Rob Rath, co-founder of topper manufacturer The Electric Playground, and TEP product engineer Nick Neitzel are joining American Pinball. Rath will serve as Product Director and Neitzel as Product Designer, working alongside Creative Director Melvin Williams on what they describe as "a slate of remakes and original titles."
The announcement, made jointly by AP and TEP on March 12, is the latest in a string of moves by AP under new owner Bryan Vincent. Since taking ownership, Vincent's AP has hired a Creative Director, secured licensing rights to seven classic Bally and Williams titles through a partnership with Planetary Pinball Supply, added a new member to its Board of Advisors, and now brought on two established names from the pinball aftermarket and homebrew world.
According to the announcement, Neitzel is already working on an upcoming AP game release.
The Roles
As Product Director, Rath will oversee planning, budgeting, marketing, and go-to-market strategy for AP's upcoming titles, plus game story and rules design. Beyond TEP, he co-hosts In Before the Lock, a mod-focused livestream with Davey Price of Stumblor Pinball (which will continue, with plans to make it more regular), and served on the TWIPY Awards committee for the 2024 awards — the same year TEP's Attack from Mars topper won Best Aftermarket Topper.
Neitzel joins as Product Designer. He first gained community recognition for Tony Hawk's Pro Pinball, a homebrew he debuted at TEP's Pinball Expo 2024 booth that won the TWIPY for Homebrew Game of the Year. Rath discovered him on social media in late 2023 and hired him as a full-time Product Engineer at TEP in January 2025. His engineering background extends beyond pinball — in a Kineticist interview last year, Rath said Neitzel's prior work was in "other even more complex industries."
TEP Isn't Going Anywhere
To my surprise, this isn't a straight acquisition. It's a hybrid arrangement that will see TEP continue independent operations out of St. Louis, Missouri, designing and manufacturing toppers for classic games, new industry releases, and — notably — upcoming AP releases. TEP becomes a key vendor for AP while Rath and Neitzel contribute to game development in Palatine.
Rath will continue to serve as General Manager for TEP alongside his new AP role. That's an unusual arrangement — not a clean acquihire, not a standard employment deal where Rob and Nick leave TEP behind. AP's Product Director is also the GM of an independent vendor that AP is contracting for topper work.
Most pinball manufacturers handle accessories and toppers in-house, though there's some precedent — DPX had similar arrangements in spirit with The Art of Pinball and Stumblor, who continued producing mods and accessories for non-DPX products while doing work for Dutch. The mechanics of how these relationships work in an industry this small remain a little fuzzy to me.
TEP's existing catalog also gets interesting under this arrangement. Some of TEP's licensed topper work has been through Planetary Pinball — the same company that now has a licensing deal with AP. Their Alice's Adventures in Wonderland topper expansion was a partnership with DPX, Melvin Williams' former company that no longer exists because AP hired Williams. Those threads were already converging before today's announcement.
TEP's unlicensed toppers for other manufacturers' games — the ones that operate in the aftermarket grey area — are a trickier fit. It's just a little strange to picture an AP-affiliated topper company continuing to make products for competitors' games — and those competitors being happy about it.
To handle the increased workload, TEP is nearly tripling its facility to 4,000 square feet and doubling its production lines from one to two. The new space will house an R&D lab for AP work. TEP co-founder Alec Gleason is stepping into a larger role as Creative & Brand Manager, and the company has promoted from within and added new hires, bringing its total headcount to 12.
The Bigger Picture at American Pinball
The hires land differently when you see what AP has been assembling under Vincent.
AP first named Melvin Williams as Creative Director. Williams came from Dutch Pinball Exclusive after DPX ceased operations, and he owns the intellectual property for several John Popadiuk designs — RAZA, Magic Girl, and Space Mission X — acquired from the deeproot Pinball bankruptcy. Williams was also involved with Pedretti Gaming's Funhouse 2.0 conversion kit — relevant experience for a company about to produce remakes.
AP then announced a long-term partnership with Planetary Pinball Supply to manufacture, sell, and distribute classic Williams and Bally pinball machines under license. The deal covers seven titles, with AP planning both traditional remakes and "reimagined" versions featuring updated mechanics, code, and audio/visual elements.
On March 10, AP added John F. Schwarz Jr. to its Board of Advisors as an Independent Director, a Houston-area pinball collector and businessman who will be at the Texas Pinball Festival later this month representing the company.
What's the First Game?
None of today's announcements address the obvious question: what is AP actually making? The TEP newsletter references "a slate of remakes and original titles" and notes that Neitzel is "already working on an upcoming game release," but no specific title has been confirmed.
Separately, community speculation has settled on Cirqus Voltaire, the beloved 1997 Bally classic, as AP's first release. That rumor predates today's announcement and is not sourced to AP or TEP. But CV would fit squarely within the Planetary Pinball licensing deal, which covers seven Bally and Williams titles. And TEP demoed a licensed Cirqus Voltaire topper featuring mechanical shooting cannons at Pinball Expo 2025 — a product that would pair naturally with a CV remake, if one materializes.
As of publication, AP has not announced its first title.
What to Watch
AP is building a team. The question now is timeline. TEP promises a first collaborative topper project with AP "later this year." Texas Pinball Festival later this month could provide the next public-facing update, with Schwarz and others from the AP team on the show floor
The people are in place. The licensing is in place. Now they have to ship — and ship consistently. I'm personally more excited to see what AP does with original titles than remakes, but leading with remakes makes business sense: easier to sell, lower risk, and a way to prove the operation works before taking bigger swings.
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