# American Pinball at Vancouver Flipout Expo 2018 **Source:** Pinball News (Vancouver Flipout 2018) **Type:** video **Published:** 2018-09-09 **Duration:** 62m 18s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZqI60MBNFo --- ## Analysis Joe Walshert, director of operations at American Pinball, discusses his 36-year career in the pinball industry spanning roles at Midway, Data East, and Stern Pinball before joining American Pinball in October 2016. He details the aggressive four-month design and production timeline for Houdini (from November 2016 paper concept to March 2017 Texas debut), highlighting the catapult shot's critical late-stage development and vendor support. Walshert emphasizes American Pinball's philosophy of single-tier pricing, integrated art packages, and customer-focused operations while reviewing his prior game design work including Apollo 13, Baywatch, and others. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Joe Walshert's career in the pinball industry started in 1982, spanning approximately 36 years across multiple manufacturers — _Direct statement: 'my career started a long time ago, like 1982. So I've been hanging around this industry for about 36 years.'_ - [HIGH] American Pinball created Houdini from a piece of paper in November 2016 to release at Texas show in March 2017 (four months) — _Direct statement: 'It was a piece of paper in November of 2016... take this piece of paper and we were going to create this pinball machine and we were going to bring it to Texas in March... March in four months.'_ - [HIGH] The catapult shot on Houdini travels approximately 22 inches and did not have a backup plan if it failed — _Direct statement: 'we've got this catapult shot that travels about 22 inches. and if that didn't work, there wasn't a plan B.'_ - [HIGH] The catapult mech was not functioning correctly until two weeks before the Texas show, requiring emergency fixes — _Direct statement: 'Two weeks before Texas, it was about two weeks, was the first time we saw the catapult work... We messed with the pulse on it, and the first one that that thing hit, it was high-fiving and jumping up and down.'_ - [HIGH] American Pinball is committed to a one-price, one-game model without tiered Pro/Premium/LE versions — _Direct statement: 'one thing that we started early on was the one game one price type of plan moving forward as a new company to have all the different levels of each game, there's all that much more time and effort... We didn't have, even to this day, we don't really have the staff that can do three different rule sets.'_ - [HIGH] Walshert was hired as director of operations at American Pinball in October 2016 for a company without a product or operations — _Direct statement: 'I was hired in October of 2016. Actually brought in as a director of operations basically for a company that didn't have a product and no operations.'_ - [HIGH] The flat rails and ball guides on Houdini did not change from the initial release to samples, indicating design confidence — _Direct statement: 'Flat rails and ball guides on this game didn't change. There's not a rep box of rep, A, B, C, D, E, F, G.'_ ### Notable Quotes > "my career started a long time ago, like 1982. So I've been hanging around this industry for about 36 years." > — **Joe Walshert**, Early in presentation > _Establishes Walshert's extensive industry experience and credibility_ > "It was a piece of paper in November of 2016. And I was able to put together a team of guys that I knew could pull this thing off... And I said, no, March in four months." > — **Joe Walshert**, Mid-presentation > _Highlights the aggressive timeline American Pinball committed to for Houdini's debut_ > "Two weeks before Texas, it was about two weeks, was the first time we saw the catapult work... if that didn't work, there wasn't a plan B." > — **Joe Walshert**, Mid-presentation > _Demonstrates the high-risk design decision and critical nature of the catapult mech to the game's success_ > "I had vendors showing up at 8, 9, 10 o'clock at night... Look, I got those parts for you. Are you still there? Or can I drop them off at your house?" > — **Joe Walshert**, Mid-presentation > _Illustrates vendor enthusiasm and community support that enabled rapid production timeline_ > "one thing that we started early on was the one game one price type of plan moving forward... We didn't have, even to this day, we don't really have the staff that can do three different rule sets or three different play fields." > — **Joe Walshert**, Late presentation > _Explains American Pinball's differentiation strategy from larger manufacturers like Stern_ > "What I do is the start of it all... I didn't do the art. I didn't do the sounds. I didn't program the game. I didn't do any of the illustrations. None of it." > — **Joe Walshert**, Mid-presentation > _Establishes design philosophy emphasizing collaborative teamwork and division of labor_ > "It's a shaker motor kit now that's available. There's a knocker kit that's available. We came up with our own glare-proof glass. We call it a Visi-Glass." > — **Joe Walshert**, Late presentation > _Describes American Pinball's approach to customizable add-ons and factory integration options_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Joe Walshert | person | Director of Operations at American Pinball; pinball designer with 36-year career starting in 1982; previously worked at Midway, Data East, and Stern Pinball | | American Pinball | company | Boutique pinball manufacturer founded/restarted around 2016; producing Houdini game with commitment to single-tier pricing model | | Houdini | game | American Pinball's debut title; designed and produced in four months (November 2016 to March 2017); features 22-inch catapult shot as signature mech; premiered at Texas Pinball Expo in March 2017 | | Gary Stern | person | Founder/executive at Stern Pinball; Walshert worked for him for approximately 13 years | | Stern Pinball | company | Major pinball manufacturer where Walshert worked for 13 years; mentioned as reference point for organizational structure and team-based design | | Data East | company | Pinball manufacturer where Walshert worked in engineering; he designed Apollo 13 and Baywatch there | | Midway Manufacturing | company | Early employer where Walshert started as model maker in tool room; later became Valley Midway | | Jeff Bush | person | Artist at American Pinball; designed art package and blades for Houdini | | Apollo 13 | game | Data East pinball game designed by Walshert; notable for 13-ball multi-ball feature; first game where Walshert's name appeared on back glass was follow-up 'Rec Lab' | | Baywatch | game | Data East pinball game; first mechanical layout designed entirely by Walshert; featured complex wire ramps | | John Borg | person | Colleague pinball designer at Stern Pinball; Walshert collaborated with him on game mechanics | | Williams/WMS | company | Major pinball manufacturer mentioned as reference for large-scale design teams; contrasted with Stern's smaller team structure | | Pac-Man | game | Video game manufactured by Midway; thousands were produced during Walshert's early employment; reference point for manufacturing scale | | Vancouver