I have just bought myself a new house! And as a house warming present to myself I am thinking about purchasing a second hand Pinball Machine.

It seems the going rate for a decent one is anything from £600 to £2500!!! I am looking at either Tales From The Crypt or Twilight Zone.

Does anyone have any advice on what to look for when testing these machines??? Or places to or not to buy from in the UK???

Cheers

Cris.

Greetings!

I have not purchased a pinball machine, but I have done a bit of research into it when looking for my current arcade machines. I would strongly recommend a google search - there are a lot of very good FAQ lists for buying new, used and reconditioned pinball and arcade games. Twilight Zone Link

The price sounds a bit high, but the prices may be higher in the UK than the US. It is also varies widely with the title and condition of the game.

As for other advice, test everything possible. Test all lights, all bumpers, all mechanical and electronic devices in the playfield. Make sure that the field / fields are not damaged or warped. Any visible wear patterns should be fairly obvious on the machine, but watch that they do not interfere with game play. Find out if it is still coin operated, token (get the tokens with the game) or set to free play.

As for the place, watch to see about free delivery, on site testing and potentially repair. Will the conpany service and maintain the machine for you? Will you need to get parts and are they available. Given the titles that you mention sound fairly collectable, it should not be as hard to get parts for them as a more obscure machine might...

You might also want to check out some of the more common part vendors (like Happ for example), to see if they have any stock parts available for your machine.

Do not let the research and testing change your mind about the idea. Having a game in your new house is a lot of fun! It will take up space and require maintenance like anything else, but it is a great way to unwind after a long day or for parties.

EDIT: Link edited. I had a generic link there before for the TZ game, but a bit of tracking found a UK supplier that specializes in this title (#1 seller) and has a great FAQ for purchasing and maintaining games...

Thanks for that Paul!!!

Pinball Heaven would be No.1 choice, but they are a tad expensive, so I'm looking for a good one that's cheap but only needs work that I can do my self doing to it.

I can't decide if I should be selfish and put it in my bedroom, or put in the living room so everyone can have a go!

I think it will make a good investment, I have been looking at them over the past few years and the prices seem to be rising steadily over time. I don't think I'll loose out if I look after it ok.

The down side of this is I won't be able to afford a propper sofa, but I figure people would rather stand at the pinball rather than sit talking to me anyway

Cheers

Cris.

I have a friend in Seattle who regularly purchased pinball machines off of eBay. He's had good success so far. The only caveat is that it is more economical to pick up the machine from the seller than to have it shipped.

Not sure how that would fly in the UK, though.

I would think picking up the machine would be easiest there as well.

I think you might be better off in the living room instead of the bedroom. Although I can just imagine the potentially amusing jokes about going into the bedroom for a quick round of pinball...

The place (Pinball Heaven?) does look a bit high, but they have a lot of good maintenance and purchasing tips / FAQ pages that are useful.

One more thing - make sure you play the game a few times before purchasing it. If possible, spend 10-15 minutes actually trying the game before buying it. If you notice anything strange in the gameplay (misaligned ramps, weak bumpers, etc.) you should make note of it and take a closer look. Once you buy it, that minor annoyance will become a nagging problem until it is fixed.

I bought a pinball machine early last year off of eBay ... For a good pinball, you're going to spend in that price range -- that's all there is to it. You can definitely FIND cheaper pinballs, but you are either looking at less popular or less quality machines. I paid about $1600 USD and another almost $300 to have the damn thing air shipped on a massive palette across the US. At least in the US, there are quite a few game shows that you can go to and get better deals and obviously not have to pay shipping. Twilight Zone is a pretty popular machine, so you are going to be looking at more $. The one I got was Demolition Man, which is a terrible movie, but a great machine ... Lots of things going on on the playfield and it's a 5-ball machine.

