game. If you like South Park, we do all kinds of crazy things in this one. I have Mr. Hanky popping out of a toilet all in the air. So, that is, I think, the first in Omi. And one in Omi will never have it again. A pinball machine with a lit piece of poop on it. We actually made brown inserts for that. You can imagine the company was doing inserts. Like, we want that one, but you've got to make it brown. Like, brown? What shade of brown? Any kind of shade. Just make it brown. And it worked. It worked. So, you know, one thing I think John brought up about the fun in pinball, and that's the truth of it. It's, you know, when you have a job that's fun to go to, you have a job that you have a passion for, it's not a job. I mean, you're doing what you want to do. You're doing what you think you should be doing. Michael Jordan, we did Space Jam. Great game. this game was one that I did all the mechanics on it the jump shot into the basket upper left the magnet shot that shot the ball up into the into the basketball and then the opening shot it was all about making baskets obviously fun game to do though and while you're doing pinball especially licensed product you get to meet a lot of fine people a lot of nice people that are in the licensing business too actually you know to meet Michael Jordan And I met Patrick Ewing at the time who was up there sooner when I met the guy I went to shake his hand and I think his fingers were into my forearm It was amazing Starship Troopers, another fun game we did there. A lot of fun mechs on there. You're shooting at spiders, you're shooting at brain bugs popping out of the play field. You just get to be creative and have some fun doing it. Striker Extreme was going to be another title at the time and you know Gary said we gotta have a soccer game and so we flipped some things around turn it into Striker Extreme and from Striker Extreme we had some re-themes of NFL games, NFL teams that different distributors were able to buy for their local fans, local customers. Yeah, here's one. Taking the same play field and re-teaming it as an NFL game where the goalie was a football player up in the corner here. The Bears. Ready for some football. There you go. Star Wars trilogy, the game I did. I think that might have been the year that I think it was Star Wars and Starship Troopers kind of back-to-back. we had smaller teams or team or actually we had kind of one team that knocked out three to four titles a year so we everybody supported everybody if I wasn't on the game I was working with John on his and vice versa so we had a lot of good camaraderie between everyone at the building at the time What was it of ours? Probably the most fun I had putting the game together. We made this big game. That was our first game coming out of JJP and it was a big game. I had three playfields and five flippers and all kinds of mechanisms. So we got a lot of support from contractors that came in and helped us. We got through it. I think one of the lessons learned there was, you know, not taking as long to get a game to market. And I'm kind of going to go there with the whole Houdini and what we tried to do when we started at American Pinball. More shots. spinning house. Fun stuff. That was I think one of the first shots of figuring out that we could fit a 26 inch monitor into a standard bat box size. We wanted to go with a change pinball a little bit and you know hit this thing with the LCD, LED LCD monitors. Once we found that this fit we were able mounted. That was the direction we took it. On top of that, being the first game with that going on, we did RGB LED lighting. We know there were issues with that. I'm sure that's all been handled since. But, and on top of that, it was RGB LED Janos Kiss at the same time. So for a first game coming out of that building, this was one loaded pinball that I do believe changed the course of how pinball was done after this game. You know, it kind of phased out that matrix that brought in RGB LED light. One of the things in my time is I was able to, I was at Wico when the first alphanumeric display was put on a game. Then I was at Data East when we did the small dot matrix on Checkpoint and that was basically the change over to dot matrix. And then I was with JJP when we put an an LCD monitor in a game and that changed another change in the course of how pinballs were looking and what components were going in them. Okay, that's some of the stuff I found there. Over time, just the things I worked on was Baywatch, Apollo 13, Space Jam, Star Wars trilogy, Starship Troopers, Godzilla, South Park, Striker Extreme, High Roller Casino, Simpsons Pinball Party, Wizard of Oz, Hobbit, and to this day, Houdini. As a company, when we first sat down to figure out kind of a direction of what we were going to do at API, we all know some of the history of API and some of the negative history of API early on. there was a big hole to climb out of for the company. And I kind of didn't realize that until I was going to get hired that week and I had read a website that explained some of the stuff that was going on with a certain individual and API. I went to my boss at the time and said, I think I might have made the biggest mistake of my life. And I kind of hit the panic button. He talked me off