It's Dead Jim. Let's talk about it

Don's Pinball Podcast (patreon feed)·podcast_episode·21m 52s·held·Aug 19, 2025

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.027

TL;DR

Don reveals detailed Cuphead pinball gameplay after American Pinball collapse.

Summary

Don discusses the cancelled American Pinball pinball machine in detail after the company's collapse. He reveals gameplay mechanics, layout features, and his positive impressions from playing an ~85% complete prototype, while explaining why the game's future is now uncertain and calling on other manufacturers to acquire the project.

Key Claims

American Pinball has lost its trademark and does not exist anymore
high confidence · Don, describing recent company collapse; corroborated by KB entity context
Cuphead pinball prototype was approximately 85-90% complete with all art done by the original Cuphead studio
high confidence · Don describing the build he played and its completion state
The game features a pop-o-matic dice mechanism with loaded magnetic dice that can roll snake eyes on command
high confidence · Don detailing specific mechanics he observed during gameplay
Cuphead license holder required 100% completion before release, which Don believes is unreasonable
medium confidence · Don citing what he 'had been hearing' as of February
Don played the Cuphead prototype twice, once sneaking in Cary Hardy to show her the game
high confidence · Don describing personal gameplay experiences
1-Up Lounge-Up Lounge arcade bar in the Pacific Northwest said they would carry Cuphead day one
high confidence · Don relaying operator enthusiasm for the game
The game was supposed to launch at TPF (The Pinball Famine/Tournament) last year and has been delayed repeatedly
high confidence · Don describing launch timeline expectations
American Pinball contact who was recently stepped up to sales manager has gone silent
high confidence · Don describing communication breakdown last week
Cuphead is positioned as the 'third Cuphead game' canonical to the video game franchise
high confidence · Don describing how the Cuphead studio viewed the pinball machine
Don is actively reaching out to other manufacturers and considering acquiring the prototype himself

Notable Quotes

“It's been no secret over the last week... there's been a lot more news about non-reassuring about American Pinball as a company. And now it seems like the shoe has just dropped.”
Don @ 0:00-0:30 — Sets up the collapse as context for Cuphead cancellation
“so hell, let's talk about it... I've been wanting to talk about it like forever right... this game should have came out at tpf last year”
Don @ 0:45-1:30 — Explains why Don is now free to discuss the project and frustration with delays
“There were no animations done by American Pinball. There were no props and ice cream things and old power supplies rescued from dumpsters... This was all really professionally done and cut together.”
Don @ 3:15-4:00 — Contrasts Cuphead's professional art with American Pinball's typical DIY aesthetic
“1-Up Lounge-up lounge... they were saying we would have this game day one, no questions asked... If it was Cuphead, I would get it, just based on that alone.”
Don @ 12:45-13:30 — Demonstrates strong cross-industry appeal and operator enthusiasm
“There was no jank. There was no jank. All the shots felt really good. The millimeters were where they needed to be.”
Don @ 14:00-14:30 — High praise for build quality and precision of the prototype
“The layout, uh, the gameplay mechanics, those are done. Like this game's done. The art looks fantastic... everything should be just like, you know, just buttoned up in a nice little bow and a box, just ready for production.”
Don @ 17:15-18:00 — Emphasizes how close to release-ready the project actually is
“I don't know that it would have sold 5,000 games, but it would have sold 500 the first year, and then I think a couple hundred a year after that... you wouldn't have walked by it. You would have stopped and played it.”
Don @ 19:15-20:00 — Realistic market assessment but high confidence in game quality

Entities

Donperson American Pinballcompany Cupheadgame Cary HardypersonStudio MDHRcompany1-Up LoungevenueGalactic Tank Forcegame

Signals

?
product_concern: Cuphead pinball machine left unfinished and unlicensed after American Pinball's collapse; ~85-90% complete prototype with no clear path to production
high · Don's detailed description of company loss, trademark expiration, communication breakdown, and licensing limbo
?
business_signal: American Pinball lost its trademark, ceased operations, and company contact has gone silent; recent distress signals including above-tier pricing and emergency sales
high · Don's opening claims about trademark loss, surprise sales, and failed communication with sales manager
?
design_innovation: Cuphead features innovative mechanics including loaded magnetic dice in pop-o-matic, proportional vari-target that responds to shot strength, and figure-eight ribbon ramp; gambling meta-game with dice roll collection system
high · Don's detailed gameplay descriptions of dice mechanics, vari-target behavior, ribbon ramp design, and gambling collection system
?
licensing_signal: Cuphead license holder required 100% completion before release; license now in limbo with no manufacturer or agreement in place
medium · Don citing February conversation about license holder's 100% completion requirement; current status of license hanging after AP collapse
?
product_launch: Cuphead was scheduled to release at TPF last year; has been repeatedly delayed through multiple expo cycles; never reached market
high · Don's statement: 'this game should have came out at tpf last year uh this game should have came out at every expo since then'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.066

