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Pinball Wizards on the Internet
cecil36 writes "Pinball wizards are now turning to the Internet for their needed support. With WMS Industries (Williams/Bally) no longer in existence,
owners of Williams/Bally pinball games are turning to online communities (such as the news group rec.games.pinball) to find sources for parts to maintain their games. It could use a little more detail, as the article failed to mention Stern Pinball. Lots of useful links contained within if you are looking for those few parts to fix your games." I need to order new
Rubber for my Jack Bot sometime too.
Hope I can turn some people on to pinball via Virtual Pinball and PinMAME. Most of your favorite games are available. It really has come a LONG way.
Cheers!
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I can recommend Steve Young's The Pinball Resource very much.
They bought a bunch of spare inventory when Gottlieb went out of business, although you can get parts, manuals, and kits for all other kinds of brands too.
I was surprised and relieved they had in stock a miniature cue stick for the Cue Ball Wizard pinball my wife got me for Christmas last year. I didn't figure I would be able to find a specialized part like that easily. Cheap, too.
Anyway, highly recommended. Good prices, quick turnaround and easy to deal with.
TILT!
www.nycpinball.org
Or simply email me.
I actually maintain a pinball machine at a local bar to ensure that our company has decent pinball at local bar-- a rarity. The machine is Creature from the Black Lagoon @ The Village Idiot, 9th Ave and 14th Street in Manhattan.
Our company-- CodeFab-- has 7 pinball machines in house. Four currently working, three in restoration mode.
Among the employees we have a bunch more. Personally, I own Dr. Who, Addams Family Gold, Gilligan's Island, Pinbot, and Game Show. A sys admin has a Twighlight Zone and Dracula [awesome game, that].
Just got done rebuilding all four flippers on the Addams Family at the office. Including replacing all bridge rectifiers on the power driver board.
Pinball is an excellent way to take a break from work. It is a digital system-- all machines after 1990 are computer controlled (including the flippers)-- but behaves in a very analog / real world fashion.
BTW: The new Stern machine-- Monopoly-- was *designed* by the same guy who built Addams Family, Monster Bash, and numerous other Williams/Bally classics. Go play it. It is a worthy machine.
Again, anyone in NYC-- check out www.nycpinball.org, sign up on the very low volume mailing list, and join us for the next PinBall BarCrawl!!
b.bum
I wonder if there is any value in the knowledge stored in the brains of us soon-to-be-geezers pinball wizards. Not only did I mis-spend my youth playing pinball machines, I worked my way through school repairing them. 200 violently moving parts + abusive players = job security.
I started working on them in 1978 when stuff like Pong and Space Invaders was high-tech. The control circuitry has changed radically over the years - from relays, solenoid steppers, and cams - to sophisticated multi-processor systems. However, the playfields are still filled with precision mechanisms that get bashed with little cannon balls.
Every machine used to come with a little kit of spare parts you could expect to break in the first week, along with a COMPLETE SET OF SCHEMATICS! Really! They were right there in the bottom of the machine. A complete 30+ page large format book of prints with long fold outs for the complex stuff. No "black box" block diagrams - every wire and resistor was shown. They expected you to repair to the component level - not just swap modules. I am getting misty eyed just thinking about how I had all the info I needed to do the job. In these "modern" times, you don't even get a clear diagram of how to hook up the power LED in your new computer case.
In my opinion, the only people truly qualified to repair pinball machines are the addicts themselves. We used to stay late after work the day a new model was delivered. We would put the first one together (these things used to come in lots of pieces and were not trivial to assemble) on our own time. 3 or 4 of us would then play the machine until dawn - stopping now and then to make tweaks. By morning we were completely fried, but had a supreme knowledge of how to tune the machine for playability. More importantly, we could kick ass in the pinball tournaments the bars would sponsor. The bucks we won would more than pay us back for the sleep we lost. Some of the customers would bitch about "professionals" playing in the tournaments, but the bar owners liked the idea of having somebody around who could unlock the machine and unstick a ball or unjam a coin slot.
smoke-filled VFW halls
quart bottles of playfield wax
a giant canvas bank bag full of rubbers
the smell of stale beer and burnt solenoid drivers
soldering iron burns
you: 685,370 everybody else: under 85,000
It was a simpler time...when carpal tunnel syndrome was just "pinball wrist"
"Reality is independent from perception." - RDH
I worked at Capcom Coin-Op during their brief flirtation with pinball. The real problem with pinball in arcades is that they take a hell of a lot of work to maintain. An arcade with 40 pinball machines? That's a full-time employee just to clean the damn playfields if you want them in top condition.