the ledge and I walked out of there and said, you know, this is not me. I did what I did and we're going to take this thing on. And in November of 2016, I was hired in October of 2016. November of 2016, I got ownership to buy into scrapping an original Houdini layout that was with the company that had shots that went nowhere. It was just a white wood that was incomplete with artwork. And they had money invested into it, and it took some time, but I was able to get them to, or I should say we as a team at the time, was able to get to scrap everything. And we started with a fresh piece of paper. So I had a sketched-up drawing in November of 2016 and went to the team that we were able to put together and said, we're going to get a couple of games. We're going to shoot for three games and go to TPF in 2017. And that was four months in front of us. and all I heard was I was full of exactly what and something's wrong with me. Well, the point that we talked about early on was we wanted to get a game out there and not have a two, three, four, five-year window. The other thing we wanted to do as a company was not take your money. We didn't want to have that pre-order hanging over our heads. I experienced it and it wasn't a good place to be. We wanted to be a company that says whatever we say, we're going to do it. We've got to be truthful. We've got to be friendly with our customers, our distributor base. So we tried to go in that direction and being in that hole I was talking about, it was difficult, but we knew if we could show a new piece that was not that old piece, in this short amount of time, that it would fire something up in the industry. And we might be able to be looked at as a small player, that we might have something here. So we went about our business. We worked a billion hours for that three or four-month span. And we actually made it to TPF with two games. They were working games. We had our issues. I don't know if anybody was at TPF, but the games were kind of meandering in and out of the show at times where I didn't want to open games up in front of the world. We had some issues with it, but we expected that. The big part of it was, can we keep them running, get it through the show, and get people to see who we are and what happened here. And it worked. And then right after the show, we started talking about we're going to ship. I think it was in the seminar at the show that we would ship games by the end of 2017. And again, behind closed doors, I was told I was full of that again. And, you know, you got to stop anything so crazy. But we did that, too. So on December 30th of 2017, we put three games in a box and we shipped them to a distributor. So we kept our work. There was two or three months there in early 2017, probably the first, actually the first half of the year, really, where we were trying to make a production line work. So we had to build it, we had to tweak it, we had to get things working. and I spent every day on the line for about three months checking every game that went out the door. Myself and Jim Thornton made sure we got out the best games we could in that short amount of time, and we pulled it off. What that did was kind of closed our window on game two because we were spending that extra time on Houdini. But it paid off in the long run because the early games that went out and then to this day, we're not having any catastrophic issues with it. We don't have a lot of people jumping down our throats that things aren't working. In fact, we get some pretty good feedback, especially location games that are just working. Obviously, it's a pinball, and you take a steel ball and beat it against anything, but it's eventually going to break it. So we're at it. People are happy with the product. It's holding up well in the field. There's some guys out there that are doing incredible things with their games that I've never seen before. I should have it here, and I don't. There was a guy that built a jail cell, basically, around his Houdini in his game room. And it's an amazing thing. If you go to our website and Facebook page and page down, you'll find it. And there's a video of it there. It's unbelievable. And, you know, to have that kind of feedback and people interested is what kind of fuels this thing. And I think anybody that's in pinball understands that. And you guys understand that from the customer side of it, that, you know, you guys are the ones that make this all happen, really. I mean, if you weren't here, we're not building pinballs. And that goes, you know, it's everywhere. So, you know, my thanks is always to the customer base and you guys that are supporting pinball and supporting these companies. There's, you know, who's left in the business right now, and you guys are showing your support all the time. It's amazing that, you know, it's gotten this far, and it's still holding its own. So, you know, to you guys, that's amazing. Thank you. We had our ups and downs getting the games out. But we have games. They're shipping. We're here. We're not going anywhere. It's kind of a word that we want to get out as a company. It's taking care of any back orders and that of distributors that may have taken some pre-orders of their own. Some distributors want to get a couple hundred bucks to