0:00

All right, I think it's safe to kind of come clean to you guys about some information regarding this Cuphead pinball machine. We're going to talk about it. Thank you for being a Patreon member. This is what it's about. Invite your friends. Let's make this an entire barbecue party. So it's been no secret over the last week, a week or so, even more, there's been a lot more news about non-reassuring about American Pinball as a company. And now it seems like the shoe has just dropped. Not only have they lost the trademark or non-renewed it for their company's name, for the assets of all of their games, surprise announcement of yet another summer holiday sale, selling the top-end edition, signature edition of Galactic Tank Force for $200 more than the deluxe edition, which is like two tier levels below. Like, things ain't good at that factory if, you know, at least by pinball standards. so I was brought in kind of early it feels like it's been a year ago it was like before the X-Men launch or some damn thing at Stern not prior to that, probably prior to that where they were like, Don, we're going to bring you in on our new game that we're working on, let you get some feedback on it play it early, do not tell anybody about this sign this contract and stuff you're under oath with American Pinball who now doesn't exist anymore so hell, let's talk about it Uh, things have not been looking good for this seminal release from our friends at formerly American pinball FAP. I guess we'll call them. Um, I was looking forward to the game because it was super fun. I was allowed to share my impressions, which is that I really liked what I had played. And I was there, uh, playing, uh, I got to play it two times. The second time I even snuck carry Hardy in the damn building. We went over there and played it. It was super fun. We were invited to play it before we left, but we just kinda, just kinda barged in there. so like i've played this game and i've been wanting to talk about it like forever right this game should have came out at tpf last year uh this game should have came out at every expo since then um we've been fed and stringed along different little bits of information the plan is still going on well earlier in the week last week i had checked in with my contact there uh you know kind of just got stepped up as the sales manager for the whole bit and uh yeah like haven't heard back anything, which is never a good sign. Never a good sign. When you're used to having a dialogue with somebody and then it's like, they just kind of ghost you. It's just not good. So let's talk about this damn game. Alright, and what could have been. Hopefully it sees the light of day from somebody. I'm messaging everybody I know that has a pinball factory and some room on the line to go and grab this game that is designed and essentially was just waiting for assets and should be good to go. Just go get this license, Let's make the games. Let's print some money. In a world where we're struggling to understand everything that's in Predator, prices are high, tariffs are whatever, this is a game that would be a solid modicum of a hit that people would enjoy and I think should be out there. All right, so let's talk about this game. Yeah, it is Cuphead. It's based on this game that came out, I guess, Xbox, PlayStation. They made a cartoon show about it. It's offbeat. It uses kind of like that pie-eyed graphics seen in early Disney cartoons and cartoons from like the 40s. So it's got that aesthetic. It's hand-drawn animation, or at least they may be using computers, but it looks like traditional hand-drawn animation captured with cell shading into a video game. And it's got fluid animations and it's hard as balls as far as a game. It's kind of like that type of video game that you got to sit there and just kind of play and die 30 times before you figure out all the patterns that can get through it, you know. But then when you do, very satisfying. So kind of a niche game. It's not as widespread as Mario Kart 9 or whatever they're up to now, but it was fun. And it probably wouldn't have been my choice for a pinball theme if I wanted to sell thousands and thousands of games. But when has American Pinball ever done that? It was definitely the best theme that I think they have gotten. So this game had an interesting layout and it had some good gameplay mechanics. Let's share some of those since you're here on Patreon. So the game was very yellow, but all of the art and all the assets were done by the studio that does Cuphead. So there was no animations done by American Pinball. There were no props and ice cream things and old power supplies rescued from dumpsters and cobbled together to make sci-fi stuff. There were no designers put into space suits and filmed in the studio. This was all really professionally done and cut together. The build that I had played only had a few of the boss scene animations. For those that don't understand, the game is mainly boss battles, these really elaborate, very animated ones. They'll have short stages here and there, but it's mainly battle the bosses, and that's kind of like how the game's modes were structured. So the layout was very much in that 1940s aesthetic. It essentially was a fan layout with a right upper play field and a little left upper mechanism that was pretty cool. This was an original theme. Uh, Cuphead has had Cuphead one Cuphead two. This was seen by the creators of the game as Cuphead three, like the third version of the game. And it was going to be a pinball game, but it was Canon as the third Cuphead game. So there were original assets and things being put in this a lot of love from the people So the layout wise um there were uh mainly plastic ramps on the left and right