I got into Pinball because my work had a handful of machines in our breakroom. This author is not joking about how different an experience it is playing pinball when you don't have to worry about pumping in quarters or being elbowed out by the next player. Pinball machines from the 90s on are reasonably complex games. They have levels, modes, and lots of goals to attain. Multiball is a reward
> I’m fortunate enough to live near the biggest publicly accessible pinball arcade (Pinball Hall of Fame)
In danger of being rude, I'd say the Pinball Hall of Fame is about worth the price of admission (it's free to enter). Maybe I visited on an off day, but it seemed to be just a warehouse full of privately own machines, about half of which were operating. My local pinball place (Next Level Pinball Museum, outside of Portland, OR) has a very large collection which spans the history of Pinball from very early games to machines that have HD video displays on the backboard.
I strongly recommend if you've never given it a try, find a pinball place that'll let you pay a flat fee for admission and spend some time on some games. My personal favorites:
- Attack From Mars
- Cactus Canyon
- Medieval Madness
- Creature from the Black Lagoon
- Star Trek (based on the Abrams movies)
- Super Mario Bros (the full size table from 1992)
The Pinball Hall of Fame is notable for having a working Pinball Circus[1], of which there were only 2 ever built. I try to give it a play every time I'm in town. It's also got quite a few other rare games that are very difficult to find elsewhere, including a significant collection of electromechanical games that usually don't get much representation in arcades. I do agree that the level of maintenance isn't great, but that's basically true for almost any place with more than ~10 machines. I have a comment here[2] about the state of the places I go to regularly in San Francisco, but basically the only one that's consistently good is the one where the owner is onsite and does the maintenance himself.
The now defunct Pinball Museum in Banning, CA had an interesting model. They opened for business on a convention model (bi-annually, or quarterly) with an all-you-can-play ticket. This gave them time to get all the machines in working order. There was also a repair crew onhand to try to get failures fixed. They did not survive the pandemic and had to liquidate their collection, which was tragic.
So while maybe not the best way to make money, the experience for fans at their shows was outstanding. The largest collection of pins and arcades I've ever seen, almost all in working order.
I deeply lament it's loss, it was something I looked forward to. I was at many of the events and even participated in the Guinness Record.
http://www.museumofpinball.org/pinball-news/hello-world/
It was a private collection and magnificent and met some amazing and interesting people there. Walter Day was promoting a set of trading cards. Billy Mitchell once handed off a ms. pacman game to me in progress which I quickly lost despite my best efforts. You could tell he was a big self promoter and liked playing the heel to create a dramatic story for media. It was worth the long drive from LA to Banning (near Morongo), and even the Bob's big boy in the middle of nowhere was a good lunch. I think the facility was an old connector factory https://www.recordgazette.net/news/local/decisions-to-be-mad... before John Weeks bought it, it was really close to where the record blanks were made that burned down. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Masters_Corporation_fir...
At least in LA we have AYCE Gogi running a couple good rooms, and a few hourly pay arcades, but the pandemic closed the Northridge Reseda one. And Two-Bit Circus in downtown is fantastic but limited on pinball. I own a Rocky&Bullwinkle but i'm still repairing it. Trying to decode/disassemble the software written for MC6808 is a part time amusement for me.
I'm glad someone used their wealth to provide a lot of joy to people, but nothing lasts forever.
My son and I went to nearly every one of the events. His first was in his baby carriage. It really is a loss I mourn every so often. Lots of amazing memories tied to that place. And you are right, everyone there was pretty cool.
I was hoping to maybe grab one of the pins during the auction but the prices the machines were getting were way out of my range. I'm glad they made some money back, I suppose. Still trawling Craigslist hoping to find a deal.
pinside.com is a quality community for pinball people, including sales. I found the operator I bought my pinball machine from and got a reasonable price. Most mainstream sites are highly overpriced, but prices soared since I got mine and haven't stopped.
Attack from Mars is a good beginner table to learn ball control especially. There's basically a single shot up the center, but a lot of nuance in how you do it to avoid a drain.
Having grown up in the one quarter to play era, pinball machines were refreshing. You could make your game last via skill, or even just holding the ball on the flipper. In comparison video games would take your quarter and ramp up difficulty until you died.
Memorable games for me were more modest, such as "8-ball deluxe" with lots of targets or "black knight" with a second set of flippers.