hold a game and get a queue working. Well, when they did that early, it kind of hurt that sale a little bit, because people were wanting their gains because we've seen a shift in the industry where you're not going to wait a year or two or three and have money involved and not have your product. So we see the shift happening and basically it going back to the way it used to be If a game was out there you could buy it So we now have our feet planted firmly in production Just so you guys know, we've chewed up the 12,000 square foot that we've had in about a 15,000 square foot building. We're currently doing, it's not big numbers, we're pushing around 35 a week. we wanted to get that number to about 50, but we're kind of running out of room. We're stepping over people. It's getting a little crowded. So ownership has moved forward with that, and they procured a building that's going to give us about three times the space we have. We're going to share it with another company that's part of the Amtron umbrella of companies. Amtron is the company that kind of supports us. If anybody doesn't know, Amesha is a big PCB house. They're out in Palatine or in Streamwood. So they found a building. They're going to put one of their other smaller companies in with us. And we're going to have the room we need to get to the numbers, to possibly have a second line running, to possibly move into some redemption pieces. So we've got some things going. Obviously, all of that is going to take time to develop. but we're not going to be one and done with your support. And what I'm seeing out there, I mean, sometimes people don't even know where Houdini came from. And we've got some marketing challenges ahead as a company to get the name out there, get people to know who American Pinball is, see Houdini and see what you think about it. feedback's been great when people know about it. So, you know, like I said, that's another step that we need to take, and we need to get ourselves more, you know, out there in the communities, people who kind of know who we are. I've got so many people come up and like, well, where did this game come from? Who are you guys? And it kind of makes you think. You might have covered one, two, or three and think you're there, but there's four, five, and six and everything else behind it that, you know, You've got to keep your foot on the pedal, but you've got to kind of catch up on things that you might have been a little slow on. So that's where we are as a company. Currently, we have a team put together working on game two. Game two has come along great. Our plan is to unveil this at Expo in Chicago in October. we'll be sending prayers up to the big guy to see if we can get that to happen again because we're in this short window again we thought we'd never be there again and here we are not going to do it the same way but we're feeling good about the layout and how this thing is going to come together and that's all that matters to us right now so the guys that are involved with our team that's putting this thing together is just completely focused on where we're at and how to get us to that finish line. So game two is coming. Game three has got a lot of ideas on the board already. So we're trying to get a queue going too. It's hard when you're new to say, I've got a queue of games ready, especially when you have one team of a few people. To be competitive, obviously we need to staff up. Anybody out here real interested in working design and working mechanical, if you're electrical, you're looking to get into pinball, put a resume together, put a cover letter together, shoot something out to me. Give me a, let's talk sometime this weekend if you know people that are interested. Because we're looking for people that have a passion for this industry and kind of get what it is and what we need to do to deliver it and have quality behind it. So, you know, we're open. We're always looking higher. We're always looking for good people to bring on board. This is a quick little presentation that I'll kind of bounce through. It has a few things in it that if you guys have questions just throw your hands up or throw something at me and we'll stop and get you guys up there. Questions on this microphone? But this is kind of a little slideshow thing that I'm just going to bounce through one at a time to make it happen. So, this was put together a while ago, so I'm going to kind of bounce through some things. We added some new stuff to it, but this is basically our design team. Now it's myself, Josh Coogler, a lot of people, a lot of you guys know him from kind of home brew crowd. He came in and has been a great programmer for us. He's got a lot of good ideas. There's a programmer from, that did Alien, Joe, I don't have his, I don't remember his last name right now, but we did hire him. So we got him and Josh working rules on game two and cleaning up the rest of what we need to on Houdini. Jim Thornton works in engineering with me. It's kind of a new product, you know, get things going. He's my guy. I like to turn things to it and he makes things happen. Jeff Busch is the art director, artist on the game. Everything on the game is Jeff Busch. Jeff's been in the industry for quite a while. But, you know, sometimes in the bigger