What's the maintenance on a vid? Wipe the screen with windex and empty the coinbox. What's the maintenance on a pin? Clean the playfield. Clean the glass. Check for stray objects. Adjust switches. Replace bulbs. Rotate and replace rubbers. Align drop targets. And heaven help you if you have a pin with really neat, but really fragile, special mechanical parts!
And what happens when the machine gets old and you want to make way for new games? Video cabinets can be re-used. Slap a new mobo in there and put a new marquee up and you're good to go. Not so with pinball machines. There's no practical way to gut one and upgrade it to a new machine. You can do it, but it costs way more in labor than just buying the new machine outright.
Don't get me wrong. I love pinball and would really like to see it make a comeback. But it takes lots of time and a dedicated technician to keep them running and fun.
Oh well. Time to go down to my basement and fire up my Black Knight and Big Bang Bar.
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
I love pinball, always have. Been playing it since the 70's when arcades were dimly lit, grungy holes in the side hallways of malls [or the basements of bowling alleys] where the walls were covered in carpet to cut the noise.
The silverball has always won my heart, because - if your good . you can play for hours. Robotron, great game - but I remember overhearing an operator at my local arcade say 'Yeah .. crank that difficulty up .. all the way' on saturday. At least with a pinball machine .. you saw what you were up against.
As for their demise .. well .. Cleaning and maintaing them really is a labor of love. As more and more arcades became huge chains, with corporate # employees, they cared less and less about the machines. The individual arcade operator had to buy their own machines, so they took care of their investment. The kids making $4.25 an hour in the 80's couldn't be bothered.
And lets face it .. I own five machines (kept in my basement) all mid 90's games .. and they are a PAIN to keep clean sometimes. My Attack from mars EATS bulbs.
But two real kickers helped put the nail in the coffin I think :
Street Fighter II, and WMS' reaction to it.
Street Fighter II was a phenenomon (With mortal Kombat on its heels). A $3000 arcade machine (about the same price as a new Pin at the time) was making $2000-$3000 in coins a week, EASY ! Never before had a machine been able to pay for *ITSELF* in a single week of operation .. when you included in the costs of 2 new joysticks a month (and 2-3 buttons) your still WELL into the black.
This put a lot of $$ in a lot of operator's pockets .. whom .. I must say .. probally didn't deserve it. Business wise i mean. If 'bill's arcade' is run by Bill , a guy who pays for his girlfriend's car out of the till - then wonders why he cant pay rent - we'll its no surprise when he goes out of business. Now all the Bill's of the world have 1/2 a dozen street fighter machines that are giving them phat cash every week- and can hold on. Do they buy different machines, and revitalize their arcades ? no .. they buy more Street Fighter Machines .. after all THATS their cash cow. [forgetting the pinball machines that kept them afloat before SF II came along]
[this same phenonomin happened with Comic Book shops in the early 90's with Magic Cards - Many hole in the wall shops that should have died - we're given free 'fad' $$ .. and did stupid things .. like 50% discounts, or whatever to try to keep up with all the idiots making a quick buck out of their garage because the $$ was good. The closest example today would be the folks on E-Bay that were selling X-Box Boxes, easy $$ .. once one managed it .. about 60 other people jumped on the bandwagon in about 10 mins.]
WMS' reaction to this was 'we gotta make pinball machines *MORE* fun !! Twilight zone, the ungodly beast that it is .. has MORE stuff stuck on it (breakable stuff mind you!) than almost any other pin. They made GREAT $$ for operators, while they worked. Thats the key phraze, while they worked. As Bally,Williams and Bally/Williams put more and more 'gimmics' on the machines (talking heads anyone?) they broke easier and easier.
Of course that cost more .. so pin prices went up, thats one of the REAL kickers, to compeate with cheap video games .. pins started to cost more. Mid - late 90's .. running out of cash .. they got back to the basics. Compeating on price
of machine rather than interest level. and *POW* they started making $$ again. Attack from Mars was HUGELY successful [just TRY to find one with a decent playfield .. i was damn lucky with mine.] and it was a stripped (narrow) playfield.
The end all though .. was a business decision. Do you manufature 'fruit' machines ? [for casinos] that you can sell for $12-15k a pop by the hundred ? or pinball machines where the manufacture count is 1,000-2,000 machines that sell for under $4k each ?.
At least we still got Stern pinball .. trying .. Hopefully Monopoly will dig them out of the hole their last few games put them in. [it plays more like a bally/williams machine than any of their previous tries.
--Ne auderis delere orbem rigidum meum, non erravi pernicose!