Games nowadays seem to be too deep to play in an arcade on the way home from school (if any such venues exist anymore). Seems to me like asking you to play skyrim a quarter at a time.
I've gotten into pinball the last year and also love the ones you listed. Some of the newer machines I've had a blast with include Stern's Godzilla, Ghostbusters, and 007 machines
If there are any pinhead game devs out there, we're still working on the next generation of Visual Pinball, called VPE[1].
However, given the current drama around Unity, we're currently looking into Godot to evaluate how much effort it would take to port, and how Godot will support our needs.
I have a VPX cab that but I've been out of the loop for a while because it just works. A refresh of my cab is on the agenda, though, and VPE looks great!
Are you targeting Linux compatibility, by chance? My biggest complaint about the whole VPX scene is that it's locked to Windows.
And it runs pretty great! I just found out about it the other day and was impressed how well it worked.
By the way prheezie, thanks for all the work you put into VPX. I hope to see VPE get some momentum behind it once again now that your DMD stuff is finished off. What do you think the likelihood is of moving to Godot, and what would you estimate as the impact on VPE?
TBH I just started looking into it, together with a few other developers from the community. I'll post something at the usual place as soon as we know more.
It depends on the effort you want to put in, and the tables you want to play.
VPX has the largest table collection, and the good ones play very well. But there is also Pinball FX which is a lot easier to set up, and they are catching up in terms of cabinet support (we're helping them, the next thing is force feedback support).
There is also Future Pinball which runs a few original games with mods pretty well now, but it's still closed source.
You’ll probably end up primarily running Visual Pinball. Some of emulations are nearly perfect if you disregard nudging; I’ve never been able to get convincing nudge physics.
Pinball FX is pretty fun too, but it definitely feels more like a video game than VPX.
Yes. I don't even bother with anything else on my cab anymore. Good VPX tables are the best looking and best playing and there are a ton of them now with more being made by the community all the time.
Very nice article, I appreciated both the game/technical detail and the personal touches in the text.
Not knowing about the author, I checked the About page [1] which states that Tynan is a "minimalist nomad", but perhaps that label is somewhat outdated? I mean ... owning three full-size pinball machines seems somewhat incompatible with both properties. Perhaps they are only minimalist when in nomad mode and not when at home, or something. Also, I have little clue about "nomadism", that is not my cup of beverage at all. :)
Author here... minimalist might be a little bit outdated. A friend wrote the about for me because he was annoyed that I didn't have one. FWIW I do still only wear one set of clothes every day and travel for weeks with what most consider to be a very small backpack.
Wholly unrelated to the topic at hand, but while you’re here…
I minimise how many email subscriptions I have, so don’t keep pace with many writers. But I have an annual tradition going back maybe 8-10 years of over my Christmas break reading all of your content for the year.
It’s been fun watching the journey from Uberman sleep hacking to multiple properties with friends (an aspiration of mine), to more recently tea + relationship + Vegas.
> Some of the best classic games for new people are Medieval Madness, Attack From Mars, and Monster Bash.
Those first 2 are what got me into pinball, many many years ago. The last original Medieval Madness table I saw was $15k at the Chicago Pinball Expo -- it's probably the most beloved table, with the possible exception of Addams Family.
Virtual pinball is the future. If you're interested, the easiest way to start is with an AtGames Legends Pinball machine. It's the most easily moddable... for mine I went with these upgrades which made all the difference.
Yes, getting it all together takes quite a bit of time and money, but everyone who has seen it has been delighted, even if they knew nothing about pinball beforehand.
Just wanted to give a shoutout to my hobby app, a social scorekeeper and ranker for pinball players, Pindigo. It’s free; there are over 11k users posting scores. It also has locations, user groups, and leaderboards. https://www.pindigo.app
I used to play a lot of pinball. I would regularly go to a location with a large collection of machines on free play and a flat entry fee. I started watching tutorial videos and improving my skills, but the better I got the less fun I found the games. I eventually stopped playing.