Something you need to be prepared for is that these things DO break -- there are just tons of moving parts and the ball hitting things over and over again combined with other shaking/collisions causes components to break off circuit boards over time. So I would very much recommend you try to get the manual for whatever machine you get -- it will include all the part numbers and circuit layouts. You will typically buy these separately, but you can pick them up on eBay -- I think I spent about $25 for mine. So what I'm getting at here is that you should either be comfortable doing small repairs (reattaching some mechanical elements, or replacing small components) or you should try to find a repair place that is near you. I've done both -- for the small things I've just fixed them myself (I ordered a replacement opto board for the ball chute and installed it myself), but I had a nastier problem that I took it in for (I have a repair place pretty close to me). They weight like 300 pounds, so fixing it yourself is a hell of a lot easier.

Overall though, they're a lot of fun, and even though they are a bit finicky, I'm glad I got mine. It's also really cool to see the admin screens on them. There's a huge amount of data that these machines collect that I never knew about (number of flips on each flipper, number of times the ball goes out on the left vs the right so you can adjust the leveling, etc).

Feel free to email me if you want any more info -- I'll be happy to help/recommend/etc if I can.

ms

Get some plastic cleaner/polisher for the playfield. Take a good look at the balls if they are dented, rusted, or damaged in any way replace them the damaged balls will act like sandpaper on the playfield. Get used to soldering. Get a manual for the pin if it doesn't come with one. Find out what lights it uses and buy a box they tend to burn out. Umm that’s all I can think of off the top of my head.

Hope that helps
Later
Rob

Thought exercise for everyone: If you could have a little mini-arcade in your house, but only had room for five machines, which five would it be?

Note: For this exercise, must list real machines, not a MAME cabinet.

Mine:
Hard Drivin' (sit-down cabinet)
Tempest
Marble Madness
Centipede (for my wife)
One really good pinball table, not sure which one.

My top five:

1. Atari Star Wars
2. Atari Tempest
3. Atari Asteroids (maybe one of the later variants, but the original gets cool points)
4. Williams Joust
5. Dance Dance Revolution (had to put something vaguely modern in the mix...)

Of course, this is leaving out so many other good games, like Tron, Sinistar, or even Moon Patrol, but I've always been partial to the Atari vector games. (And, it's such a treat to find one that's still working. Those color vector screens didn't age very well.)

A while ago I looked into getting Area 51, but didn't have the $650 it was going for at the time.

Hmmm... I seem to notice a lot of vector monitor games so far...

Tempest <grin, but sadly needs repair work in the high voltage cage>
Golden Tee <grin>
Spy Hunter
Star Wars
Pinball table of unknown version.

Gauntlet 4-Player
X-Men: Children of the Atom
Paperboy
Spy Hunter
Kiss (Pinball)

Damn, Spy Hunter. I'd forgotten about that one. Which one goes, then, Centipede or the Pinball table? Wife would never forgive me if I didn't have both of those. But I can't cut any of the others, that would just be wrong.

Star wars almost made the cut, but I realized that it got old real fast for me. The others don't.

Argh, Joust. That one is a hard one to leave off the list. The two-player cooperative mode is just the bee's knees.

It's been a while since I've looked into this. Where do I go to find these cabinets? I remember finding a store in Virginia that had its stock online, but I haven't got a clue how to find it again. Does anyone know of a central website that has information on where to buy? I mean, I could get an Area 51 cabinet off of ebay for $1500, but that's insane considering just 3 years ago it was going for $650 everywhere I looked.

I am not familiar with Area 51 - do you have a good link?

Spy Hunter and Joust were fighting back and forth on my list for a while. I finally settled on Spy Hunter for the driving aggression release factor.

Darn it, this conversation is making me want to build my MAME cabinet.

My idea for a MAME cabinet is not to go "big huge" with lots of buttons and such, but rather to go cocktail, with each side having just a small joystick, a small trackball, and a few buttons. Then only put games onto it which work well in cocktail mode. Of course, that precludes two-player Joust, two-player Marble Madness, two-player Gauntlet, most driving games, etc., but it's the only thing that would actually fit in my house and look half decent. And it could have a lot of great games on it that work fantastic in cocktail mode.