Flipout Expo | event | 2018 pinball exposition event where this presentation took place | | Texas Pinball Expo | event | March 2017 expo where American Pinball/Houdini debuted; major industry show referenced multiple times | | Chicago Pinball Expo | event | October event mentioned as target for American Pinball's second game release | | Jim Lovell | person | Apollo 13 astronaut; Walshert delivered Apollo 13 pinball machine to his home and received signature | ### Topics - **Primary:** American Pinball company strategy and operations, Houdini game design and development timeline, Joe Walshert's career history in pinball industry, Catapult mech design and late-stage engineering challenges, Single-tier pricing model vs. multi-tier Pro/Premium/LE approach - **Secondary:** Collaborative design process and vendor relationships, Aftermarket add-ons and customization options, Historical pinball industry context (1980s-1990s vs. modern era) ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.82) — Walshert expresses enthusiasm about American Pinball's rapid success, pride in accomplishments, and gratitude for vendor and community support. Tone is reflective and appreciative of industry history. No significant criticisms or negative sentiment expressed. ### Signals - **[business_signal]** American Pinball acknowledges staffing constraints preventing adoption of three-tier Pro/Premium/LE pricing model used by competitors (confidence: high) — Statement: 'We didn't have, even to this day, we don't really have the staff that can do three different rule sets or three different play fields or three different art packages' - **[community_signal]** American Pinball actively recruiting talented mechanics, electrical engineers, artists, and sound designers to support company growth (confidence: high) — Statement: 'I'm always looking for good people to bring on... anybody here knows mechanical, electrical guys, artists, people that sound... feel free to... email me, call us' - **[design_philosophy]** American Pinball intentionally avoiding multi-tier pricing to focus on single unified product and maintain quality control with limited team (confidence: high) — Statement: 'one thing that we started early on was the one game one price type of plan moving forward as a new company' - **[market_signal]** American Pinball experiencing strong demand with games in production and backorders; distributors actively seeking inventory (confidence: high) — Statement: 'we're in production now, obviously. You know, games, leadership, back orders, everything has been covered. our distributors were just kind of knocking at their doors a little more often' - **[community_signal]** Walshert emphasizes collaborative design approach where layout is starting point; art, sound, code, and illustrations handled by specialized team members (confidence: high) — Statement: 'What I do is the start of it all... I didn't do the art. I didn't do the sounds. I didn't program the game' - **[product_strategy]** American Pinball developing proprietary Visi-Glass glare-proof glass and custom topper as factory-integrated add-ons for Houdini and future games (confidence: high) — Statements: 'We came up with our own glare-proof glass. We call it a Visi-Glass' and 'We have been working on a topper for this game' - **[product_strategy]** American Pinball planning second game targeted for Chicago Pinball Expo in October 2018; Walshert hints at potential sneak preview (confidence: high) — Direct statement: 'we're going to try to get to Expo in Chicago in October' and 'we're out of our minds trying to get this thing going' - **[business_signal]** American Pinball positioning as customer-friendly, community-focused boutique manufacturer emphasizing feedback and collaboration (confidence: high) — Statement: 'one of the things we try to do early on is to try to be that more of a friendly company to our distributors and a friendly company to our customers' --- ## Transcript This is a Pinball News Production. Well, my career started a long time ago, like 1982. So I've been hanging around this industry for about 36 years. When I look back at the numbers today, I thought, wow, it was only yesterday when this thing started for me. But here we are. So we're going to open this thing up with a joke. I'm going to try to make people laugh in here a little bit. so Houdini and Chris Angel walk into a bakery and Chris Angel says watch this Houdini and he swipes three donuts and he puts them in his pocket and nobody sees it he said that was a pretty good trick wasn't it and Houdini looks back at him and says yeah that was alright but alright it's good enough for now and he walks up to the owner and says hey can I get a donut So then he gets a donut, eats it right in front of the owner of the donut shop. Says, hey, can I get another one? And grabs another donut, eats it right on the spot. And asks for a third donut. And the owner of the donut shop is looking at him sideways, what's going on here? And he devours the third donut. And looks at him and says, what are you doing? You just had three donuts. What are you doing? What's the trick? Yeah, you know, there's supposed to be a trick here. He said, well, go check Chris Angel's pocket. So I probably didn't come off too good on that one, but at least it's something with the media involved. I don't know. I found it on the web. So there we go. So anyway, you know, pinball for me has just been just a part of what I've been hooked into for many years. I was basically in the industry for the longest time and then was out of it for about three years. And in those three years' time, I really wanted to get back in. And I had an opportunity with American Pinball as a startup. So I jumped at that and we created this guy. We did this in kind of a record time. It was a piece of paper in November of 2016. And I was able to put together a team of guys that I knew could pull this thing off. and the big surprise to them was that we were going to take this piece of paper and we were going to create this pinball machine and we were going to bring it to Texas in March. And they said, okay, March 2018. And I said, no, March in four months. And they all looked at me sideways and there was a few expletives used at the time. We've got kids here, so we won't bother going there. But the impossibility of it or the thought of it being impossible to make it happen was not on the table. And we had some really dedicated people that just said, you know what? You think you can do this? I think we can do this. And we got these guys to buy in. And it wasn't just the team creating the game. It was several vendors that I had worked with in the past that just wanted to lift us up and make it happen. And two weeks before Texas, it was about two weeks, was the first time we saw the catapult work. Now, people that are familiar with the game, we've got this catapult shot that travels about 22 inches. and if that didn't work, there wasn't a plan B. I usually try to have a plan B. I didn't have one. The guys were there. We were there daily for 14, 16-hour days. We were putting in all kinds of ridiculous hours to make this happen. I had left at about midnight or so one night when we finally got this thing up and