Jolt Country

The guy who wants the novelty of an arcade game in his house might pick either Golden Tee (year irrelevant) or Pac-Man. Nothing wrong with that guy. I am not "bagging" on anyone here, real or imagined. I mention him because when it comes to pinball... [/i]I am that guy.[/i]

I usually avoided pinball games because they were right next to arcade games. It was the same quarter and I'd much rather lose it spending, literally, 25 seconds playing Defender than a random pinball game that would offer more play time. Just one of those things.

But now I am interested. Not this week or this month or even this year, but eventually I see getting a pinball game and it would be nice to chronicle one man's self-discovery within this corrupt and dangerous world. Did you know they used to destroy pinball games in New York City? And that dozens of years later the "Great Flipper in the Skies" destroyed two big buildings in NYC? They never shoved "No Good Gofers" into the East River in Topeka, mates.

Might want to see if there are ever any pinball/arcade shows in the Denver area. Did I ever post the pics of the first annual one here from a few months ago?

Dozens of pinball games set up on free play, most for sale. You can play several and figure out which ones appeal to you. It's not always easy to pick a favorite, but it's easy to pick some that you do NOT want to own.

The problem is that nearly all pinball games are pretty expensive, and the ones that are desirable (the Elvira games, Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Star Wars ones, etc) can be a bit more.

My wife loves pinball so we'll probably get one some day. But I'm guessing that we'll looking at $1,500-2,000 to get one that we want. I'm personally a fan of the Starship Troopers pinball... and Elvira, and Black Lagoon, and a few others.

Oh, the other problem - those sumbitches are HEAVY. They're extremely difficult to move around. The local pinball nuts make their own hydraulic lifts (well, take commercial ones and adapt them for lifting pins.) Plus, they're pretty high-maintenance. Usually the ones you see in restaurants or arcades nowadays are poorly maintained and there are lots of features not working.

Jethro Q. Walrustitty wrote:Might want to see if there are ever any pinball/arcade shows in the Denver area. Did I ever post the pics of the first annual one here from a few months ago?

No -- please link us to them!

Dozens of pinball games set up on free play, most for sale. You can play several and figure out which ones appeal to you. It's not always easy to pick a favorite, but it's easy to pick some that you do NOT want to own.

The problem is that nearly all pinball games are pretty expensive, and the ones that are desirable (the Elvira games, Creature from the Black Lagoon, the Star Wars ones, etc) can be a bit more.

Yeah, the one guy out here who sells them wants $2400 for the Elvira ("Scared Stiff") pinball game. I don't doubt that's a reasonable price, just a tad depressing.

http://www.classicarcaderesource.com/scaredstiff.htm

Oh, the other problem - those sumbitches are HEAVY. They're extremely difficult to move around. The local pinball nuts make their own hydraulic lifts (well, take commercial ones and adapt them for lifting pins.) Plus, they're pretty high-maintenance. Usually the ones you see in restaurants or arcades nowadays are poorly maintained and there are lots of features not working.

Jesus Christ, their own hydraulic units? This pinball thing may be beyond me for quite some time.

One other thing to do is play with PinMAME, you can get a rough idea of how the games play there. Unfortunately, I had problems getting one of the Elvira games to play right - it wasn't playing the in-game sounds (like her voice) at all, even though it would if I played it without the playfield emulated, or something like that. It was weird. PinMAME could use a little more development before it's really perfect.

Plus, if you think getting a set of MAME ROMs is tough, that ain't NOTHING compared to getting a complete set of PinMAME ROMs and boards.

But I digress.

Scared Stiff is really good. The earlier game is Party Monster (or Party of the Monsters? something like that) and is good but not as advanced - doesn't have the LED video screen, just a scoreboard, etc.

Off the top of my head, $2,400 is probably not cheap but probably not outrageous, either. It is one of the more desirable games out there.

The pinball pics are at home, gotta put 'em on Groucho. I'll do that.