companies you're kind of held back a little bit. Or if you're working a licensed product, you can't really put everything out there that you want to put out there. You've got people telling you no. This time, Jeff was able to do this. This is his. So, I mean, that was the word to him while he was doing the project was, it looks good to me, Jeff. This is on you. I want you to be happy and proud of what you have as a final product. And it's going to be on you. And that's what you get. We came up with the idea of crossing steampunk with the Houdini theme. And it just fit like a glove. And Jeff pulled it off in many ways on this. And, you know, we couldn't be prouder of the artwork. through our packaging in the game. One thing that we did now is, I mean, we started out as kind of a one game, one price. And we're kind of phasing now into we're going to hold that through, but we're going to have add-ons. So it will be kind of an a la carte. For this particular game, we have side blades, side interior art that's available now. You can order from the factory or order outside of. The one thing that's unique about these is that the blades are dug by the original artist. So it really opens up his palette and he has a lot more fun with it. You'll find a lot of little innuendo and things about the magic community and that era in the side art. Jeff worked with that in a big way and had some fun with that. We do offer our magic glass. That's out there now. We have a shaker motor kit. that's out there now. And for those of you that like the real knocker sound, we have a knocker kit that can be purchased for the game. You can see some of the changes here from the original that we came out with early on to you can see the brightness of what's going on here with the artwork. This was once we came off the sample stages and we went into production, we really bumped up our art. to make it, you know, it'll pop more. Early on, if you guys saw the game out in Texas, the stage had a, you know, has a monitor on it, but we had it turned 90 degrees and turned it more into a marquee for the API Grand. And this is as the game progressed, we saw what direction we wanted to take it in. These are some, you know, spotlights on the game were sculpted. Matt Reister is the guy that did all the sculpting on the game. He does incredible work. I'd love to give him more time and that's kind of what we're trying to do now is get him more time because he's an incredibly talented guy. This was at one model, one price that we went with. Like I said, now we're going to hold true to that. We're not looking to raise our price, but we will have add-ons that could be as an a la carte type order when you place your order with your distributor, which includes the magic glass interior and that's on this game. On game two we're going to try to fit in some of these what we call add-ons on Koudini because of budget. We're going to try to work something into game two to maybe get these things included with the base price of the game. I'm not going to bore you guys with game rules. If you guys want to come and talk to me about it, this is a whole other half an hour of just game rules to kind of talk about it. The one thing that helps on the game that we put in a little bit later was this right here. As you go into a mode, because of RGB LED lighting, which is amazing, we're color coded. So, say on some mode you'll have a light blue. You'll go through other modes that will be all red or orange, green. and you can shoot those colors if you don't understand the rules, the colors as you're working your stuff through the game, and it'll start to explain itself as you're playing. There's 10 stage modes. It's loaded. There's a lot going on. Seance multiball is kind of for... It's a multiball that can be started fairly easily. It's by hitting the seance targets. As you guys see the game, there's five seance targets that kind of get banged into just by missed shots or coming off the magnets or slingshots. You'll pick them off, and you can set yourself up for a multiball, which is more for the novice player can get himself into a multiball. There's a trunk multiball, and you can see where we added the colors. That's what I was talking about. You have the teal for seance, the turquoise for trunk, blue are movie modes, green is jail escapes. So throughout the game, yellow is magic shot. And each one of the modes has X amount of shots to complete it. Once you complete it, you complete the Houdini letters and it goes into a master magician mode at the end. It doesn't happen very often. One thing that I liked what we did with Wizard of Oz was have the, as you drain a ball, there's a game still there. And I really liked that idea, and we pulled it off in a nice way with Wizard of Oz while I was at JJP. So we put this in to work with this game. So if you go into a drain, once you light Return from Beyond or Escape from Death, it's 30 flips to spell Seance. for the return from beyond and escape death is 30 seconds to spell escape. If you do, you get your ball back and you keep playing. So it's a way to turn the drain into another part of the game, so there's a game after the game kind of thing. Bonus multipliers going into the pops, just banging it. You get it into the pops and the numbers carry