running, but we didn't have it wired right. Something was not right. So I left to go get some shut-eye. And it wasn't 15 minutes later that I got a text with a movie attached to it and popped that on and saw this thing fire. Well, the thing was it was hitting the ramp and bouncing against the wall and it didn't even make it. and immediately I just put my shoes back on, jumped in the car, went back to the office, and started playing with it. We ended up having to trim the ramp a little bit. We did a couple things to it. We messed with the pulse on it, and the first one that that thing hit, it was high-fiving and jumping up and down, and I still get a little tingle up the back thinking about it because if it didn't work, we were in big trouble because it was only a couple of weeks to the show. So we started pounding hours into it again right after that, and we were able to clean this thing up and make it work. And we were seeing it working about 90% of the time, so we were in a pretty good place with it. I could have played it safe. You know, a lot of pinball designs out there, you do want to stay on the safe side. You don't want to kind of cross too many lines where a shot won't work or have issues with it. You know, I could easily put a wire form in front of that catapult and let it throw, you know, kind of like the back catapult, let it throw into a wire form and get to the box, but it's just a lot cooler without it. There, you know, occasionally you're going to find it's a pinball machine. There's mechs that work perfect most of the time, and then there's mechs that kind of are fake. And when you dial it in and you get it right, it works well. So we put adjustments in it to make it happen, and then that became basically the feature shot of the game. I thought it was going to be the stage mech, but it turned out to be that shot. So making it to Texas was a big deal, And there was a little bit of baggage that the company was holding on to for some prior stuff that was going on. And we really needed to make that jump and make that happen for Texas. And what we did, we were able to kind of put a splash out there for the company that we were real. We brought a couple of real games to the show. Art was there. Sounds were there. We had some coding in it. And we started. And API basically was reborn at the Texas show in 2017. And that kind of brings us to where we are today. Like I said earlier, I was going to probably jump around a little bit, but like I said earlier, my career started back in 82. I was working as a mechanic at a gas station. Well, gas stations used to have mechanics and full serve and all that back in the day. and kept getting laid off and called back from general orders as a kid, but I was working for a GM. He has a setup man, machine setup man over at Electromotive. It was a train division. They were making locomotives there. It's a pretty wild job. 10,000 employees working three shifts a day, seven days a week. It was amazing. I was working on a guy's car, Tony, an older Italian guy that I knew. I was the only one he would let work on a car, so we got to be close. And he says, hey, my nephew's got an opening for a, because I like model making, tool maker type of thing, so why don't you go down and see my nephew? I said, okay. So I go down, there's this Dick White building off of Mannheim in Franklin Park, and I walk into this big place, and there's a Pac-Man out front, I'm going in, and it's midway manufacturing. And I wasn't even a video guy then. I really never really got into video games much when I was a kid either. That's back when kids used to go out a lot and just play and, you know, hit sports and everything else. We weren't tied into video games a lot, and I didn't go to arcades to play video games very often. So I walked in, and you guys remember those old boards? It was a black board with the white lettering on it that you just slide letters up and on, and it said, you know, Midway Manufacturing welcomes Joe Walsher, and it's this gigantic vestibule. I'm a kid, 23 years old, and I walked up to this little desk in this big area and said, that's me, and it all started there. I got a job as a model maker in a tool room at Midway, and then Valley bought them as Bally Midway. Started to get into pinball a little bit, doing fixtures, So I was a line fixture guy, where they used to call it kind of a prick punch plates. You drop the play field in, and every spotted hole on the game, it gets pressed into the board, released. And I used to make the fixtures for that. And then a lot of line fixtures and keep it kind of on the production side. So I did a lot of machining, a lot of work in the tool room, actually making dies and making fixtures. And then, you know, the first game I laid, not laid out, but actually laid it out for the spotting templates was a little mini pin called Granny and the Gators. I don't know how many people even have seen that or heard of it, but it was a little mini play field with a monitor on it. So it was a video pin. And that's the first game I kind of worked on moving over to the pinball side for fixtures. Everything else was line fixtures for assemblies. 8-ball deluxe was on the line. And there were stacks to the ceiling of monitors everywhere because they were running Pac-Man. And I mean, there were the 36-inch wide aisles just for OSHA at the time. And that's the only aisles you had to get through. And every place in there would be stacks of monitors everywhere you looked because they were moving thousands of Pac-Man at the time. So that's where it all started for me. Ended up getting laid off from there when Valley did a big layoff across the board and moved over to a company called Wicco. And we did a game there called Aftor. It was a one-and-done company. The banks came in one day, and everybody cleared out. Never got to game two. I didn't lay the game out again. I was doing fixtures at the time. So once that ended, I ended up at Premier Technology. And still in the tool room, but starting to learn AutoCAD just on my own time. Trying to figure it out, working with the guys that the games we were producing. I was doing all the fixturing for those games also. And then in time, Premier closed. So once I left Premier, then I had an opportunity to go over to Data East. They brought me to Data East. I was working with Joe Camico, Gary Stern. In the early days, they had, what was on the line? I think it was First Simpsons. Their First Simpsons was on the line when I got there. So Joe gave me an opportunity to get into engineering. engineering. So I moved into engineering and then still was doing work with getting the plates made, kind of overseeing some stuff from between engineering and production. And, you know, I was able to really get a lot of insight and a lot of direction on the game design side, start to see how it really comes together and you start getting an eye for how the games lay out. So I had an opportunity then, and the first game that I was able to lay out, my own layout, was Baywatch. So back then, you kind of had an open book on how you wanted to do things, and Baywatch is a really loaded game, a lot of rampage. I was able to really get a little crazy with wire ramps and get