I would definitely see if there are any local pinball clubs or anything. Now that there's a club in Rochester (with a Yahoo Group - that's a good place to check for local clubs for damn near everything), at least I know that if I have problems, I have some local experts who will be glad to try to help out. Plus I was really happy with the work done on Baby Pac-Man, and it was cheap, so I know there are local professionals if I need work done. So I would feel fairly safe picking up a pinball.

But if you're in a situation where you don't know anyone local who's a pinball nut and the only repair guy is expensive, then it might be a bit more intimidating. Hopefully you can make some contacts - surely the people are out there, the trick is finding them.

But yeah, the high cost and amount of work in moving the things make the initial time/money investment pretty significant.

Someone locally was selling one that was nearly pornographic recently, and were desperate to sell and were pricing it pretty cheap. I might have considered it if I had the extra cash at the time. It had some futuristic robotchick in skintight clothes on the artwork and she'd make orgasmic moaning sounds as you played.

Superauctions doesn't seem like it's coming any closer than San Jose or Dallas this year.

www.superauctions.com

But if I'm in St. Louis for one--I'm missing the August 5 one, obviously--you're welcome to stay at my place.

Bruce

Now that I have a house, the thought of more cabs is an intriguing, interesting one. Especially those picked up on the cheap. Well, cheaper than eBay.

In terms of fixing one up, aside from monitors ... okay, aside from monitors and replacing ROM chips... okay, there's a lot of things I don't feel confident fixing in an arcade game, but stuff like the control panel or, er, side art I could fix up.

I am basically on the lookout for Roboton, Discs of Tron environmental, Q*bert, Wacko and Spy Hunter, off the top of my head. Although just having picked up the Multi-Pac, it would be wrong to get something so quickly. I want to put a hot tub in the backyard anyway HONK HONK!

And I realize I'll never find a DoT environmental, so no big deal. In fact, with what people want for Robotron I am probably better off just building a reproduction of a cab myself. Especially since the side art and marquee seem to be pretty common.

(Am I a homo for giving a long ummmmmm to a Dragon's Lair game? Of course. Forget I mentioned it: I would never play it. It just looks cool.)

But yeah, this year and the years that follow are much better to make a St. Louis trip than previous ones. SuperAuctions has ignored the entire time zone out here!

I've heard a lot of mixed opinions on auctions, especially big-name ones like Superauctions. Often all they have is crap and overpriced crap at that. And lately, a lot more of the stuff has been vending-type things rather than games... from what I've heard.

You can probably do better by watching usenet or game forums (for/sale sections obviously) or game shows, like the Rocky Mt one I linked to over on Groucho.

As for the collection, I'd work on a MAME machine before anything else. A MAME machine should be able to replicate perfectly the Robotron experience and probably several others.

Once you have that, you can figure out what more you want that the MAME one can't do. As long as you have interchangable control panels, you can easily make a few for your favorite games.

Besides, it can be cheap. I got two good cabs for free. If you keep your ears open over at arcadecontrols.com or some other places, you could get the same deal probably.

Jethro Q. Walrustitty wrote:I've heard a lot of mixed opinions on auctions, especially big-name ones like Superauctions. Often all they have is crap and overpriced crap at that. And lately, a lot more of the stuff has been vending-type things rather than games... from what I've heard.

I've been to several in St. Louis (well, Belleville, but same difference).

This is largely true.

Most of what is there is shit, even in the video games.

And much of what is there is not video or pinball games, it's vending-machine bullshit. And yeah, you do have to sit through that crap before they auction off the interesting stuff.

But even when the auction isn't good, there are generally a few interesting things. Last one I was at there was a nice Wizard of Wor (went for something like $750, I think), a small Monaco GP, an honest-to-goodness Scramble, a few other cool things. Including a Battlezone whose monitor still worked (early Atari vector games are fairly rare because the monitors have a tendency to crap out).