with multiple areas to kind of access that area a lot of ball paths that kind of spread out when i say fan layout it's really a fan layout in the sense that um from the lower left all the way back straight back to the upper right to the lower right there were shots all along there that you could make uh shots with some were just small little ball paths that would turn around. Other ones would lead up, you know, to the main ramps. There were a couple of entrances, a couple of exits to every little area, but it was like nice care and detail played with everything in there. So it wasn't like an overly ambitious design that would be difficult to pull off. It was something relatively safe, but by far better than something like Berrio's Barbecue Challenge. Easily twice as many shots, and they were three times as interesting. Okay, Like this was a fun game to play. Ball paths, you know, main shots. I want to say there was probably about eight or so. And the ramps were all plastic. The ramps are plastic and there weren't wire forms. I don't believe, I'm thinking of a lot of plastic. I wasn't allowed to take pictures. And it's been like a year since I've seen this thing. There may have been a wire form or two, but essentially what I remember was nice, smooth shooting plastics. Just like Stranger Things or Elvira, right? That's like how it felt to play this. so there were mode starts, there were fun little mechanisms I'll just tell you what I know about it on the lower right area there was a one of those hammer and bell carnival type games, you know you would hit the thing and cause a little mechanism to go off and that would play animations on the screen which was what I was told we were going to be seeing I'm going off a memory so if the game actually comes out and some of this isn't 100% accurate that's what I remember, so that was cool there was just like a little plastic bell or something, but they were telling me that they were going to implement something sculpted or a toy at some point. On the left side, you could access this long return ramp that was on the upper left. It was plastic. It was fun and satisfying to hit. It seemed like there were a couple of ways to access it. Like I think there was one on the upper right that could drain over there. And then there was a diverter involved, I think with an up-down ramp where you could either shoot into an orbit or get the ball to go up into that ramp. And it was kind of fun, that interplay between it. The right upper play field had an extra flipper on it. And it was fun. There were a couple of shots up there, like a repeatable loop type shot, and then another shot to kind of kick off into a wire form or some such. The main, like, well, okay, there was one more ramp right straight through the back. This was fun. This was almost like a ribbon type ramp, something similar to the boats on fishtails, how you could shoot up one side and it would come down the other. Only this made like a full figure eight. It was a figure eight that was open on the bottom. So it was essentially like a ribbon, like an AIDS ribbon or a breast cancer ribbon kind of shot. So if you shot it hard enough, it would go around this entire loop and then come back satisfyingly. I believe there was a magnet up there in the back, so that could be activated where you could shoot up the ball, be grabbed, and then dropped into a little slot, which was fun. Or a weaker shot could go up one side and down the other, right? It was interesting and it was fun to shoot because every time you shot up there and it went through the little thing, you were like, yay. That was a cool little ball path that we just saw. There was a very target in this game that was in the dead center at the back of the play field and it was a powered very target. I think they called it like the very angry target or something like that. But essentially you would hit this target and depending on the strength that you hit it, that is the strength that it kicked back at you. So that was fun. So a weak little shot would kind of knock your ball back down to you if it happened to just kind of roll up and make contact with it if you fired directly up there it was coming rocketing right back at you and i think they had a little angry face on that they called it like the the very angry target something like that they had a cute name for it and it was just fun to see that you know old school pinball implement uh put it in a way that i haven't seen really uh with that type of thing so a very target that throws the ball back at you uh proportional to the strength that you hit it that was super fun um all right now Gameplay mechanic-wise, I'll tell you about the story because that leads into the mechanic. So if you've played Cuphead, there's essentially these two little characters. They make a deal with the devil. They lose. The devil gets their souls, and they're trying to bargain to get it back by going through these stages. And so the devil says, essentially, if you can go out and defeat these bosses and bring me their soul contracts, if you do enough of those, eventually you can win your souls back. And the devil's like this big kind of hairy monkey-looking kind of creature. He has an underling that is this guy that owns a casino or runs the casino, and I think the devil's involved or something. But it's essentially a guy in almost like a purple zoot suit with a giant die for a head, like dice, you know? And he's got the snake eyes kind of deal going on. Super cool, like Cab Calloway type character. And he seems to be the main antagonist for the game. You're playing as the Cuphead guys. I think you pick Cuphead or Mug Boy or whatever. and then you're battling against the dice guy. I forget what his name is. I'll look it up.