the ball off the play field. And the game did fairly well for us. and I had a blast doing it. At the time, we'd go and visit the whole Baywatch crew and everything out in California. And there was a lot of tie-ins where you'd be a lot more involved, I think, than even today. You were more involved with the people that owned the license as opposed to now it's more formal paperwork back and forth and you submit, you get approved, you submit, you get disapproved, whatever it is. But back then there was more of a relationship with the people that had the license. So it all started there as far as layouts went for me. And then as time went on, you know, some of the games I did there was like Apollo 13 was probably my favorite game that I did there. You know, I came up with the idea of 13 ball multiball. multiball. So if anyone hasn't shot an Apollo, if you run into an Apollo, you can shoot it. When it dumps eight balls on top of five that are already on the play field, you know, the first time we had it on test, the woman was playing it with her son, and we had it set up so all she had to do was make one shot into the Saturn V rocket, and she was going to go right to 13-ball multiball. And she screamed when her kids started crying, thinking that something just happened to her mom, or to their mom. But it was just that you've never seen it before kind of thing on a pinball. And when all those balls drop, you know, you can see the excitement. And any time we went out on a test and watched the people play, and even to this day I have one at home. I was lucky enough to have one at home. I was able to go to Jim Lovell's house and deliver it. And he signed the game He signed the 75 rocket for us on the original game that I have And you know it was just that kind of experience level that really had me hooked And from that point on, I was like, this is too much fun to get away from. It's not a, you know, it's not an industry that's gigantic. I mean, even though back in the day, back in the 90s, there were 100,000 pinball games made a year between five companies. So it was a different industry then. It was definitely a bigger industry. And we've seen its ups and downs. And we're seeing this thing climbing back up to a decent level for this industry. And obviously, we want to see it grow more. you know at Stern I worked for Gary for like 13 years so I got to see a lot I got to be involved in a lot of games if I wasn't laying out a game I was helping you know John Borg or whoever might be on the mechanics of a game I learned over years to able to do a complete game so I could I've seen enough and been around enough where I could do the mechanisms, I could do the layout there's a few games out there that I did everything on as the game went to production and then there's other games where you get this guy will take this smack, this guy will take this smack and we kind of bounced that back and forth between us when we were doing games because we had one decent sized team that did three models a year as opposed to like the big guys over at WMS or Williams at the time. We only had three or four teams doing three or four games a year. So each team would do a game a year is how it turned out. We were doing three games a year with that one team. So you always had one in the works, but it wasn't where you had separate team members working on separate games. We all kind of grouped together and did our own thing that way. Right now, it's kind of the way things are set up at American Pinball. The company's still young. One game in the market, one game coming up. We may do a little something for that second game today. You guys might get a little sneak eye. We'll see. I'm kind of on the edge of doing that or not. It's hard to start to reveal things on a game when it's, you know, I can't show it to you. I don't want to be that guy that, you know, here's a back glass and here's a side art for a cabinet. And then the game's not for a year down the road or whatever. So I'm that kind of guy. We want to put things out there when it's appropriate to do. and we're close enough that I think it's appropriate today to kind of talk a little bit about what we're doing for game two, which we're going to try to get to Expo in Chicago in October. So we're out of our minds trying to get this thing going. I promised Tommy to come out here. He asked me to come out here. You know, you can't change plans, but that's how it always works. You finally get in a lot of things, but then you have something that we have to get to. And I'm glad. I'm really happy to be here. It's a nice little break for me anyway, just to kind of touch base with everybody again and just kind of get that fire going again, which is what these shows do for manufacturers. To see you guys and the support that you guys make for this industry, it's amazing, and it's all over the States. It's the first time I'm up in Canada. So we know that it's you know, it's here and it's here to stay. I don't see this thing going anywhere At any time so, you know, it's made it through its big ups and downs and and we're in a good place The industry's in a good place and you know We kept it going this long so And American people like I said we were small and we need to grow. You know, I'm always looking for good people to bring on what we do there. So anybody here knows mechanical, electrical guys, artists, people that sound, people that are interested in pinball that could help us, feel free to... I've got a bunch of cards up here, email me, call us. You know, we're looking for good people to make this thing grow. So that's another little pitch that I wanted to put out there. You know, we're constantly open to finding quality people to bring on board to make this thing start to grow. And that's kind of where we're at now. Houdini, when I got there, was a title. that the company had. They trademarked it. And there was another layout that was out there that just didn't work. And that's where that piece of paper came from in November of 2016. I was hired in October of 2016. Actually brought in as a director of operations basically for a company that didn't have a product and no operations. So it was something that had to be done where we had a product to move forward with. And, you know, we got lucky on this layout. You know, I tried to put as much time in it, you know, as I was laying it out, so there weren't a lot of mistakes made or a lot of, you know, you're overseas and you don't see something like you should. our vendors were spot on if they saw issues with trolling and said we're out there they'd be on the phone right away look I think you meant to do this or there's something missing here or whatever and it all kind of came together and to this day I don't even know how it's hard, pinball's hard enough but to go like I said to go from that you know sketch to pretty much what you see here in that four month window was an amazing thing. And personally, I wanted that to happen. I just, there's been a few years now, you know, over the last five years plus that, you know, games take a long time to get to market or, you know, a new product comes out and then it just doesn't get to the customer base in any type of time frame. And, you