Heighway Pinball Wasn't Supposed to Fail | The Lost Pins

Heighway Pinball wasn’t supposed to fail. They built real machines, shipped real games, and landed one of the most ambitious licenses in modern pinball — Alien. In this episode of The Lost Pins, we break down the full rise and fall of Heighway Pinball: from the early Bacardi Cuba Libre project and their first game Full Throttle, to the development of Alien, the loss of their lead designer, the removal of founder Andrew Heighway, and the company’s eventual collapse in 2018. This isn’t a story about fraud or vaporware. This is what happens when a real company tries to scale too fast — and can’t survive the weight of its own ambition. We also explore how Alien survived after Heighway’s collapse, and how Pinball Brothers rebuilt the game into a stable, modern release. The Lost Pins is a documentary series about unreleased, canceled, and controversial pinball machines — and the companies behind them.