you through the bonus multipliers. This is some shots of our factory early on So this is what it looks like what it looked like while we were you know early to mid early 2017 as we were trying to put together the lines in a small area As it progressed, you know, we got our rotisseries made. We had our plates made for, you know, putting wood rails on the whole nine yards. yard. So it took a while to tool up, but we're running full steam ahead now. So that would be running through those. We don't have a lot of time, so I'm going to try to just pop through one more. And then towards the end, I'm just going to play a little movie. I've got some music and you can kind of see some shots of the game. This was put together more recently. This kind of recaps what I was talking about. We started Playfield Design in November. We did prototypes at TBF in March. Production samples went out. The first three were shipped in December. Actually, that number is now to 400. We're getting games out there. We've got 400 games shipped now. That's going to continue to grow. So we're just setting to get overseas and that's going to help us too. So this game is going to be more visible around the planet. In short order, we're hoping. It's just some of the stuff from that old one that I don't need to go through again. One thing about the game rules, we kind of did some looking into our test pieces that were out. And the game rules itself, they were kind of running this way. And what this chart shows you is game time. So zero to one minute, one to two minutes, two to three minutes, and so on. So you can see the two to three minute game is probably the highest percentage. And it's more enthusiasts, guys that can play, guys that understand it, and ladies too, I'm sorry. So that's kind of the meat of the program. And there is plenty there for the advanced player that's going to play for five or ten or fifteen minutes, or I've seen guys play for 38, 40 minutes and just beat the game down. And it can happen, and it works that way. A million is a pretty good score on this game. 500,000, you're starting to learn the game. A million, you're starting to really shoot it. We had a – I think it was Atlanta was a 0-5. First time a guy played a game, I think, just went that way for him. So the game, you know, it's all there. people say some of the shots are tight well we like it tight at American Pinball I'll tell you the inside left loop on the game I'm sorry the inside right loop on the game that gets you to the buck over to the catapult it's definitely a makeable shot the ball is an inch and 16th it's not that that lane is an inch and 16th it's one and a half size times the ball, so it's a little over an inch and a half. It is a shot. It is a tight shot. It was meant to be. It fit in this layout. Once you play the game, those of you that are good at backhands, one of the secrets to making that shot is the right side backhand. If you just hold it on the flipper, release it, and get that timing done, you're going to make that shot backhand all day. The shots are there. The one thing that's a lot of comments afterwards is that You know something, I shoot this game and get pretty good at it. I get out under games that have wide shots. I'm shooting the other games blindfolded. So it kind of bumps your skill level up a little bit. And, you know, it really isn't a mean game. I don't see it as. It has a couple of skill shots on it, you know, skillful shots on it. And once you get there, you know, you're going to feel good about yourself making those shots. This is all from the last slideshow. I kind of put this, grabbed this stuff last minute. So again, on this particular game, this one is, does have everything in it. So you do have your shaker motor kit in here. It does have the magic glass on it. and it does have the sides of the blades. So, you know, come over to the booth, take a look at it. We'll have this here for a minute. You guys can kind of take a look at it. It just bumps up the game to a better level, and you're not breaking a bank to get there. A couple of enhancements we did on the tube from the early production models were we always felt we needed something up here on the head. when you put the head down it protects your protects the side armor and also when you lift the playfield up you're not going to damage your bottom arch decal or anything there. So those are on the production models now. If you know anyone that's got an earlier model or if you have an earlier model, just give us a call at API and we'll send you out when you need to update your game on that side of it. One thing that was not missed, but it just didn't It didn't happen when it should have. It's on our speaker grill. It's down here. Actually, the one game we have in the booth, we added some acoustic foam in here so you don't get the light coming through it from the backbox. It should have been done much earlier. We should have got it done, but it was one of those things like, do we need it? Yeah, we needed it. That's being installed now. Again, if you have a game that you own or you know someone that has an earlier model game, we'll get you those foam pieces, those crystal foam pieces out. And it's a pretty easy install, and it'll bring it up to speed on what's going on in