know, in my heart of hearts, I knew that with the right people on it and you just let us do our job and everybody takes responsibility for that part of it, then it can be done. And it took a little buying into by everybody because of that short window. But once everybody kind of shook on it and said, let's make this happen, it just started to roll. And, you know, I had vendors showing up at 8, 9, 10 o'clock at night and call me. Look, I got those parts for you. Are you still there? Or can I drop them off at your house? What do you want me to do? And really, these guys were showing up in, you know, late nights, Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever, enthusiastic about getting those parts to us to be a part of what we were trying to do. That was amazing. That was something that I'll never forget. Some of these guys, I still, to this day, I thank them, even for what they did back then, to get us to where we needed to be then, and now they're stepping up to get us to where we need to be now. So it's kind of a fun thing. It's a small little industry, kind of like a grain of sand on this beach of industries, and there's Pitwall. So you get to know a lot of people, and you get to get some friendships that last for a long time. I'm talking to guys that it's been 25 years since I've talked to them, and somehow 25 years goes by like that. I don't get it, but you know, you've been talking about starting in this industry in 1982. Wow. I mean, that's a lifetime ago, and I'm amazed that it's still going, and, you know, these people are still doing it. And it just, it maxed me out on a small, tiny industry like this that there's so much enthusiasm that just keeps it rolling. And, you know, people have told me that he's so enthusiastic and so passionate about what he does. And, you know, he's not the only one. There's distributors across the states that we use, around the planet that we use, that have that same burn in them to make this thing work. And that's how it works. And it's not, I do pinball design, but that's where it stops. I mean, I can do the lines and circles and make it work from a bird's eye view looking down. I can do mechanisms if and when I need to. But that's the beginning. What I do is the start of it all. And then all these other people have to be a part of it to create that. So that's not... I didn't do the art. I didn't do the sounds. I didn't program the game. I didn't do any of the illustrations. None of it. That's not what I do. So it kind of starts with the design, and then everybody buys into what you're doing. You kind of tweak it a little bit. Hopefully the shots will work. When you get all the flat rails and ball guides in, and the shots that you see on the computer are the shots that work in real life, in real time. That's the luck part, I guess, is a part of this thing. You know, flat rails and ball guides on this game didn't change. There's not a rep box of rep, A, B, C, D, E, F, G. There's a lot of stuff on this game is the same from that first initial release to get the samples made. So that's something that had to happen to make it, you know, to make the game in that short a time. So you had to have a lot of confidence in what you were putting out there. and have a lot of confidence in your vendors that they were going to get what you needed to you in a short amount of time. And it all paid off in the end. It was awesome to do the unveiling of the game in Texas. Everybody running up to the game to see this for the first time was just a great experience. You can't put words to it when you see that amount of enthusiasm coming from a customer base. And, you know, one of the things we try to do early on is to try to be that more of a friendly company to our distributors and a friendly company to our customers. We're open to sit down and talk with anyone here at any time. we're not we all have blinders now when it comes down to suggestions from you you know how the business is run how field service is taken care of you know all the parts to make a good pinball company is really a lot of feedback from you and that's important to us so you know anything that comes up that you guys want to talk about or throw out there, just feel free to do that. Shoot us an email, give us a call, however it works out. And, you know, we will definitely look into it, see what we can do about it. Bottom line is, you're important to us. So it doesn't, everything else around it doesn't really matter. It's the end user, the end customer, you guys, that get us ready for the next one and support what we're doing. So, you know, hats off to you guys for being there for us up until now. Use the shooters. What else can we cover? Just kind of thinking how this came together and we are where we are. There's a lot of naysayers early on. We had put it out there that we were going to get to Texas in that little window, and a lot of people said that's not going to happen. I think that's what drove us in a heart to say, well, yeah, it's going to happen, and it did. So we'll hang our hat on that, and we're in production now, obviously. You know, games, leadership, back orders, everything has been covered. our distributors were just kind of knocking at their doors a little more often saying how many you need when you need them we started to do some add-ons to the game one thing that we started early on was the one game one price type of plan moving forward as a new company to have all the different levels of each game, there's all that much more time and effort that needs to go into a final product when you have three levels of a game. We didn't have, even to this day, we don't really have the staff that can do three different rule sets or three different playfields or three different art packages. So we wanted to pin that down as a one price, one game, one price as far as us moving forward. As it started to come together, I wasn't a big blades guy in the interior art. I just come from a time when that interior art wasn't a big deal. It just was something out there. It's kind of like when I was a kid, everybody had cars and you would get, you know, put a new exhaust system on it or some headers in a, you know, a Holley four barrel or whatever And you kind of work with your car and trick it up and make it yours That what people do to pinballs these days So when I talked to Jeff Busch our artist and said you know, one of the things about blades is they're usually done by a different artist that did the art package for the game because there's, you know, other different companies that do them and they try to match them and try to make it look right, but it always looks a little different than the art package. So when I talked to Jeff about doing this and gave him the sizes to work with, I just said, you know, go nuts on the blades and put in images and things that you couldn't fit or put in the play field or other things that you wanted to get in the play field and you couldn't. They put some fun stuff in there. And when we did get the blades in and popped them on the game, I was all in. So, you know, to have the artist do, the artist that did the package do the blades, that's, that's our, that's a rule of ours. And on game two, we're hoping