I want a real Pinball Machine

[Richard B]

One thing that will cut down on maintenance expenses is staying away from machines with motorized toys and easily breakable play field objects. There's a reason why TOTAN mentioned the lack of motors in it's flyer.

 

[Richard B]

I married the right girl 24 years ago. She loves pinball as much as I do! I'm sure we'll get a table or three once our daughter finishes college...and we finish paying for it!

Those who love pinball and are not married yet - do what this guy did and find a wife that also loves pinball.

 

[LeeChicago Gilbert]

Yeah there's crap loads of hot young chicks into pinball

 

[Richard B]

Yeah there's crap loads of hot young chicks into pinball

Don't need crap loads - just one will do.

 

[Bahnzo]

I had a Jurassic Park for a while. My advice is keep an eye on Craigslist and if you aren't familiar with the game, get the VP version of it to see if it would be something you'd like. I wasn't sure about the JP, but when I played it on VP, it was a no-brainer.

If you are reasonably handy, I don't think maintenance should be an issue. The JP I bought was a bit of a fixer-upper, but nothing more than replacing the rubbers and some solenoids. Making sure you have the games manual for part #'s is a good idea, and I think you can still find them as .pdf's on the internet. Once I had it running, on-going maintenance wasn't an issue. Some regular cleaning with some playfield wax kept it playing well and some of that canned/compressed air to clean out the underside once in a while and it was good to go.

Dang I miss that JP.

 

[CycOd3liC]

www.pinballowners.com is a good site to look for tables for sale/trade also.

 

[Fuseball]

I wouldn't worry too much about maintenance. Anything mechanical or part of the playfield is relatively easy to understand and there are a lot of after-market parts available these days. Circuit board repair is the biggest headache. I have a local operator repair mine if they go down. The internet is a fantastic resource for maintenance tips.

The only WMS games to avoid as a first pin are ones that are over-complex. ST:TNG can be a nightmare to fault find on, so great as it is I wouldn't recommend it as a first game.

The good thing about buying a real pin is that it holds its value. There will always be people willing to trade or temporarily swap games with you, should you become tired of the one you own. I used my CV and ToM in a swap deal for TOTAN and MM at one time. I could never have owned a MM any other way!

 

[Richard B]

Sadly, they hold their value too well. Ten years ago you could buy a TZ in good condition for under $1000. Now, the cheapest you'd find that same machine would be around $3500, and you'd be lucky to pay that. Prices are escalating so rapidly, that I suspect that within the next 2-5 years, pinball machines will only be affordable by the wealthy.

 

[Fungi]

I used my CV and ToM in a swap deal for TOTAN and MM at one time. I could never have owned a MM any other way!

CV? ToM? TOTAN? MM??? Is Farsight using you to choose their releases??? Happen to have a BoP lying around? Sheesh.

 

[Animator_pin_fan]

For my VPin, Im considering getting one of these shells as a kit:
http://virtuapin.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=7
Even though I've got access to a wood shop at work, the time that I would save is well worth the price of getting one partially assembled. And then I can spend more time tinkering on the electrics portion of the build. Even though I'm not a fan of cheesy LED flashing buttons on MAME cabinets, I find that adding flashers like those super bright cree LEDS on vpin tables is a real enhancement. It adds to the greatly adds to the experience. Especially when you couple it with flipper force feedback, vibration shakers, and a real DMD.

BTW, my wife loves pinball just as much as I do. And, she's usually the one who looks up all the cool places to find and play real pin tables out in the wild when we travel....

 

[Fuseball]

CV? ToM? TOTAN? MM??? Is Farsight using you to choose their releases??? Happen to have a BoP lying around? Sheesh.

Funny you should mention that... Many years ago I bought a wreck of a BoP and then a much better condition stripped playfield. Built a stunning perfectly working game out of them. It's now owned by my brother-in-law.

I never owned a Funhouse though. Rudy freaks my wife out!

