I was inundated with messages this morning saying that my company’s first game was being torn to shreds on this forum, and that I should come here and defend my company.
However, I am here today to offer some explanations, not to criticise people for their opinions.
We asked for feedback during, and after, the UK Pinball Party and the comments, on the whole, were very positive. A lot of people have play-tested the game and almost every one commented on how fast it was, how well the game flowed and how satisfying the shot layout of the game is.
I would like to point out that people were playing a prototype at the UK Pinball Party – which was little more than a flippable whitewood with art. Our rules are complete but our hardware is not and if neither are working together properly, then the game won’t play as a real pinball game should. Try playing ANY game without any proper rules and you can get bored very quickly.
Being a prototype, the lockdown bar was not smooth enough, the backbox lighting was too bright, the ramps were too smokey and we were getting ball bouncebacks from the ramp exits. Again, please understand – this was a prototype.
I could answer everyone’s criticisms individually, but I think many people have missed the point with what we are doing.
We are targeting operators first and foremost, and are the only manufacturer, mainstream or boutique, that is doing this. Therefore our target audience is not die-hard collectors who want to buy 16-year old remakes or who are buying one of a small run of games.
Our goal is to make pinball a mainstream activity again – so the majority of our customers will be operators. Our target market is people who have never played pinball before, or who have only played pinball on smart phone apps or consoles. This is why we decided to change a 30+ year old cabinet design and modernise it, and introduce new technologies to make the game of pinball more interesting for a new generation of players
Why did we choose ‘Full Throttle’ as our first game? Because we wanted a theme that would attract the widest possible target audience for our first game. That target audience is 15 to 50 year old males. What common interests do this target group like? Speed, adrenaline, glory, danger and women. We think we are delivering this with our first game. The feedback we have from operators is that this theme should do very well.
It is also worth noting that themes for games are very subjective – but if the game is fun and plays well, then the game can be a huge success. Take ‘Fish Tales’ for example – Mark Ritchie and his design team were laughed at for pursuing a fishing-themed game, yet it went on to sell more than 13,000 units – one of the best-selling games of the 1990’s!
It’s true that the most talked about feature of our first game is the artwork. We tried to get this right from the beginning – first hiring a Marvel Comics artist, and then pinball art design legend Doug Watson. Clearly, the artwork is still not loved by the majority but I would like to point out that the translite art is still not finished yet.
So I hope I have answered a lot of your points. We are building games predominantly for the operator’s market – but that doesn’t mean we won’t sell to collectors who want our games too. If anybody doesn’t like our first game then it is their choice whether or not to buy one or play one on location.
Please understand that we are building a game that will be very different to other products on the market. We are a new company and we have a lot of design challenges trying to implement new technologies and ideas into a pinball machine. We are building a system that allows games to be changed over into existing cabinets in less than 15 minutes, whilst bring new technology and mechanisms that are designed to be reliable and easy-to-service. Add to this many other new ideas and technologies, and you have a product that requires a lot of time, energy and money to develop.
We hope you will bear with us as we move closer to developing a finished product
Thanks for reading
Andy
See you at the Slam dude ....bring some FTs and maybe some lovely promo girls to hand out flyers and sh*t yeah 