What about retrofitting an old Joust cocktail or using it as a starting point in your design? The shell is great for two player games like that...

KLOV!!! Forgot about them. Thanks!

My god, you guys must have a sh*tload of free time, and plenty of spare cash floating around. I can't see the point of owning a game, i'd play with it a couple of times and then lose interest. That's why I have an n64 and a playstation gathering dust in my study.

If I had to get a game/pinball machine it'd probably be Ridge Racer to remind me of my mis-spent youth in local Laser Quest, I never played Laser Quest, I just went on the games. Then again, it'd probably get a couple of days use before I get bored again.

Very nice! I like the look - very simple, elegant design. Cool! The only reason I was thinking about the tempest cocktail is that it does not have the seating positions at either end, but facing the same screen at a slight angle, like this:



(image linked from KLOV)

I think mine would have to be:

1. Williams Defender
2. Pacman
3. Atari Battlezone
4. Atari TX1 (I think that was its name - sit down Pole Position style racer, with 3 monitors giving a wide field of view)
5. Galaxian

I would love to get a coin-op cabinet for my spare room, but can't justify the cash right now... maybe some day...

Ah, cool, I'd never seen a Joust cocktail.

Naw, woudln't want that. I like the more traditional cocktail style, it would go better in the house.

The issue there is screen flipping and cooperative play. Perhaps you could have the players side by side and a screen in front of them somehow... But I do like the narrower traditional table. And it is much easier to fit into a room. With a nice wooden verneer, that would like like a nice piece of furniture.

Oooh! I forgot Defender! Never was good at it, but great game! I would choose Stargate (Defender 2), though.

Bom Bom Barnanom Bom Bom Barnom,
Bom Bom Barnanom Bom Bom Barnom,
Bom Bom Barnanom Bom Bom Barnom,
Bom Bom Barnanom Bom Bom Barnom,
Wowwwwwwwww-wahhh! Wowwwwwwwww wah wah-wah-wah-wowhhh!
Wowh-wowh-wowh wahh-wahh wahh-wahh-wahh wahh-wahh-wahh wahh-wahh-wowh wahh-wahhh!

My list:

Tempest
Missle Command
Centipede
Ms Pac Man (for the wife)
The Addams Family (pinball)

-Zeke

If the list were pinball only:
Addams Family
Funhouse
Whirlwind
Twighlight Zone

(extra credit if anyone can see the theme to these four games)

I would want:

Food fight
Mr Do
Ms Pacman
Whirlwind (Pinball)
Funhouse (Pinball)

I want a MAME cabinet to just show up here. I need to get someone with the clue to do it beholden to me.

If only I knew what was wrong with the Mr Do machine I have, actually, I'd be less sad (though a pinball table would be nice, too)

Why not simply convert the Mr. Do machine into a MAME cabinet?

You realize that there are interface boards that allow you to plug its controls and its monitor directly into your PC, so that the only thing you'd need is the PC.

I would understand not wanting to mess up a classic arcade game in good condition in order to make a MAME cabinet, but:

1. It's not even in working order, based on what you said.

2. Come on, it's Mr. Do.

Hahahahhahaha! One thought I have always toyed with was creating a mini-MAME cabinet. Not a full size cabinet, but a control panel with a mini-atx or other small computer inside with output to DVI or other big screen TV. This way it does not take up that much space, but the gameplay and screen are still impressive.

It was a gift, and I'd like to make it work again.

Looks like Tempest is on everyone's list.
I was feeling pretty good that I actually *own* a Tempest game until I went to the California arcade thing last month. Somebody had brought in a Tempest where they had switched in some custom ROMs to get new level shapes. Some of them were inside out ! Excellent. Now I'm jealous again.