to, you know, I'm hoping to be able to fit those into the package of the game without having it be in an add-on. So that's something that we're working on. It's all build material at that point. So we're working on that to try to hit that number and still fit in what we can. There's a shaker motor kit now that's available. There's a knocker kit that's available. We came up with our own glare-proof glass. We call it a Visi-Glass. It makes a huge difference. So we do have that in stock. It's a nice add-on for any standard body game. So we have those available. You have to call in and see what kind of price you can get for them. But that's available too. We have been working on a topper. We know that there's a couple toppers out there now that you can get after market. We have been working on one for this game. We're working on one for our second game. So we will try to have a topper available per model before it hits the streets. So it's available to you guys. It's kind of like an a la carte now. So you can order the game through your distributor, say, Hey, get me blades and magic glass and a shaker motor, and they'll come up with some type of a deal to get it put in in the factory as opposed to you guys having to do it yourself. Putting blades on a game, you've got to pull the play field to do it. And a lot of people don't want to do that. You have a $7,000 piece that you just bought, and you've got to pull the play field out and put these blades on it. So we want to make that available, come it out of the factory, if and when possible. That's how we want to do it. So it's kind of like an a la carte. You can talk to distribution and say, I want to get it with this, this, and this on it. Check our website, what's available, and we can custom build that game for you before it leaves the factory. that's about all I got about me I just wanted to kind of introduce myself to you guys any questions from anybody here that you want to get on the stuff that I can answer if you have any questions about who I am or whatever that I can answer we can do that right now what's been running up there was just a kind of a montage of things that have been going on at the factory the one thing that I did have this so I have a bunch of games just a bunch of images of games that I have that I've worked on that I can kind of just run through for you guys. Games that I had something to do with the layout. Let me get this to come up. My computer doesn't like to work in Canada. So that's Apollo. And again, the big deal at Apollo was the 13-ball multiball play. It's a good shooting game. I enjoy it all the time. People come to my house and shoot it. They're amazed at the 13-ball multiball, and it's really fun. Just some images of it that I picked up over time. If you look right here, I don't know how closely you can see this area here. I can get bigger with it if I have to. But that was the first time that my name got put on a back glass. Wallster Backwards comes out, Rec Lab. And Rec Lab just kind of worked with the space theme. And since Tom Hanks didn't want his image on the back glass, we had to pop in this guy with the, you know, looking into his visor where you could see the Earth in his visor, which actually that was a pinball, which was pretty cool. but licensed serves didn't go for that one. But he got to be named the rec lab. That was the first time that my name got to get on a back glass. It was exciting for me. You know, a lot going on in the game as you can see. It was a fun game to put together. It was back in the day when you could really add a lot and the bill of material wasn't gigantic like it is these days. One thing that made it better for bill of material then was we would do releases of 2,500 or 5,000 at a time. That's how the market worked. Now you're releasing 500, 250s, 500, maybe 1,000. But it kind of plays with those numbers a little bit when you go down in quantities. Some Apollo stuff. There's Baywatch, that's really the first one that I did. the mechanical layout of. Got to get crazy with wire ramps. I'm running all over the place here. Kind of a mousetrap type of thing, it's kind of fun. Baywatch was obviously huge back then. Castle House was like Elvis out in Austria, I think, at the time. Godzilla was a fun game. It was a game we tried to do at a less cost, and it didn't work out that way. It's not a lot on the game, except one big, gigantic, great plastic ramp. And if you guys ever seen it, that ramp, it goes back here all the way around. That's one piece that drops down. And that was done. The drawing for that that came off the AutoCAD, we had a QC guy that wanted a drawing. I said, I don't think you want this drawing. And he said, no, I need a drawing. So we printed it out. It was 36 inches wide by, I think, 10 feet because of all the different views to make this thing happen. He ended up pinning it up on the wall in his office and it stayed there for like a wallpaper. It was the biggest drawing that I remember printing back then. And it was just a matter of, you know, a big Godzilla head coming out with a hand crushing the building. There wasn't a lot going on there, but it turned out to be a pretty good shooting game. Hyrule Casino was one that another designer had left and I took it over and kind of relayed it out in some areas to kind of fit what we were doing at the time. Hobbit was when I was over at Jersey Jet because I spent a couple years at Jersey Jet. I actually did Wizard of Oz as the first game and then I did the layout for Hobbit. The game was pretty close to production at the time, but when I left, there was a couple of changes done to the play field and it is what it is today. But mostly the layout stayed the same. There's just some shots of, there's the white wood even before SMOB was put in. We had different ideas for SMOB when I was there that kind of changed into what it is today. There's a shot of the play field printed. Some earlier artwork. This is just kind of overlaying what was going on with the artwork at the time. There we are shooting the white wood wondering how the shot's going to work or whatever had in my mind at that point. What happened was a fun game to do. You can see that's really early Whitewood right there. A couple shots of how the artwork evolved. This was a game I did over at Sega, which was Davey, Sega, Stern, same company, different name. This was just a one-off of a golf game, basically in a redemption cabinet. Didn't go anywhere, but had fun to do. This is the last game I laid out at Stern with Citizens Pinball Party. When I left, it was probably 90-95%. There's a couple things that changed from the original, not where it was, but the mech that went in there. Super fun game to do. Working with Keith P. Johnson on that. I mean, you guys know how deep and crazy those rules are in that game. So it kind of put Keith on the map in a big way on what he did with the rule set. That's the original one, Simpsons. Which is kind of a wild thing. When I started there, Simpsons was on the line. And when I left there, Simpsons was ready to go at the second one, the pinball party. You seem to be sitting here for months of Sundays. South Park. Fun, fun game to do. Got to meet the guys that do