14:25

This was kind of like after Galactic Tank Force kind of came and went and Burial's Barbecue Challenge was sitting there not doing much and they were on the 10th run of Hot Wheels. This seemed like the first game from American Pinball 2.0. right? Like really just kind of, okay, this company, this design studio really does have the ability here to put something out. And it was fun to play. It was fun to play. I got to play it for, I don't know, 40 minutes or so. You know, I played some games through there, played with David, played with the designer as well. You know, it was good, you know, and they were taking me through the game and what they had planned on it. And, you know, a lot of the boss battle animations were placeholders. So they just played like the same two back and forth. But when fleshed out, you would have had all this cast of characters that were created in the Cuphead universe for the third Cuphead game. And it was going to be a pinball machine. And like, this would have been the game that people that were interested in the video game could have seen like, Oh, I think I'll seek that out just so I can, I'm a Cuphead fan. I would like to play the third game and it's on a pinball machine. Where can I go play it? Um, the one-up lounge that a lot of my games end up going to once I make them over, uh, they're a retro arcade and pinball gaming bar in the Pacific Northwest. And just on the rumor of Cuphead, they were saying we would have this game day one, no questions asked. Like these are guys that love role-playing, love video games, love dice games, tabletop gaming. And so to have a pinball machine, which they also love, have a major video game theme with like some gambling and gameplay and tabletop elements into it. It was like a win three different ways for them. And, and it was like, but guys, you know, it is, there's American pinball. It's making it, you know, some of their games have been a little bit, you know, not, not tearing up the charts, you know? And they said, you know, I don't care what company would bring this game out. If it was Cuphead, I would get it, just based on that alone. So I think the theme had some strong kind of cross appeal not just within pinball but within like gaming in general So I was really I been a proponent of this game the whole time This was of of everything it out like what I would look forward to purchasing from American pinball, like at release, like here's a deposit, let's get one of these. This looks really fun, right? I talked to him before in the past about seeing if I could get my hands on a galactic tank force to play in stream or a burials barbecue challenge. I could play in stream and take around to different arcades and do pop-up events and things. Cuphead is absolutely one I would have jumped on that with because it was a fun game. The layout felt good. There was no jank. All the shots felt really good. The millimeters were where they needed to be. So the orbits felt good. The 180 ramp or the... I don't know what they called it. I called it the breast cancer ribbon ramp or something. I'm sure they would have came up with a better name for it. But it was just fun to have a game with a very target that wasn't just kind of there to be hit and then reset. It would fight back with you. It had some personality. I think it had some googly eyes on it or something. It had an upper play field that really followed in the mold of what we've seen with like Foo Fighters and Jaws, where, you know, it's an upper play field that you don't mind being up. You're not up there all day. It's like the gameplay just continues. You're just up there. And then when it's over, you wish you had a little bit more time up there and you want to get back up. It felt like that, man. It was like a cool, fully featured game that seemed to hit on everything it needed to do. you know i don't know that this would have been game of the year you know this wouldn't have unseated you know the top releases from you know spooky stern or jjp but this would have been the game that like yeah in addition to my three sterns my two spookies and my jjp i want this game in my game room right um so ah this sucks this news that we just got um which really i doesn't surprise me and i was hoping against hope that this wouldn't have happened um but you know and i tried to keep this as under wraps as I could. I mean, the rumor has been out there, so, you know, I'm free to speak about the rumor. I'm free to speak my, uh, my impressions of the game. Uh, but the game details was like the last thing I just could not wait to talk about. And with the loss of the company, uh, doesn't exist anymore. The trademarks are gone. Uh, the people I signed the contract with are gone. Um, you know, nobody's communicating and the license is just sitting there hanging like this really sucks. This really sucks because this game, like the, the, the layout, uh, the gameplay mechanics, those are done. Like this game's done. The art looks fantastic. And the art was all done by the original art studio that holds the license for this. So it's not like you need to wait for this license, uh, to approve the art. It's not like you have to wait for animations to get approved. It's not like you have to go and hire an animation studio to come up with these animations, then submit them, wait for feedback. Like it was all done by the design studio. So everything should be just like, you know, just buttoned up in a nice little bow and a box, just ready for production. And what I had been hearing up until like February last, last time I heard something from these guys, um, was that, uh, the, the license holder of Cuphead, uh, did not want the game coming out until it was like a hundred percent complete, which is not reasonable, I don't think. I think 80% is perfectly fine. Get the game out, get some feedback, fine-tune things, fix some bugs, and then boom, you got a 1.0 game that's just stellar and could have been made for years, man. And I don't know that it would have sold 5,000 games, but it would have sold 500 the first year, and then I think a couple hundred a year after that, and really, it would have been a game that was fun to play and interesting, and you wouldn't have walked by it. You would have stopped and played it. So I don't know what's going to happen with this license, but I'm actively reaching out now. Everybody I know that's got pinball production and, you know, can make decent games. I'm talking to them like, you know, if this exists, go get it. I'm about to, you know, I'm about to start knocking on doors and seeing if I can get my hands on this prototype. Like, can I just buy the prototype that I played, that Carrie and I have played? Like, we'll finish it. You know, we'll finish it. It'll be a one-on-one. We'll take it round of shows. We'll try to make it so that everybody can get a chance to get their hands on it. I'll bring it to expos. I'll take it on the road with me.