Unless you're very competitive, I recommend avoiding any kind of systematic effort to improve your skills, as this is likely to reduce the enjoyment you get from the game itself. The explanation is itself a kind of tutorial, so I've ROT13 encoded it for the sake of people having fun at their current skill level:
Cvaonyy vf n shaqnzragnyyl synjrq tnzr traer, orpnhfr vg erjneqf pbjneqyl cynl. Gur zbfg eryvnoyr zrgubq gb trg uvtu fpberf vf gb fybj lbhe cynl qbja, pbageby gur onyy, naq gnxr fnsr, ercrngnoyr fubgf. Vs lbh trg n zhygvonyy, vg'f orfg gb genc nyy rkprcg bar onyy, orpnhfr zhygvonyyf ner gbb hacerqvpgnoyr. Gur zbfg sha srngherf fubhyq trarenyyl or nibvqrq, orpnhfr gurl'yy chg gur onyy ba na hacerqvpgnoyr cngu. Gur bayl gvzr lbh fubhyq or vzcebivfvat vf jura lbh'er erpbirevat sebz reebef. Gur orfg qrfvtaref ner njner bs guvf ceboyrz, naq gel gb rapbhentr evfx gnxvat, ohg gurer'f bayl fb zhpu gurl pna qb jvguva gur yvzvgf bs gur traer. Gur orggre lbh trg, gur yrff sha lbh'yy unir vzcebivfvat naq ernpgvat gb gur onyy.
I own three pinball machines and recently built a virtual pinball cabinet running open source Visual Pinball (aka VPX) which is great. One challenge of getting into pinball is knowing which tables are "good". While it's true that different people will have different preferences, there are tables widely considered as "good" by the community. There's a list of best 100 machines of all time here: https://pinside.com/pinball/top-100. This is voted by the community and the majority of voters are very experienced players. You'll also see in the comments for each machine that many of the voters are current or former owners of that particular machine.
Since I have a virtual pinball cabinet now, as well as some friends who are pinball collectors with dozens of well-regarded, sought after machines - I've played everything in the top 100 (most on a real machine at least once) and IMHO - pretty much anything in the top 50 is worth a play, Also, my personal favorites are all in the top 50.
A few years ago I could have sworn that The Addams Family (1992) was the most highly regarded table of all time.
What appears to have happened is that between last time I checked and now, some great tables have been produced. I checked out a video of that Deadpool one and it looks amazing. It's good to see vibrant activity in the pinball space; I thought pinball had died off (again).
Yes, The Addams Family held the top position for many years and is still considered the best selling pinball of all time (although Stern stopped releasing sales figures ~10 yrs ago, it probably still is). The list was fairly static for a lot of years but you are correct that in the last several years a number of newly released pins have quickly risen into the Top 25.
Fortunately, this is not (IMHO) due to some corruption in the ranking or declining standards. It's because manufacturers, especially Stern, have really managed to elevate the design and playability of new pins to an incredible level and do so more consistently than in the past.
It's extremely difficult to create a hit pinball machine that's initially accessible, fun to play and yet remains challenging over time with deeper rule sets. Many of the top-rated pins are still the "classics" from the 1990s (TAF, CFTBL, MM, TW, etc). Today's best new machines are still being designed by some of the same people who perfected their craft over time (or those who apprenticed at their knee).
I own a Godzilla Premium and it's popular because it really is just a super fun game and stands head to head with the greats of all time.
That's really incredible. In an era where things I loved as a kid (including computers) are on the decline or falling into disrepair, seeing a resurgence of pinball, especially good pinball tables, is comforting. And new technologies probably help manufacturers like Stern produce better, more sophisticated, more fun tables, adding new depths of craftsmanship to this time-honored art.
But TAF will probably still be my wife's favorite table.
Man. I really want a pinball machine. But they’re just so expensive. Though I had kinda ruled out building a virtual pinball machine. This article has convinced me to reconsider. Can anyone recommend a guide?
I’m a pinball newbie but not a woodworking newbie. So a guide with details on the software and pinball-specific hardware included would be sweet.
While I'm sure the sibling comment is correct about how much nicer 120hz screens are, you shouldn't let the cost of them dissuade you from this project.
I built my own pinball machine (I looked up specs of real machines on the internet, and just kinda copied their angles and sizes) and put a 43" cheap 60hz TV in it. I had a computer laying around with a 1080ti, but that was overkill I think.
I initially set it up with just a pair of speakers, but I soon added the "exciters" that make the sound come from the cabinet in the 4 corners, and that was a subtle but important upgrade, IMO. It also needs some amps, etc for that.