this out in New York. It was really fun to meet them. South Park, back in that day, was a simpler game, simpler rules, but a good shooter and a lot of fun. a funny game in a way. In fact, I have a South Park and Apollo 13 and a Space Jam. It's the only three I have left after two divorces. We all kind of know what that means. That's a good thing. But it's kind of a first game out there and it probably never happened again where you got a toilet and a piece of poop on the game. It's kind of a... We looked at that. We actually made brown inserts. That was the supplier was like you want what? just a brown insert translucent brown is that a color you have? and he pulled it off space jam blast to do that game the shot up here is jumps and grabs on a magnet and slams it so it's got a nice feel to it as far as making baskets if you guys have played it before kind of a fun shooter. I did all the maps on that game, that's one of the games that I was able to, you know, under time frames I did all the maps and shots and everything on that game. Got to meet Michael Jordan, crazy. Went to one of his charities and met Patrick Ewing, who is a a oak tree. Gigantic man with gigantic hands. I think his hand's covered half of my arm when I shook his hand. He's a big man. Starship Troopers. A couple people really enjoy this that come to me and say, man, it's like my favorite game. I've really had, we really had a lot of fun putting this one together. There's one on the floor out there that plays pretty good. Striker Extreme, that was a game that had a different title and got changed to a soccer game when Gary said we need a soccer game. And then it got kind of cut short. It didn't really do that well as the soccer game or the sales overseas weren't as high as we expected. And then we went off and made a couple different versions of it and turned it into, you know, US football type of thing. We did specials for the Bears, Broncos, 49ers, wherever markets wanted some, we individualized that for distribution. Star Wars Trilogy, another real fun game to do. I think that year is when I did Star Wars Trilogy and it might have been Starship Troopers or Space Jam, something, two games that year, back to back, which took a lot of time, a lot of work to get that done. We changed the head back then. We went to the curve head. You'll see a couple of them out on the floor. Wizard of Oz. Loved doing it. Loved having the wide body format to work with. Fun, fun game to do. Really one of my favorite layouts. It's got a lot going on. Three playfields, 7-9 yards. We pulled all the stops on that one. Not just put in the 27-inch monitor, RGB LED lighting, but gave it three playfields. It was a monster. And for a first one out of the box for a new company, that was a big build to get right. And let's see what else we got. That's pretty much it. I just had a few of them up here. That was it. So that's that. Okay. Yeah, we only got 15 minutes left, so we'll take it from here. We don't need to show much more. Anybody got any questions? Anything you kind of want to talk about? Something you've seen out there? Something you just want to get off your chest right now? It's kind of open for questions. Yes. No, it was a, there was nothing, the design came from the name. So that's the best way to design, is to have a theme and then design that game around that theme. You could take it, you know, I have a couple of layouts that you could probably plug a theme into. But this one was, we tried to keep a ramp that was tooled and we ended up changing it anyway. But yeah, the layout was done specifically for this and specifically for a first game. We didn't want to do, you know, what I saw at J.J.P. with his startup with Wizard of Oz as being such a big game. big game, it's that much harder to get it right and get it built. So we tried to not necessarily dumb it down, but make a game that had enough going on, but it wasn't a killer when it went to manufacturing. And you can see because we did the turnaround, got to Texas, and then we shipped. And at Texas, I said we'd be shipping by the end 2017 and we did we actually shipped three games on December 30th so we didn't BS anybody and say well maybe it's in another three months or maybe so we did start shipping and then we you know started shipping full-time a couple months after that as we got the line running so far. I think a lot of people picked up on what we were doing for Gate 2 because it's a non-licensed thing. And what happens is, and I'm probably going to open it again, I'm not sure everybody here, or you probably all know this, as far as the trademark goes, that's open, that's public domain. So if you do a licensed product, that remains between you and the licensor until you want to say something or you want to announce it. One thing that we didn't think of or just because we were in such a frantic mode to get things done, when you trademark everybody knows it. So you know the Houdini trademark, they knew, everybody knew, or could know, that that's the next game we were doing. So the trademark, when we trademarked our game two, which for people here that don't know, we're doing an Oktoberfest game. So when that got out early on, we kind of understood that we've got to watch what we do as far as trademarks go. Maybe we need to wait a little bit or try to trademark three or four or five things at a time so we can get some confusion going on out there because it kind of let the cat out of the bag a lot sooner than I expected it to. But that's our game that we're working on moving forward. Hold on, I want to pull up one without revealing the world. Hold on. I'm not giving away the world here, but... Shoot, Jordan, come on! We're calling the game. It's Oktoberfest. Pitball on tap. One thing we want to do with the theme, we don't want to turn it into this crazy drinking game without any family ties to it at all. It's hard for some of us to convince the wife, maybe, whatever, to buy a game that's going to be all about drinking beer. and, you know, kind of partying and drinking beer or whatever. So there are aspects of this game that are definitely family-friendly too. We have modes in the game that will be, you know, kind of drinking modes and chugging modes, things like that. But it's not way out there that it's a complete adult-themed game. you know being Oktoberfest if you look into it and what it is it's a big family thing too so it's gigantic around the world and by adding Pitbull on tap to it we give it some legs to it doesn't have to be just in October that you have Oktoberfest it could be at any it's year round it's whatever it is it fits right in any of your collections the barcades, all of this should work well as far as we know or we hope. I'm going to switch to another picture real quick. So, I threw up a couple of pictures of the play field and as you can see here, we got a little bit of rampage going on, on the game. I think, I believe, the first time you see this game and shoot this game, I think it's going to be really well received. I've really got a lot going on. So we bumped up Houdini to, we know how to build Houdini, so now it's time to build something a little bit bigger and a little bit better. I'm not saying that Houdini's