Trident (Stern Electronics, 1979) was my first foray into classic solid state (SS) game repair for a customer. I had bought Stars (Stern Electronics, 1978) a little while ago and while I hadn't restored it yet, I had done a lot of reading about common problems, the boardset, and playfield mechanisms. While I initially wanted to work on Stars as my first classic SS restoration, a customer approached me about fixing his Trident so I decided to bring this one back to life first. He had actually asked about selling the machine to me, but instead decided that he wanted to have the game repaired so he could play it again. As this wasn't a full game restoration, this blog entry will be shorter and will cover only the more interesting aspects of the repairs.
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Johnny Mnemonic (Williams, 1995) was another machine from our pinball road trip. Fiona and I had tackled all of our previous restorations at a leisurely pace. We'd generally start tearing a machine down for cleaning, clean and repair the parts as necessary, and then put them all back together whenever we had a chunk of spare time. As of late, we had not had that much spare time to devote to pinball. Our last restoration of Doctor Who (Bally, 1992) took us several months because we were so busy with other things going on. It's a little frustrating to have a machine sitting in pieces for so long, not being played. With this restoration, we decided to try something different. We both freed up our Easter long weekend and devoted it entirely to restoring Johnny Mnemonic from start to finish. So come Friday afternoon, we turned our phones off and got to work. Just like the restored machine, our work this time around was fast and furious. I have to admit, Fish Tales (Williams, 1992) is never a game I had thought seriously about owning. I had seen it a few times but the theme threw me totally off. I hate fishing. So it stood to reason that I'd never like a pinball machine based on fishing, and I never paid Fish Tales much attention. It just happened to be that there were two Fish Tales machines in the lot I purchased during our pinball road trip. I figured I would restore them both and sell them on. This restoration post is a little different from the others. Both of the Fish Tales games were very similar in appearance and condition, but each had their own issues to troubleshoot. I restored these games at the same time, swapping parts between the cabinets as necessary and they were both finished at around the same time. So I didn't take many pictures of the individual machines. Instead, I'll deal with both of the machines in this single post. The pictures are a mix of photos from both machines, but as they were both so similar, it doesn't really matter. 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. 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). 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!
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 northwestern 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. 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. 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.
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Here you will find logs of our pinball and arcade machine restorations, repairs, discussion about general pinball and arcade topics, as well as recounts of our random pinball adventures.
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Running this website is a hobby for me (just like pinball!). I like being able to show off my restoration work so everyone can learn from it and potentially fix their own machines. If you enjoy reading the site's content or it has been helpful to you, please consider donating to offset some of the website's operating costs. |