Overpriced? Depends on who else is there and how much they want it. That's how come I ended up with Bubble Bobble. I said "$100" (I think; maybe it was $125) cause I was *sure* that someone else would want it more. Oh well. I played it for a while until my MAME cab made it completely superfluous, and then I gave it away to a local collector because I got tired of it taking up space in my garage waiting for ICJ to get his ass out to Missouri for it.

For $100? It was a damn good deal. I've had dinners that cost me more, were over much quicker, and weren't nearly so much fun.

Bruce

Dude, Bubble Bobble??? where the fuck was i..

sooo many hours wasted on NES version. <-drk

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:Tee "bagging"... one man's self-discovery

Hurr hurr hurr.

Bruce

In other news, this guy is a bit optimistic:

http://denver.craigslist.org/ele/192121001.html

Great deal - all fantastic games, wow! -- until you realize you dropped over a thousand bucks a game.

At the St. Louis Super Auctions I think they were issuing people Galaga machines just for showing up. If you attended one was thrown at you and your only choice was to run or use its weight against it and flip it into the bed of your truck.

You know what one of my favorite feelings in the world is? Driving the game home. Being the slow guy in traffic, hoping it doesn't rain, hoping you don't mess it up in transport, rocking out to an unfamiliar sound system (if you are like me and without your own truck). A truly under-rated moment.

Oh. And eating some guy's marrow. #1 and 2 on my list

Current Top-Five Pinball List. This is based on pinball games I have actually played. I have not played them all, but I have played a bunch recently (the real things, not PinMAME, which I was never able to get working).

#1 Attack From Mars: Games last forever, I feel like I am good at it, and it does not drain your ball all the goddamn time. Currently top on my list.

#2 Black Hole: It has a level underneath the main one where you have your flippers at the *far* edge, and play in "reverse." It's fucking awesome. You know how you'll hear a song on the radio and it like instantly becomes your favorite song for a few days and only later you put it in perspective? This is Black Hole for me, as I have only played it a few times over one evening. I should mention that my score got worse each and every time I played it.

#3 Orbitor 1: We weep for thee!

#4 Banzai Run: This is the pinball game that has you playing pinball ON the frigging backglass. (And gravity is truly your enemy!) Can't imagine what it takes to repair this thing, how is it ever even functioning all the time. It beggars the imagination or something.

#5 Joust: Dayna and I play it every time we are in Lyons and I still really like this one. It's two player, and you have to send the ball through a particular gate to get points while on your opponent's side. I can never remember which is which. Therefore I always (and I mean always) lose.

There is some game about Magic (the skill, not the card game) that I enjoyed watching, but couldn't play it for shit. Dayna had a ball go for about six or seven minutes, hitting shot after shot on the thing. I think I got about forty seconds of play time total, for me, that game. I can't remember the name of it, however.

And I realize this thread would be much better with pictures.

bruce wrote:That's how come I ended up with Bubble Bobble. I said "$100" (I think; maybe it was $125) cause I was *sure* that someone else would want it more. Oh well. I played it for a while until my MAME cab made it completely superfluous, and then I gave it away to a local collector because I got tired of it taking up space in my garage waiting for ICJ to get his ass out to Missouri for it.

Regretting the HELLUH out of that these days, by the by. Argh! This and the free Time Pilot (or was it 1942? Can't remember) that someone was offering out here are truly the two that got away.

Ice Cream Jonsey wrote:

bruce wrote:That's how come I ended up with Bubble Bobble. I said "$100" (I think; maybe it was $125) cause I was *sure* that someone else would want it more. Oh well. I played it for a while until my MAME cab made it completely superfluous, and then I gave it away to a local collector because I got tired of it taking up space in my garage waiting for ICJ to get his ass out to Missouri for it.

Regretting the HELLUH out of that these days, by the by. Argh! This and the free Time Pilot (or was it 1942? Can't remember) that someone was offering out here are truly the two that got away.

Then maybe you SHOULDA GOTTEN IN YER FUCKING NEON and GOT THE GODDAMN GAME.

Bruce