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    Doctor Who

    1992 Bally Doctor Who
    Picture

    After my World Cup Soccer restoration, I was rearing to go for another. Doctor Who (Bally, 1992), was another machine I had bought at the same time as World Cup Soccer. I had a lot of mixed feelings about Doctor Who as a pinball machine. While I wasn't much of a fan of the TV show or other Doctor Who media, I hadn't played the pinball machine much before and many pinheads insist that it is a really cool game. The mini playfield is the main feature on Doctor Who. It's a section of playfield that rises and sinks to reveal objectives to hit; it is very similar in style to the ball lock area on Jack-Bot (Williams, 1995). Doctor Who definitely looked like more of a technical challenge so I decided to sink my teeth into it and see how far I could get.
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    World Cup Soccer

    1994 Bally World Cup Soccer
    Picture

    World Cup Soccer (Bally, 1994) was the first machine I chose to restore from the eight machines I purchased during our recent pinball adventure. World Cup Soccer is a game that is approachable and a fun theme to play, especially for novices and non-pinball people.  Looking at the playfield, you can understand why. It's got a giant soccer ball in the middle of the playfield and a goal with a goalkeeper guarding it. Way cool! You can instantly understand one of the key parts of the game: scoring goals.

    Out of my eight new machines, I decided to start restoring World Cup Soccer first simply because it appeared to have the fewest things wrong with it. After the relatively relaxed and enjoyable experiences of getting The Getaway and Demolition Man up and running, I had some serious work ahead of me if I wanted to get all eight machines up and running. Getting a relatively easy machine fixed and out the door was my main goal (pun intended).
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    Pinball Road Trip

    Events
    I've already described how I bought my first and second machines. In early 2015, I got in touch with an ex-amusement machine operator. He had operated pinball machines and other arcade games for decades, at one stage having over 400 pinball machines in operation. This guy had now decided to sell his entire inventory of video games, pool tables, jukeboxes, and pinball machines. He had ten pinball machines left to sell, out of his original inventory of several hundred. The problem? He was near Maclean, in far northern New South Wales, near the Queensland border. I was in Sydney. Just over 700 kilometres away!
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    The planned journey.

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    The Getaway: High Speed II

    1992 Getaway Williams
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    ​Ever since I became interested in pinball, I had always wanted to play and own a Getaway: High Speed II (Williams, 1992). The Getaway is a popular machine and over 13,000 were made. As a result, I had played a few in private collections, and had a blast each and every time. It's an incredibly fun game that has wide appeal. Having only just finished restoring my first machine, I was game for another. I contacted a seller in north-western Sydney who was selling a Getaway. She and her partner had had the game for several years, but it had never been set up. Her husband had purchased it from his place of work, where it had been sitting around and was no longer wanted. The couple originally intended to have it repaired, but now they were moving house and needed to get rid of it. 

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    Demolition Man

    1994 Demolition Man Williams
    Picture

    I recently got in touch with a pinball machine collector in Glenhaven who wanted to sell his collection. He was moving house and was planning on selling his machines instead of moving them. He had a number of machines for sale, including The Addams Family (Bally, 1992), Demolition Man (Williams, 1994), The Flintstones (Williams, 1994), Rescue 911 (Gottlieb, 1994) and Guns N' Roses (Data East, 1994). This was obviously a guy who had an obsession with the year 1994. He sent me a few images of his machines and I spent some time thinking about which one I wanted to buy.
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    The Pinball Bug

    General
    If you talk to any serious pinball collector (particularly those that have several games), they all seem to have one thing in common. At some point, they get bitten by the pinball bug. They buy their first machine and have an absolute blast restoring, fixing, or playing it. They squeeze this first game into a room somewhere in the house, regardless of whether or not they actually have the space for it. The machine keeps them occupied for weeks. They spend all of their free time on it. And before you know it... boom! The person you used to know is gone; replaced by a mad, pinball-addicted collector who trolls eBay and Gumtree constantly in search of pinball machines for sale.