OK, my dream list.
--------------------
Tempest
Robotron
Qix
Quantum (slightly rare, but quite cool)
DeathRace 2000 (silly fun, extremely rare, haven't seen one in decades, strangely was considered "too violent" way back in its day)
Defender/Stargate

For Pinballs:
--------------------
Hyperball (30 or 40 pinballs in flight at once, crazy madness! Useful for waking up the children or annoying the neighbors.)
Black Hole
Gorgar
Then probably FunHouse or Black Knight
Finally I'd probably include "Invasion from Mars" if it weren't so enormous and so likely to be an utter maintenance nightmare.

Bonus wishlist item: An old Atari Football would be nice for any rec room (Black and white. The X's vs. the O's. Giant trackball that one spins wildly.)

Then, if I still had just a little more room needing to be filled, I'd get a pinball game called, I believe, "Orbit." It's not that fun to play, but it's really fun to watch someone else play it. The playsurface isn't flat but is some kind of parabolic clear plastic. So the ball orbits around the flippers and just generally does weird bizarre things.

Well, Whirlwind didn't have a magnet but rather a spinning disc which would do wild things to the ball's trajectory. Good guess though!

My favorite Funhouse quote: "HEY! You with the face!"

The pebble remains.

-Zeke

I can't name one but but I'm positive some of the games I've played had electromagnets under the board. They went on and off depending on what I never figured.

We built a mame cabinet at my old work, and it's still there. We went all the way, too. Built the cabinet, complete with T-moulding and plexi drink cover. The only thing we left out was the coin mech. It was just too expensive to justify. At the house I just use a shelf from home depot with 2x4's attached with rubber feet on the bottom. The only problem with that is that it's too light for 2 people to be playing something like Killer Instinct on it. It keeps sliding around. The only bad thing about going the whole cabinet route is the space required and the cost. Total cost BEFORE adding the PC was about $800. Since there were 6 of us going in on it, it wasn't so bad, but I couldn't swallow that alone.

Or you could wimp out and buy one of these.

One of my favorite pinball games with the electromagnet was Addams Family. When you had two out of three balls for multiball it started spinning under the table, making the ball path erratic. It continued through the multiball until you were dead. It also came on during the "Seance" bonus game, where you had to go up the bear ramp 3 times to finish. The Adams Family is one of the most popular pinball games of all time, btw.

Theatre of Magic was also an excellent pinball game.

There's many that have magnets, Twighlight Zone & Addams Family both use them.

There's a great resource at www.ipdb.org for searching games.

Search by Playfield Toys / magnets and you'll get a list of 11 machines. Williams also had 'Magnasave' which caught the side drains on some of their machines.

-Zeke

A coworker had his Addams Family table at work for a while. It sucked when he left.

You could buy one of these for even more money

Greetings!

The item you are looking for is the Tempest Tubes ROM. You can occasionally spot the ROM chip, or the Tempest Multigame modification on ebay. If you still cannot find it, I have a Tempest Tubes ROM somewhere in my desk... Of course, if you really want to get exotic, you can (in theory) design your own playfields with TempEd and burn them to ROMs. I haven't tried this one yet, though.

Thanks, Paul! You the man!

I actually thought about doing this in the early 90's, but never actually got around to it. I'm sure glad somebody did though. (and apparently even 10 years before I got the idea!)

You don't happen to know where I can pick up the 3-color laser thing do you? Apparently, someone got red/green/blue lasers and rigged it to their Tempest so that you could play with it projected onto a 100 ft by 100 ft wall outside.
Now that would rock.

I guess this means it's time to finally get around to replacing the old capacitors, etc. inside the high-voltage cage. I'm always a little afraid, however, ever since I melted the end off a voltmeter probe when discharging the CRT cathode. Better the probe than me though!

Wall-sized laser Tempest?!??! That's something I'd love to try. You might as well add in some insane speakers and subwoofers so you really feel it when you get shot.