production. And Joe? Yeah. If you don't have a conventional white box or a conventional back glass area now, does Jeff Busch work on the graphics on the monitor as well? On Houdini, he did add to that because we had, I don't know if you know, Ish Rinesis, his brother Mark, they've been around in animation for a long time, bouncing everything. Well, Ish is with us full time now. We were using him as a contractor, and he kind of ran out of hours. So Jeff was taking some of his art, and he would give it to Josh Kugler, and Josh, our programmer, would kind of do some animations to make it work. Some of the stuff isn't the best, we admit to that, but it works for the game. Game two and beyond, remember we got a full-time animator, things are going to be sharper, you won't get cut-offs, you won't get the things you might catch on this particular game. And I don't think it's to a point where you go, oh that was really bad. It's just once you do look at our animations, you might catch things that probably could have gotten better or a bit better and we'll admit that you're right. But to get the game in production, we had to draw a line somewhere. But yeah, Jeff does it all for us. It's amazing some of the things he can do. Two more questions. Okay. Couple more questions, anybody? I'll ask one. That's good, okay. I want to know about, since you mentioned that even though the company is American Pinball, you are considering how to make some non-pinball games in your mix to keep the lines going and whatever. So when you're looking at licenses, you're licensing for all the game types that you might plan to make, if possible? Yeah, well right now we're trying to stay in the non-licensed arena. I kind of call it pseudo-licensing is what we're doing, where Houdini, which is unbelievable that it wasn't a licensed team, is not a licensed team. The reason behind that is he didn't have family, so it didn't really move on from generation to generation. But he did make some statements or there were some writings of his that he wanted his Houdini name to move forward and be out there. So once we did find out that that was open, which is amazing of all the magic games out there, that Houdini wasn't looked at as a viable non-licensed or licensed team. So our next game is a non-licensed team. Our redemption pieces that we're kind of looking at, we're trying to stay in that same arena. I'm not going to say that we'll never do a license theme, but the handcuffs kind of come off. No pun intended with Houdini here, but you can do so much more than you can under a license theme. Although a license theme kind of gives you the playbook, that's what you're paying for. So you're going to get the music and sounds and video and things you need. It's just a matter of how you put it together to get it approved. So, you know, to answer your question, we're going to try to stay on this path as, you know, as long as we can and, you know, try to come up with viable titles that meet that criteria. So, okay. Last call. Oh, yeah. What kind of volumes are you looking at for each meeting? Well, Houdini, we released it at 1,000 pieces. We had confidence in it after the first couple shows that we could get there. And we are going to get there. I believe, I would say, you know, not written in stone, but that we would probably be doing 1,000 releases per new title. We'll see how that works out. One thing that's nice about, again, the non-licensed team, is that we can stop it and we can come back to it. So, you know, we could build up some hype, make it happen, get the new game out there, and see where we are about bringing back some Houdini's when we get enough orders for that. So, you know, our prior to business plan is $1,000 per unit as an initial release. And you kind of got to be in that range to keep your bill of material down. You know what I mean? Once you start going to shorter numbers, your bill is jumping up here, and, you know, there goes anything we were looking at from that $69.95 price tag is not going to cut it if we go with shorter releases. We won't be able to get there. Yeah, that sounds like you learned some lessons from Data East and then saying your pinball and stirring pinball until you can turn around so fast. I was there with Gary for 13 years and watched each title being licensed and what you had to go through to get that approval process done. And sometimes it goes through like grease. It's just, boom, it's done. But other times, boy, they make some suggestions to you. It's amazing that you can't, I can't do that. You know, that guy's got to be that much bigger than everybody else's head or, you know, whatever. So if you look at Last Action Hero, maybe one of them, that, you know, Schwarzenegger's head is that big and everybody else's is not. You know what I mean? That comes from the licensor, and that's how you have to do it. That's what we like, not having that restraint. It helps us. Obviously, you've got to do more on your side, but it's worth it in the long run. Well, thanks for coming. You've given me some ideas about how we can have presentations from American football in future shows. Okay, great. Let's do it again. Hey, thank you, guys. Thank you.

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 36289e34-f79b-41c7-aefd-fa433b44d17d*