Heighway Pinball

Heighway Pinball was founded in 2012 by Andrew Heighway in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, as the first company based in the United Kingdom to design and manufacture pinball machines. Production later moved to a larger facility in Ebbw Vale. Before releasing a game of its own, the company built a run of 250 custom Bacardi-branded Baffle Ball machines, a promotional job that helped get the young factory off the ground.

Heighway's first original title, Full Throttle, arrived in 2015 under lead designer Dave Sanders. It was built as the first production pinball machine with an LCD screen embedded directly into the playfield, alongside a second screen in the backbox. The company followed it with its first licensed game, Alien, based on the Alien film franchise, which began shipping in February 2017; around 185 units were produced.

Alien's difficult production run strained Heighway Pinball's finances, and in June 2017 a group of outside investors bought out founder Andrew Heighway's stake and took over the company's leadership. The change did not turn the business around: Heighway Pinball stopped trading in April 2018 and went into liquidation owing creditors close to £2 million. Pinball Brothers, formed by some of the same investors, later acquired the rights to Alien and resumed its production.