Melvin Williams Joins American Pinball as Creative Director

Time is a flat circle.

Melvin Williams — formerly of Dutch Pinball Exclusive and the designer behind Alice's Adventures in Wonderland — has been named Creative Director of American Pinball. The announcement came today from AP's new owner, J. Bryan Vincent, who said Melvin would be "leading the design team and creative vision of American Pinball going forward."

This comes just over a week after DPX ceased operations and Melvin split from Dutch Pinball following a dispute over the company's direction with new investors. At the time, he made it clear he was looking for a U.S.-based manufacturer to continue his projects. That didn't take long.

What This Means

Melvin owns the IP for the old John Popadiuk designs he purchased from the wreckage of deeproot Pinball — including RAZA (Retro Atomic Zombie Adventureland), Magic Girl, and Space Mission X (a lesser-known Zidware title that only reached prototype stage). RAZA was reportedly near completion when DPX folded, and it comes with him. There's been no official confirmation that the Popadiuk titles are part of AP's plan — but Melvin owns them, he's now their creative director, and the game was nearly done. It's not a huge leap. Whether RAZA ships under the American Pinball brand or as something separate remains to be seen, but AP's facility in Palatine, Illinois gives the project a manufacturing home, assuming the new ownership can rebuild the operational capacity that's atrophied over the past year. As Pinball News pointed out, building RAZA stateside also sidesteps the import tariff issues a Dutch-manufactured run would have faced.