I already had a cheap arcade button/joystick set that I just used the buttons and controller from, and I splurged on a plunger.
The plunger was surprisingly optional in the end, though. A lot of the best games don't even use it! The plunger also had an accelerometer for nudging, but I soon disabled it because it was causing a slight angle to the virtual table and I haven't gotten around to bothering to fix it. It's also not really necessary.
I found that Virtual Pinball X was the easiest software to set up tables on and had most of the best tables. Look for "pinup popper baller installer" to get an easy installer that will ask you a lot of questions and just set things up.
You'll also want a second tv/monitor for the backboard, but don't feel the need to get a third screen for the DMD. Most (all?) game themes will just integrate it into the second screen for you.
My wife is a huge pinball fanatic and when I told her I wanted to make this, she rejected it out of hand. She said it wouldn't be good enough.
She has completely changed her mind. She played it a ton at first and still fires it up weekly at least. Of course, she still goes to arcades for real pinball.
Thanks! That's very encouraging. I'm excited again. I do have some arcade buttons laying around, as well as an old LCD TV. I'll throw together a nice POC :)
The thing that matters most is having a 120hz screen, and I'd argue that 4k/OLED are equally important. When I first laid screens out on my floor to test I almost decided not to build one because the monitor was a 60hz IPS and it just didn't look that great. LG C1 48" is a little big but is what I started with. Excellent picture quality. LG C2 42" or KTC 42 seem to be the best. Don't worry too much about the bells and whistles, fancy buttons, etc.
I owned a pinball machine (Stars). It was interesting at first. Another guy I worked with owned a donkey kong machine he bought from some prize money. We both sold these things. They are seriously cool to own. But after awhile the attraction of them is not worth the burden of owning one.
Also they are not really meant for home use. These things are tanks. They weigh a decent amount. So moving them around to clean them up is a chore. Depending on the condition of what you get you may need to be doing a decent amount of that. If you move you need to set up some decent logistics on how you are going to get it out of your existing place and into your new one (seriously stay ground floor if you can if you own one).
Then there is maintenance. The machine I owned had at least 3 different parts that were decently difficult at the time to source (internet probably changed that). It had another 5-10 electrical/mechanical issues that needed to be fixed because of the previous arcade owners shoddy work. Also some of these things are getting up to 50+ years old. So they are going to need a decent amount of rework for parts that have finally given out way past their EoL. Some of them which no one makes anymore so you have to part scavenge more broken machines.
Also you really better really like that pinball game. As unlike a say a cab you where with some work you can switch out the game. Now with something like the VP tables with a nice screen and some decent switches you can get close to the real thing and switch the game out. Its nice but not the same as the real thing.
I drop a quarter into a machine every few years and remember why I dont buy these things and just rent them for a couple of quarters for a few mins.
I would love to own a Stars, such a great game when well maintained. Very simple playfield but good progression and opportunity for bank shots and unconventional nudging once you get a read on the particular machines setup and angles.
That unconventional nudging is where emulation usually fails with this sort of thing. All of the stars tables I have come across none of my interesting ways to get some extra points never worked. I got rid of mine for 500 bucks and got a nearly complete set of (US) master system games for the same price. I had at one point changed the coin mech to accept showbiz tokens which was kind of fun.
Besides the link the Pinscape build guide posted by Tynan, I would highly recommend this build series for a Virtual Pinball Cabinet by Way Of The Wrench. It is stuffed with tips and tricks, very practical, and covers the tradeoffs between one approach and another.
Whenever I see pinball machines I check the embedded bubble level and 9/10 are not set to the right angle, even in reputable arcades. It seems important to keep the angle in spec, otherwise the ball goes either too slow or too fast but I wonder how much it really matters.
IMO too slow/fast doesn't matter a ton unless it's extreme (e.g. some steep ramps become impossible with weak flippers). Tilt to the left/right is a much bigger issue, especially if it starts making some standard ball return path drain straight down the middle.
I wouldn't do this to someone else's machine without asking, but the feet on a machine are easily adjustable to fix levels.
The thing is there isn't really a "spec". That's part of what makes it cool IMO. The same machine in two different locations can play completely different.
Also, I've been told that the bubble levels are notoriously unreliable in most machines.
