Interview with Dennis Nordman and David Fix, GNR Collector’s Editions on the Line, LZ Rules, K’NEX Pinball Machine

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Following last week’s announcement of Dennis Nordman joining American Pinball, the guys at The Super Awesome Pinball Show were joined by Dennis Nordman and David Fix! Here are just a few highlights:

David Fix: …[we want to] get this from one game every 18-20 months to 2-3 games a year.

On Dennis Nordman’s role as Senior Game Designer:

David Fix: Dennis’s role as Senior Game Designer is not that he is going to be the only one designing games. In the three weeks I’ve been there I’ve already brought on three junior game designers, who are already working on their first games. And in fact one of the first games that is coming to market will be one of our junior designers, probably in the next six months…when you see these people, you will know their names…

On Joe Balcer:

David Fix: Joe has a unique way of working with other people. And we didn’t really let Joe go, we maneuvered him into contract design. So Joe if he designs his game, he’s going to bring it to us, we’re going to pay him, we’re going to do everything we normally do with any other contract designer. But the day to day operations and being [at American Pinball] will fall to Dennis instead. And Dennis is going to mentor the younger guys in a format that we like better.

Dennis, on moving to different companies often:

Dennis Nordman: Every place I’ve been I would like to have grown roots. The reason I bounce around is that the people I have been with have not been able to produce a pinball game. So I was with deeproot for two years, I did three really awesome games for them, but I never had an engineer the entire time, I just couldn’t make any more progress, no mechanisms, no anything. I just got so frustrated, I wanted to go someplace where I could get a game done…so that is when I went to Chicago Gaming. But before I went to deeproot, I was with Multimorphic, and Gerry ran out of money to pay me. And of course we all know Heighway…I had good reasons for leaving Heighway…I remember at Expo he announced that I am designing the Alien game and that the game will be ready in the spring, and he’s taking deposits. And I knew the game would never be ready in the spring…

On what he’s working on at CGC:

Dennis Nordman: I’m working on a game with Chris [Franchi] with Chicago Gaming [Company]…

On the release schedule at American Pinball:

David Fix: Game 4 – technically the game we had that was G4 has kind of been put on hold. [Game 5] has been bumped up because it is ready… Dennis has come on board and he will start working on his own game, starting today, January 4th…in the weeks before January 4th, Dennis and I have already had a bunch of meetings talking about licensed and unlicensed games, different things we can do…

On his goals for 2021:

Dennis Nordman: The one goal for me, in 2021, it is a high goal, and I’m shooting for it is to have two games come out this year…

They also talk about American Pinball’s new facility, Dennis talks about working on models and foam core models and building whitewoods, shares that it takes (Dennis) about 2 months to create a whitewood, talks about trying to get the “full” license on licenses, talks about the importance of theme, they talk about Hot Wheels, talk about the marketing plans and challenges with COVID with Hot Wheels, talk about Elvira HOH with Stern, talk about Josh Kugler being their main code guy still, bringing in “key” people into American Pinball, talks about continuing building Houdini, Oktoberfest, and Hot Wheels, and much more!!

Listen to the full episode here!!

Jersey Jack Pinball shared last week that Collector’s Editions were on the production line – check it out!!

Last week Stern Pinball released a code update for Stranger Things, and also released the official rules for Led Zeppelin – check it out!!

A monthly recap of everything that happened in December in the pinball world, with your host, Kacee – check it out!!

A super cool moment happened last week when a Hot Wheels collector was surprised with a Hot Wheels pinball machine – check it out!!

Not sure exactly what this is, but it involves a sledgehammer to a playfield. Here is the description of the YouTube video:

Welcome. Here we are showing that our Digital Printed Playfields have Balls. In this video we show that it is possible to digital print playfields without pooling, cracking and chipping. We were ask to produce Alien playfields for the Pinball Brothers, they didnt want to go cheap, they wanted quality playfields. In this video we tried extremly to achive pooling, chipping and cracking. The only thing we could distroy is our solid work bench. Enjoy the video.

It is arriving – check it out!!

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