owned one for a couple years and I am very gladly sold it for $500 a couple weeks ago.
When I bought it I was in the mode where I would buy any pin that came around. It was in good shape from troxel, a member here, and it saw a lot of action. He had replaced all the connectors and it was almost fully working.
I tried to LED it and ran into
some insane problems. Lindsey really knew his stuff
here.
The pacman part of it caused a problem with Bally and Namco. The ghosts follow no rules besides the red being the fastest, then green. I never really played pacman and loathed the PM part of it. I simply am not good enough to do it and it caused frustrations for me.
You only get power pellets in the pinball area.
I have read a
strategy guide and would follow the basics for good games. That really is the only way to play it. Stay in the pin part as long as you can.
I still have tons of parts for BPM. I should offer them up for sale here actually. The guy I sold it to is just using it as a machine to trade up to another, better machine.
Normal peeps would come over and like it, because they did not know better. It is a quarter sucker and made most mad because you die so easy. They never did well, but liked the mix of vid and pin. the pin part is boring as hell. I had a few folks who were pretty good at it. When you get up in the pac levels strange things happen like walls disappear and it makes it pretty fun.
I never had problems with the interconnection between the pin and vid via the vidiot board. Clay had a whole page just for BPM. The game is just not a quality product physical wise in my opinion. The playfield can be lifted, but is not hinged and if you place it wrong you will smash switches and just mess stuff up. The light sockets are horrible and they do not sell replacements. When I called Steve Young of pinball resource he spent a few good minutes shredding the machine on how dumb it was made. It made me bleed so many times and it just made me hate it more.
I would never own it again unless I found a beautiful one from someone who had no idea how much it was worth and I could just turn it for profit. I doubt I would play it a few times while in my possession.
* takes a deep breath *
If you are going to go look at it, make sure the horseshoe works to get the 2 power pellets. make sure the feet are adjustable. Check the quality of the screen. If you really want it and know how the game plays then go for it.