I used to play pinball pretty seriously in the 1990s. I would particularly like finding machines that had no tilt or insensitive tilt and “nudge” really hard or even put the front legs up on top of my boots for better control.
At a small state school they saw me doing this and threatened to kick me out of the game room if I face it up (which had me playing more Xevious and World Heroes) but ai learned the meaning of social class when I was in grad school at an Ivy and nobody ever gave me trouble.
There was that time I put up a score on a Harley Davidson that was so high I’m sure people would have thought it was impossible and that was almost true.
Raising the front legs high enough to set them on your shoes wouldn’t just give you “control,” it would negate the downward slope of the table. I guess it’s on them for not setting up the tilt sensor, but that doesn’t sound like a particularly fun way to play unless you simply want to make that number go up.
In some games you can't hit some of the targets with the table in an elevated state because the flippers don't have enough power to hit a slow moving ball to the top of the table and up a ramp even with the reduced slope.
I think in some games with a working but insensitive tilt it makes the tilt sensor even less sensitive. Also I am pretty sure that I can nudge with stronger effect and better precision in the elevated state.
Now, there is a tilt sensor on most pins (and even arcade games) that is likely to be in working order which is the one on the coinbox. The coin mechanisms on most of those games is pretty rudimentary and if you hit the front of the machine hard repeatedly you'd be able to get free games if there wasn't something that would clear out all your credits for doing so. The thing is that there are techniques to get the ball back from the drain that involve impacting the machine at the right time and those techniques are pretty dangerous because they risk triggering that tilt sensor.
I'm gen-x and really loved pinball. A list of some of my favorites
Cyclone
World Cup
Beat The Clock (The Stone Pony in Asbury Park NJ had it) that one gave you a set of time and you try and stop the clock while still playing. A very old game but an unique concept with a better setup than a fixed amount of balls.
I saw some new pinball machines for sale at our local home store. They were bloody expensive, on the order of 9k. What makes these machines so expensive?
Two big things. First, because the economics of modern pinball are brutal, venues mostly stopped buying, so manufacturers and their competition shrivelled up and with it, supply. The supply-side market at this point is effectively dominated by individuals and collectors, neither who want to part with their machines, as they’re nostalgic items and they know they have value.
Furthermore, working machines come at big premiums as repairs are finicky, expensive, and time consuming - god help you if you own a machine and some targets or rollovers on your machine give out, as it’s challenging to find someone who’s even capable of doing the repairs, let alone pay their price. The expertise to do it is really thin these days because all the people who historically used to make a living from it are all getting old and retiring. This combines with a second problem: although widespread 3D printing helped a little with making repairs more doable, parts are hard to come by and often demand cannibalizing other old or dead machines - meaning a working machine is worth its weight in gold, and so is a dead one: Either it has interested players, or it’s of value for salvage. This “literally every machine is valuable” situation drives prices up, even if the machine is essentially dead.
Lots of moving, mechanical parts, all handcrafted and hand-wired, machines built in small production runs (only a few thousand machines of a specific type usually) - there's just not too much room for the typical optimization approaches of "scaling production up" and "scaling things down to integrate more".
Though todays' manufacturers already try the latter, otherwise those machines would be even more expensive. You should take a peek into the belly of a machine when you get the chance somewhere - ideally into a newer machine, manufactured after 2010, and into a 90s machine. That's a stark comparison: the 90s models have thousands upon thousands of individual cables, wiring hundreds of individual lamps and solenoids and sensors. On the newer machines, manufacturers tried to cut down on the number of cables, pre-fabricating larger modules with LEDs on large PCBs, or installing sub-controllers from which solenoids are driven instead of wiring all of them individually with hundreds of large cables into the backbox.
But there are limits to this kind of optimization. After all, pinball machines are mechanical contraptions that need to integrate lots of individual mechanical parts spread over a large area. If you can't replace them with solid-state elements (which is basically what a virtual pinball table does, by replacing almost all mechanics with a screen) or concentrate them into smaller areas, you can only gain so much using modularization.
Besides the other replies, 9k is on the premium end of the spectrum - literally so, pinball machines come in trim levels like cars and 9k is the price for the Premium class.
There are Pro models for 7k new or typically 6k used, and also some Home models for 5k MSRP and often under 4k at street price. They have less stuff than the premiums, but you can get into a modern machine for way less than 9k.