That laser thing does sound rather nice! I have never seen it in use, though. Wow! And, yes, a sub so you can feel every shot!!!

The story of the melted probe certainly makes me think twice about going into the high voltage cage myself... I have all of the documentation and manuals - 19500V does not strike me as a "good thing", although I am sure there are some on the board much more comfortable with this kind of voltage than I!

Yes, I think it would be awesome.
I've never seen it, but apparently Loren has.
See here.

Oh! A MAME version. That is easy, because you would be hooking up a standard projection unit to a PC / video card. It would not be a Tempest arcade machine powering the graphics. That can be done with any PC projection system, although there might be some versions that are better than others.

EDIT: Found it! See LaserMAME...

By the way, did you get the Tubes ROM? If you are not interested, I might pick it up as a spare. The one I have is (I think) one of the originals...

check Here.

Yes, looking through that site, if you want real lasers instead of regular projection (and who wouldn't), you are looking at some serious investment. Still, if you were going on tour or building an arcade or club...

Why haven't I seen Major Havoc in any of these lists??? A classic!

I am settling on the idea on a cheaper/needs work machine.

I figure it will make a better investment long term, I will have to learn how to maintain the thing, so I may as well restore it as I go along. Also the initial outlay will be much lower.

PinballHeaven.co.uk is a great resource, prices seem quite good too!!! I'm all excited!!! Now to wait to find a good deal.

I did toy with the idea of a MAME Cab, but I have never been a fan of computer games in general, pinball is much more my bag, although it would take up much less room!!!! Mmmmmmm

Cheers

Cris.

One thing you may want to do before buying the machine (or perhaps when you buy it) - get the full technical manual, study it and be sure you are comfortable with as much as you can.

MAME is nice, but there is nothing like a good pinball table...

Quote:
Actually, I had that one growing up. I wonder what happened to it? My parents got divorced when I went to college so my Dad might have sold it. Now I have a burning need to know!

I have a burning image in my mind of another pinball machine that I played at Nantasket Beach around 1964 that I can *not* get out of my mind, but can *never* remember the name of. Grrrrr.

We had a Fireball in the lobby of an EM club at Fort Sam Houston in 1972 that had a complete lock on my affections until years later when I married Missile Command :-)

From that link, looks like there were "consumer" versions of Fireball (vaguely remember reading about that). Did your folks have one of those?

I see a Fireball on eBay for around $2600 US. Sighhhhhh.

Arn't all crt's pretty much the same? It's the drive circutry that's different. That and the phosphers.

You basically just said: "They're all the same; only, completely different."

Holy crap. Visual pinball is EXCELLENT. Downright creepy how accurate it is, actually. I just played the Addams Family for a couple of hours and wow, gameplay is exactly as I remember it. The only complaints I could have is that the electromagnet is a little too strong and the sound isn't quite there. Other than that, the physics are spot on.

Now that you mention it, that's true. I got the skill shot only twice. As to the electomag editing: cool. I will. It was rather funny, once the magnet grabbed the ball and draged it a full 360. The real machine would NEVER have done that.

Well I bit the bullet and picked one up yesterday.

I saw one on ebay last week for £695, got in contact with the guy, I liked the sound of it and took the 500 mile round trip to Cardiff yesterday to take a look at it. Here is a photo...



It's in quite good condition for the price, it has had a semi overhaul and just need cleaning up a bit. He had replaced all the blown bulbs, thrown in a new set of balls and remade a few dry solder joints as well as giving it a general once over. It played really nice, I can't wait to get it set up!!!

WOO HOO!!!!! Pinball-arama

Cheers

Cris.

Nah, I had to hire a van for the day. Nicola did some driving too, that girl has the patiance of a saint!!! She didn't even give me the "what are you spending all that money on THAT! for..." speach although I could see she thought I was a little nuts when I saw the look on her face when I was having my first game.