 

[Richard B]

For my VPin, Im considering getting one of these shells as a kit:
http://virtuapin.net/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2&products_id=7
Even though I've got access to a wood shop at work, the time that I would save is well worth the price of getting one partially assembled. And then I can spend more time tinkering on the electrics portion of the build. Even though I'm not a fan of cheesy LED flashing buttons on MAME cabinets, I find that adding flashers like those super bright cree LEDS on vpin tables is a real enhancement. It adds to the greatly adds to the experience. Especially when you couple it with flipper force feedback, vibration shakers, and a real DMD.

BTW, my wife loves pinball just as much as I do. And, she's usually the one who looks up all the cool places to find and play real pin tables out in the wild when we travel....

Looks nice. I've never understood how those cabinets work. Do you put a regular desktop computer in there, or are there special hardware for it?

 

[Animator_pin_fan]

You should check out these build pages:
http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/showthread.php?4826-46-quot-30-quot-19-quot-widebody-cabinet
and this one eve has a deep playfield:
http://www.hyperspin-fe.com/forum/s...dy-(custom-artwork-bezel-less-deep-playfield)

 

[Richard B]

Interesting, except that one guy built one out of an old STTNG cabinet. Who in their right mind would let a STTNG fall into such disrepair?

 

[Fuseball]

I was given a water-damaged ST:TNG that was otherwise heading to the skip. The underside of the cabinet and rear of the back box are still quite bowed but everything else is repaired and working perfectly now. Took about a week of intensive work to fully fix it up.

I've seen pins fall into shocking disrepair when operators don't care about them anymore. So many have been scrapped or stripped for parts when they are almost always repairable.

 

[Richard B]

A nearby Chuck E. Cheese threw a Simpsons Pinball Party in the dumpster. It had a few issues, such as one of the flippers in the upper playfield not working, couch multiball not working properly, etc. They threw it away because their policy is to destroy machines rather than sell them, for fear the competition might get a hold of them.

 

[dtown8532]

A nearby Chuck E. Cheese threw a Simpsons Pinball Party in the dumpster. It had a few issues, such as one of the flippers in the upper playfield not working, couch multiball not working properly, etc. They threw it away because their policy is to destroy machines rather than sell them, for fear the competition might get a hold of them.

I would have loaded that one up.

 

[jrolson]

A nearby Chuck E. Cheese threw a Simpsons Pinball Party in the dumpster. It had a few issues, such as one of the flippers in the upper playfield not working, couch multiball not working properly, etc. They threw it away because their policy is to destroy machines rather than sell them, for fear the competition might get a hold of them.

So they throw a piece of history away just because they are to lazy to fix these problems? Idiots...

 

[Da Chosen]

If you buy a new pinball machine the chances are really great you don't have to maintenance this machine the next years to come. Offcourse you can be unlucky like me, I had to change a coil after owning the Transformers for about 2 months (shortcircuit in coil). You do have a year warranty.

At the moment i am owning thre machines: Lord of the Rings, Spiderman and Transformers Limited Edition. The first 2 are home used only and only had a couple of hundred games before i got them. the last one arrived to my house brand new in box around christmas 2011.

I owned a lot of games allready: Scared Stiff, Fishtales, White Water, Circus Voltaire, Monster Bash, Wheel of Fortune, Super Mario Bros, Frankenstein, Theatre of Magic, Flintstones etc. etc. Unfortunatly I only have space for three pins, otherwise I would have kept a lot more pinballs. The ones I miss the Most are CV and MB. Beautiful pinballs to see and a lot of nice gameplay and a lot of things going on in the game.

Hope to own a Attack from Mars, Medieval Madness and Sopranos some time and hope to get a CV and MB back one day

 

[Da Chosen]

A nearby Chuck E. Cheese threw a Simpsons Pinball Party in the dumpster. It had a few issues, such as one of the flippers in the upper playfield not working, couch multiball not working properly, etc. They threw it away because their policy is to destroy machines rather than sell them, for fear the competition might get a hold of them.

Oh man A simpsons pinball party throwing away.....? Who is that sick... That kind of problems are fixed within an hour....