Because they are still sources of income so you’re paying a premium. I did chuckle that none of the other responses mentioned this, but the new business model on them is to run them on location a couple of years and then resell it to a home collector for nearly what you paid.
It's what the market will bear. The particular machines you were looking at are sold on the collectible nature of these specific machines - new machines, limited quantities, licensed IP, etc. You get a guy who overlaps any amount of interest in pinball and something like jurassic park, and they "have to" have it. Then you get the people who see the price and think of it as a status symbol that they can show off along side (or maybe in lieu of) their fancy watch.
Used machines in perfect working order from back when there were arcades are way cheaper.
Probably because it's what the market will bear. It gets worse too, as maintenance on pinball machines is expensive: Labor intensive and time consuming.
My pet theory as to why pinball has gotten so popular in the Northwest is because it's a way to pay a few quarters to temporarily avoid interacting with other people. A win-win for introverts and bar owners!
Pinball is addictive. I don't even have a house to myself and I've had to talk myself out of picking up pins for my apartment. If anyone is in the Bay Area, I recommend the Pacific Pinball Museum. Over 100 pins ranging from old EMs to 90s games to plenty of modern ones. I have a season pass and try to go as often as I can.
I built a virtual pinball table. Sadly I came to the realization that I just don't like pinball, so it mostly only gets played when other people come over and want to play.
But building it was pretty easy, and fairly cheap. I used a new 55" TV (with "game mode" to reduce lag) for the play surface, and old monitor for the backdrop. It does require a descent computer and graphics card, but not top of the line. My card is a Nvidia 1080, a buget card wasn't enough. The main structure is just 2x4's, then plywood tacked on. I used dimentions from a real pinball table, and real pinball table legs. There are a lot of artwork stickers available to make it look like less of a box (though I own a printer that can print large enough that I could do my own). Overall I would consider it a fairly simple project.
I traded 5 hours of IT labor for a Bally Sea Ray table (1971). Tuning it up was interesting (electro-mechanicals use many solenoids and relays) and the end result was a blast...
Now I have a client who is asking to hire me to get their old table back in shape.
I played pinball at a metal festival (Wacken 2022), because I was bored of loud music and wanted somewhere to chill. for some reason there were a few real machines there in tents outside. I think 8 or so, and no one was really playing them. We got to have quite a lot of goes without having to pay that much, and it was quite. Also the fun thing is that we had a lot of beer so we got to drink beer while playing them. The tables were messed up and dirty, so I didn't worry about putting my beer near them. There were some interesting tables there, Terminator 3, Lethal Weapon 3, Godzilla...and a few others I can't remember
I have a 1976 bally freedom machine that I inherited from my grandfather in the early 90s. it was right on the cusp of digital pinball and from what I understand there are versions of this machine out there that are solid state. unfortunately it broke a long time ago when I rolled the scoreboard over into 6 digits and I haven't been able to play it since. it's now sitting in my garage waiting to be restored, collecting dust for decades. I have a long term plan to bring it back to life and luckily there is a prominent pinball youtuber that walks through the restoration of the exact same machine I have. I hope my plans come to fruition some day and im sure its gonna cost me more than the ~$1500 it is worth fully restored. looking inside at the guts, it is an absolute wonder of mechanical engineering.
I got into pinball myself this year in a big way. It started with restoring a mid-80s Williams Comet that my wife's family had stored in the back of the barn for years. Things went slightly off the rails after that and we have since picked up another eight machines. We now have a good mix of electromechanical (Grand Prix!), 90s classics (Twilight Zone, Fish Tales, and Safe Cracker) and modern games (Jurassic Park and Foo Fighters). It's a great feeling to clean and repair an old machine and get it playing smoothly. And there's a lot of skills to be learnt by playing on a wide variety of machines.
Yes! The movie is a good one. My wife enjoyed it and she doesn't know anything about pinball. There's a little love story woven in. Highly recommend it.
I've thought about buying a pinball machine for a while, but haven't pulled the trigger. I think I would get bored of one machine after a short while, and then it would just sit there. I like pinball a lot and I think the design and build quality of many of the more recent games is fantastic. But, I'm not interested in collecting machines. Is anyone else in a similar situation?
Get new machines if you can afford them. Stern or Jersey Jack.