At the moment it's in a mates garage, I was going to put into my storage room until the house is ready, but that is almost full and I had forgotten how big and heavy these things are!!! Anyway I wouldn't be able to nip around and have a quick game/make repairs if it was in storage.

Who needs a dinging room table or a sofa when you have your own pinball anyway

Cheers

Cris.

Ah young love! I can't see Amy being as keen to drive several hundred miles to see a pinball machine.

I've got a MAME pinball machine emulator on my PC. It's pretty good, and almost every pinball machine I've played has been MAME'd

Ok, so not as cool as having the real thing in your house, but much much cheaper.

Oooh - I didn't realise they did pinball MAME. Is it standard MAME with pinball roms?

My dream arcade:

Video:
Tron
Pac Man (cocktail)
Battle Zone
Out Run
Blitz (any version)

Of course a couple of mame systems too.

Pinball:
Blackwater 100 (cause I have it already)
Xenon
Adams Family
Twilight Zone
and one I don't know the name of that I played long time ago it was a graveyard/ghost theme and had a playfield under the main playfield.

My Dream Arcade...

Pac-Man
Donkey Kong
Atari Star Wars
Dragons Lair
Space Ace


And lucky me... I already own them all! Horray for Ebay...

Now if I could only find a place in the Seattle area who can help fix them.

Congratulations!!! Hopefully you will be visiting it from time to time until it is moved into your place permanently. Of course, the person holding it for you may not want to let it go by then... Hurry...

Surprisingly, the laser disc games run fine... Except the monitor finally died. I'm told you can slot a normal 19" TV in there. I also updated the player to a more modern Sony even though the pioneer still works. I never did figure out how to get the skill level buttons to work properly on Space Ace however.

My main concern is Star Wars has a monitor problem that I think would be fixed with a cap kit. It only shows the top half...

Question: do you get the bottom half "displayed" in reverse on the top half of the screen? Or a thick line in the center? The troubleshooting for the monitor electronics should be very similar to a Tempest.

Edit: Added debug URL.

Rory, it's mentioned in the thread here:

Quote:
Ever played Visual Pinball? Not *quite* the real thing, obviously, but very well done, and has simulations of virtually every machine ever made. Some are better than others, but many of my favorites are done quite well.

Scroll up for the link.

I just spoke with my father and it turns out he still has the machine in storage. I wonder how it's held up in there? I know it went through at least one flood.

Anyway, I don't know yet wether it was the consumer version or not.

I just hope he doesn't decide to sell it now. I must come up with a way to get him to bring it here . . .

Ok, he doesn't know which version it is. All he knows is that he bought it from Playboy.

I mentioned I have a perfect spot for it upstairs . . .

one I don't know the name of that I played long time ago it was a graveyard/ghost theme and had a playfield under the main playfield.

Sounds familiar, is this it? AJ's Table Information Haunted House

OMG how good is VP!!!!!! The tables rule!!! It's going to make the choice of the next machine much easier, as I will have already played the machine.

In the mean time I will have to make do with the Virtual version of Tales from the Crypt I think, not sure if my mate would be happy with me setting up camp in his Garage every night, and anyway if I set it up his daughters will want to play with it, and I don't want it broken just yet

Cheers

Cris.

Thanks for the Tempest site... I'll have to check it out in more detail later...

It's the bottom half of the screen, all in one thick line... funny thing is, you can still play pretty well in that mode.

One thick line near the center? I am guessing that either a) spot killer circuitry is bad or b) deflector circuit has a blown component.

Sweeeeet thats the one. Thanks man!

Here are some nice pics of Haunted House.

Thanks again!

Cheers - have got the install stuff, and my favourite ones. I can see what you mean by size, though. If you did happen to have an internet facing server you could pop them on next week, I will be at the end of a fast pipe on the 21st, 22nd and 24th and would be very grateful for them. Otherwise it'll be manually grabbing each one over the next couple of weeks