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New Heighway Owner

People wondered why I was never a distributor... oh I wonder. Anyone that had ever dealt with Andrew knew what he was like, Mr Bull****. I remember when he couldn't pay a parts bill of about £100 that I sent him (years ago). He had about 50p to his name and the rest was hot air.

Doing the vat fraud with electrocoin years before HP... the tales are endless and you guys are surprised?
 
DRD said:
Shop floor guys who have never made Pinball machines before

Working for a manager who had never made Pinball machines before

Working for owners who had never made Pinball machines before

Operating out of a factory that had never made Pinball machines before

In a country that had never made Pinball machines before

Without the backing of an extremely wealthy patron willing to burn money to fund his dream

Who could have predicted the business' demise ?

Buying an Alien is a huge risk. It is not analogous to Big Bang Bar. Capcom knew how to make games that actually worked. These Heighwaymen lacked that pedigree .
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That's a bit harsh imo, but mostly I agree.

I haven't had much experience of Allen, but I played on one of Tobin's for a bit. With the exception of the ball launcher being about 90% reliable, it worked fine. That's not to say it wouldn't have broken the day after, or whatever.

That said, there are a fair few proprietary boards, and no schematics, parts list or even a manual. If you bought one you'd have to make peace with it potentially being an expensive door stop.

Worlds apart from 25+ year old machines that are still running like new (or better than new) today.
 
philpalmer said:
People wondered why I was never a distributor... oh I wonder. Anyone that had ever dealt with Andrew knew what he was like, Mr Bull****. I remember when he couldn't pay a parts bill of about £100 that I sent him (years ago). He had about 50p to his name and the rest was hot air.

Doing the vat fraud with electrocoin years before HP... the tales are endless and you guys are surprised?
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Geez... he was even worse than what I thought, and I had really low expectations.
 
mark9 said:
This was Andrew’s last post on pinside, several months after the new investors came in. There are gaps where he quotes another pinsider:

4. I purchased a license to run a hydrofoil business? Rubbish. I spent £40 on forming a company that was never used. Again you allege I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on this so please provide the evidence

Andrew
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i.imgur.com_jUZdTUS.jpg
 
https://www.pinballnews.com/site/2018/04/26/heighway-pinball-faces-liquidation/

Welllllllll ................. just when you think it's game over man .........the plot thickens . There seem to be mutterings over on Pinside now about the Pinball Brothers possibly having kept the license ?, intending to continue making Alien plus others ????

Who knows !?! You couldn't make this sh*t up :rofl:

I guess until some 'official' announcement is forthcoming.

Gonna need a lot more popcorn on this one over the coming weeks I think.
 
Even if they did still own the licence I really can't see them incurring the costs of supplying machines to the people who had originally paid - what's realistically in it for them? With that being the situation who the hell would want to buy one now?
 
johnwhitfield said:
Even if they did still own the licence I really can't see them incurring the costs of supplying machines to the people who had originally paid - what's realistically in it for them? With that being the situation who the hell would want to buy one now?
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This.

Also what possible motive would they have for making customers whole, particularly ones they never saw any money from because it went on Andrew's boat (allegedly), when they were only just recently emailing people to tell them about "customer canceled green trim LE that could be yours if you just pay us all the money now!"..?

People thinking that this revelation is somehow light at the end of the tunnel for them are just setting themselves up for more heartache.
 
The punters who buy from HLD will probably have no idea of any of the history behind Alien pinball, just another new machine to them, not all pinball owners read forums.
 
mark9 said:
The punters who buy from HLD will probably have no idea of any of the history behind Alien pinball, just another new machine to them, not all pinball owners read forums.
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Surely someone like HLD would be honest about that sort of stuff, right.........?
 
Sgt GrizZ said:
https://www.pinballnews.com/site/2018/04/26/heighway-pinball-faces-liquidation/

Welllllllll ................. just when you think it's game over man .........the plot thickens . There seem to be mutterings over on Pinside now about the Pinball Brothers possibly having kept the license ?, intending to continue making Alien plus others ????

Who knows !?! You couldn't make this sh*t up :rofl:

I guess until some 'official' announcement is forthcoming.