not good. I'm just saying that we need to bump each game if we can. And that's kind of our plan. So, you know, as you can see here, we got ramps going all over the place. And I'm not giving you anything to really say, oh, I can figure out what's going on there. But there's shots we've got. We've got shots that change into different shots. We have a wire form ramp that I don't think has never been done on a production pinball before. we've got a ramp on there that once you see it you're going to look at it and think I don't know if you can even shoot that and you can shoot it so it's got a lot of cool stuff going on that I think you guys will be happy with once you see it and like I said we're on the fast track to try to get a couple three whatever we can maybe more if we can to Expo in October So that's what we're planning to do on fail there. I'll pull up one more. One more. Oh, by the way, so while I'm doing this, this is Nirmal Vasani. He's going to be working on marketing and sales side. fresh out of school learned a lot about the industry I'm sure he's wanting to pick people's brains here and just get some ideas on how this industry works and he's in that mode so I'll give it over to Nirmal for a minute and I'll pull up another couple pictures that I'll pop up there well unfortunately we're running kind of tight on time so I'm sure a lot of you have seen kind of some of the prizes that I have laid out since we won't get a chance to do all that right now, what I will do is I'll be hanging around the machine. This machine will be out over there, close to the main entrance. And so I'll be kind of hanging around that machine, and I'll be talking to you guys. And so come over, talk to me. If you get a decent score, I'll give you one of the prizes of your choice. How does that sound? Otto is one of the main characters in the game. Funny fat guy that's going to make this game come together as far as characters go. So he's our guy. He's our Oktoberfest guy. and without Otto, this game doesn't happen. So, I'd love to show you guys a lot more, but I'm on the edge of even showing this just because. Like I said, a part of our company is if we say it, we're gonna do it. And I'm now saying it, so it is Oktoberfest. pinball on tap it's gonna happen with maybe some of that luck and some of that sprinkle stardust that happened to make this happen we're hoping to make that same thing happen you know one of the things that our smaller engineering group is that getting Houdini on the line and getting good game shift early on, I spent a couple of months out there. A couple guys in engineering, we were on every game. We signed off on every game before it went out. It paid off for us because the build quality, not saying that it was me building them, but I was making sure that how it was supposed to be built was what was going in the box. That kind of ate up time on developing game two. I'll put that right out there. And that was a decision that had to be made. I mean, you know, we had the better insight on what the game should be and how it should go. And we had to be there to do that. So that's probably why there was this, or definitely that is why there was this gap that said, in the back of my head, I had this little guy banging on my head saying, you got to get out of game two, you got to get out of game two. But we're trying to shift quality. And until we got the right people in and trained and could do what we did to sign off on games, now that's taken care of. We've got a guy at the end of the line that, you know, he knows everything there is inside and out about that game. And anything he sees is out of the ordinary or something's wrong, you know, he puts a stop to it and gets one of us. And, you know, we wreck the fight before it goes in the box. Nobody's pushing games out. and even to this day we're not just purposely pushing games out. We have to shift quality, and when we do have problems, we have to have a service that's going to take care of it. That's good. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. One thing that's been really nice is some guys had a conversation with a couple of guys, and they said, you know, I know the field service guy from this company, and I know the field service guy from this company, and I know this guy pretty good too from this company but I don't even know who your service guy is bam you know that's a big old fist bump thank you without saying you know without saying he's saying that he got himself a big game you know so that's a good thing for us so yeah I'm just going to put this back up there as we finish this thing off and I probably talked too much and too long we really never got into the game or playing but we'll be out in the booth all day you guys come on out definitely want to shoot a game with me or with any of us I can take some people out and do that and we've got some pretty cool things they cut up some playfields and framed them frame the cutouts, the pretty cool little things for your game rooms that I haven't seen out there. We've got a few t-shirts of our Slingshot girls at Houdini. So we've got those to give away. This one is extra cool. It's the whole Houdini logo from the play field. It's a little pretty. We'll have QC check that before we ship it. But, yeah, come over to the booth. Let's have a great day together. Shoot a DD. Get to know it. Hopefully you guys got one or are going to order one. Put it in your game room. I stand by the game. It's a really fun game to play. I know we hear a lot about tight shots, but I'll tell you what, the shots are makeable. and once you figure it out and you go out to a game that has bigger shots, you're going to be hitting those on day, you'll come back here and you'll be a wizard on this one. So it's nice to put a couple shots and challenge our players. I mean, that's in my head all the time. But on this game in particular, it's a game that starts multiball. It's a shot that starts multiball and you lock balls there. Backhand, if you guys shoot the game, remember you've got to backhand and backhand's pretty solid going to that shot. So I hope you all enjoy the game. I hope you all enjoy just kind of talking here. I know the questions were not that many, which is good. I guess I covered base as well. Come out and talk to us, and let's have some fun the rest of the show. And definitely thanks for coming out. That's the guy that does it right there, and Tommy, too. By the way, huge shout out to Tommy for supplying us with pizza. That was great. Yeah, so thank you guys so much. And I think they forgot also, there's a box. It's like this big. And it's full of American Pinball shirts. And it's just sitting near the booth there. So there's got to be 100 shirts in there. So definitely hang out with these guys. They're going to be giving them out all day. And please stick around. We've got Mike Kalinowski from Holton. He's coming up next. He's going to talk about Thunderbirds and a lot of other things. So, yeah, take a quick break and then come on back and let's have some fun. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. _(Acquisition: youtube_groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 3dcd9d77-fd68-4c60-abe6-58ca716353e8*