90s machines are great, I love them, but they are 30 years old and are not where I recommend anyone to start... My first pin was a fixer upper Twilight Zone. Learn from my mistake! Haha
The most challenging part is the maintenance, especially the classics. Owning several machines taught me to fix them. My newer machines broke less often...
Every time I threw a decent party I'd end up buying minimum $200 in parts and spending half a day fixing them.
Lord of the Rings is one of my all time favorites. I highly recommend it. It's not ancient, and the game is really deep. It's pretty easy to work on and fix. Make sure you protect the plastics, I couldn't find after market ones. The Wizard mode is extremely satisfying because it is super difficult to achieve... There are a couple fun special modes you can unlock.
On modern solid state pins, you can adjust the difficulty settings to make the game more fun for friends.
Thanks for the great advice. LotR is actually my single favorite pinball game and I've played it a ton, mostly at Pinball Pete's in Ann Arbor. But, I've played it so much that I would probably get bored of it quickly if I purchased it. Twilight Zone is great too! I'm in Seattle now, and so lots of places have the new Foo Fighters pin which I'm enjoying a lot.
Author of the post here. My first game (No Good Gofers) is relatively simple, but I still haven't gotten to all of the advanced modes on it. More than that, just learning different passes and catches is interesting and challenging enough that I think any halfway decent game would give you a lot of enjoyment. If you get a very complicated Keith Elwin game like Godzilla or Avengers Infinity Quest, you'll probably never get sick of it.
Also worth noting is that games tend to hold their values really well, so you see most people trading/buying/selling regularly. The guy who sold me my Avengers only did it because he had a Godzilla Premium on order and had room for one game.
Cool! Love the game, by the way. Feels like it's a bit underrated because of the golf theme, but it's one of my favorite multiballs and I like the progression of the scorecard.
Different pinball machines, like video games, all have varying levels of replay value. Almost all games made after 1990 will have some "wizard mode" (like a boss level) that's incredibly hard to get to.
That's the value in owning a machine, in my opinion. Keep it for as long as you can to beat the wizard mode. I actually owned a Metallica (Stern) for ~four years, but I was never able to get to the wizard mode ("End of Line"). It has a notoriously difficult wizard mode.
The other cool thing is that pinball machines really maintain their value. You'll likely be able to sell your machine for the same amount of money—if not more—than you bought it for!
I would echo the sibling comment about wizard mode - it's difficult enough on modern machines that you'll most likely take a long time to get there. If trying to "beat the game" motivates you, I think you'll get value from it. I had significant money on the line to reach wizard mode on a Lord of the Rings that was in my apartment, and failed to do it in the year or so it was there.
Note that maintenance is a real pain if you're not comfortable with dealing with a lot of wiring yourself, so there's also some risk that something breaks (more of a certainty), and the machine just sits there until you can be bothered to get it fixed.
How is the durability / needed maintenance on new pinballs from Stern?
I'm in love with pinball since when I stopped worrying about losing the ball, as you also told in the article, but because of their price, I'm a little scared without knowing that much :(
Very anecdotal (just the experience of me and my friends, who have a total of 5 new sterns between us), but I think there's not much maintenance. These things are made for commercial settings so they're pretty durable. One of mine had a bolt fall out of the auto plunger, which I screwed back in. When it fell out again I added some loc-tite and it has stayed in since. No other issues. If you're into DIY at all, they are VERY easy to access for repair. The playfields flip up, they come with technical manuals, many parts are generic, and all parts are pretty easy to find.
> I’m fortunate enough to live near the biggest publicly accessible pinball arcade (Pinball Hall of Fame)
In danger of being rude, I'd say the Pinball Hall of Fame is about worth the price of admission (it's free to enter). Maybe I visited on an off day, but it seemed to be just a warehouse full of privately own machines, about half of which were operating. My local pinball place (Next Level Pinball Museum, outside of Portland, OR) has a very large collection which spans the history of Pinball from very early games to machines that have HD video displays on the backboard.
I strongly recommend if you've never given it a try, find a pinball place that'll let you pay a flat fee for admission and spend some time on some games. My personal favorites:
- Attack From Mars
- Cactus Canyon
- Medieval Madness
- Creature from the Black Lagoon
- Star Trek (based on the Abrams movies)
- Super Mario Bros (the full size table from 1992)