Gonna need a lot more popcorn on this one over the coming weeks I think.
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Why the hell would they carry on with it do they want to loose lots more money

Andrew Highwayman failed and left last year
The investors take over and tell us they are going to turn it around and fail
So why carrying on with this change anything they have absolutely no chance I suspect supplies are out of pocket so they are not want to doing the same again distributes out of pocket are they going to come back for more I don’t think so and customer s no the whole Highwayman concept was floored from day one 1st game never got produced 2nd game sold about 20 before alien came along all games have been plagued with problems from day one the whole system need s scraping and re designing and I would suspect you would need 3-5 million to do this
 
can't imagine any fool would give them any money if they tried to continue. I hope some who is owed money talks to Fox.
 
The way most failing businesses will act when facing impending doom is siphon off all the good stuff pretending everything is A ok, collapse the doomed company and then spring up again under a different name.

A sad fact of life.
 
Nothing any good to take from highway Pinball and Pinball is such a small community if an alien pops back up then who would buy it anyway as I said before that game and Highwayman concept needs a whole re design just to make it fit for purpose and I doubt any other Pinball company would be remotely interested in any of hp licences board designs or software both other pinball companies that went pop are now dead and buried
 
Big Phil said:
The way most failing businesses will act when facing impending doom is siphon off all the good stuff pretending everything is A ok, collapse the doomed company and then spring up again under a different name.

A sad fact of life.
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It’s not like you can just move to another place and start up again doing the same thing with Pinball
 
chris b said:
It’s not like you can just move to another place and start up again doing the same thing with Pinball
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Yet it is starting to sound exactly like that!!

Just to add to the fire, and met with considerable distain in the 20 mins it’s been up, Andrew H has posted the following....

Statement From Andrew Heighway

I am truly sorry to hear about the turn of events announced today.

In June 2017 I sold my controlling stake in Heighway Pinball Limited – including its commitments and liabilities - to a group of investors who claimed to want to put significant funds into the company, achieve mass production and deliver part-paid and fully-paid games to customers, as well as new machine sales.

Throughout the five years that I ran the company, we developed and sold games up until the time of my departure. This was never a ponzi scheme, as some have suggested. A mix of technical problems, supplier quality problems and unrealistic timeframes resulted in delays that financially crippled the company. We were all committed to delivering games to all paying customers. I personally apologise for the unrealistic timeframes.

There have been suggestions that I stole or diverted company funds for my own ventures. These are very serious accusations and never once have I been interviewed by the police for any alleged wrongdoings. The company’s accountants have never suggested any wrongdoings by me. It can be proven that the company owed me significant monies and not the other way round. I would therefore advise people to refrain from making any libellous or slanderous statements about me – as I will defend myself and my integrity.

I very much regret that the company’s owners have closed the company without honouring its commitments to all paying customers and I wish everyone the best in pursuing their claims against the investors or via the insolvency practitioners.

This situation has appalled me and I am extremely sorry for the anguish that it will inevitably cause.

Andrew Heighway
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I am probably one of the 'ex employes' being held under a non disclosure blah blah blah. I was in fact a contractor - I did not stay on as the 'package' I was offered was less than what I could earn a mile from my house sweeping pavements. Yes - really. When I was there - I was paid to give technical advice, that was ignored by the director. I gave suggestions that were better than his - as I came from an electornics/engineering/electrical background - was it taken? You have one guess.

Having had the 'Wayne' incident years ago - people seem to want to pay large payments for pinball machines that may never come.

My advice - give Phil Palmer a £1K deposit on the next game you want made by Stern
 
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EDIT: All sorted

EDIT2: Oh well, didn't notice that Neil had quoted me. Ho hum.
 
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Ewan_M said:
That's fair enough, but just remember that Dave is going through a tough time at the moment and he doesn't exactly want his private matters splashed all over the forums. He was massively taken advantage of by Andy and he feels quite embarrassed about it, so I think it would better if people found out when Dave himself felt the time was right.
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I can sympathise with that but I think Dave should know he did a great job on the design of these games and should have no other feeling than pride!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro
 
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