Having revealed the production version of their Houdini game in March 2018, American Pinball wasted little time before unveiling the company’s second title in October of the same year. Game Designer, Joe Balcer, had announced the title of game two at the Vancouver Flip-Out Pinball Expo earlier in the year during his seminar. The first seminar in the theatre Oktoberfest: Pinball on Tap will be the name of American Pinball’s second title Pinball News was privileged to see Oktoberfest: Pinball on Tap at the American Pinball factory during our tour just before the Pinball Expo 2018 show where the game was going to be officially unveiled. The American Pinball building Oktoberfest cabinets alongside Houdini games in the factory The game was presented to the public soon after during the American Pinball seminar at Pinball Expo. Nirmal Vasani welcomes guests to the American Pinball seminar Members of the American Pinball team unveil the game One of two Oktoberfest games at the seminar Oktoberfest was then available for seminar guests to play before heading to the Vendor Hall for everyone to enjoy. One of the two Oktoberfest machines in the Vendor Hall As with Houdini, several changes were made to the game between it’s unveiling and the start of production. The Oktoberfest backglass For one, the cabinet and backglass artwork was revised, making the game’s name clearer and removing an over-familiar monkey from the backglass. There were changes on the playfield too. The Oktoberfest playfield The barrel’s tap on the left was re-designed to make it more aesthetically-pleasing, along with several other playfield tweaks. The playfield features on Oktoberfest The front of the flyer Since then the game has been a staple at most major pinball shows, with production machines starting to ship in April 2019 and game manufacturing continuing through the rest of the year. Playfield detail from Oktoberfest: Pinball on Tap Playfield detail from Oktoberfest As with Houdini, there have been several software updates to Oktoberfest. The most recent at the time of writing (V19.7.27) added a mini-wizard mode, additional voice calls, attract sounds and music, plus numerous adjustments to the game’s rules and scoring. You can read more about Oktoberfest at the American Pinball website.
