Pinball G-R-E-E-D !

pacman71

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So I have stayed away from pins for awhile and recently went a little over the top. Financed by the sale of several very nice machines including my Star wars... and a couple of other machines I took a small beating on.

Landed a pretty nice addams it cleaned up well, but its a B- at best.... but I have to say there is a reason they bring good money. The game is fun as heck. It is now my favorite pin. The game has been played over 100 times by the family in a week. To put that into perspective I have a HUO POTC that I have owned for 2 years that only has 250 plays. Addams family has fast play and enough toys and flashers to keep my kids enthralled.

I also picked up a nice jurassic park... stinks like tobacco and it cleaned up nice. With a little cabinet work, and a couple of switches it will be an A-. Not enjoying the play. Hopefully the switches will make the difference. The head won't turn from side to side. The gears in the motor seem messed up. The T rex still picks the ball up so I'm not overly concerned. I know until I fix it it will bug me a little.. (anyone ever repair the motor rather than replace)

Apollo 13 is really intriguing. It has no problems with the exception of when your supposed to get the 13 ball multiball. The balls won't release? (anybody have a hypothesis) cabinet is a bit rough, and the flippers a bit weak, but the playfield is really nice. The verdict is still out to whether it will be a keeper. It will need a major cleaning yet. I think playing a 13 ball multiball will be a bit difficult.

So now I find myself wanting a Family Guy and a Simpsons. Is there ever an end. Unfortunately I find my pockets a little empty for these.

How's that for a pointless ramble. Anyone else been active in pinball?
 
The 13 ball multi ball on Apollo 13 is brutal. They all come out and you really just flip like crazy to keep as many in play for as long as possible. I couldn't even watch to see where they were going. Can't help you with troubleshooting it, I was playing it on location. Good luck!
 
So many great modes in AF. The sound effects and music so well done. Thing flips, the thunder cloud topper, the power, and on and on and on. I never get tired of playing it.

I'm curious - have your kids ever seen the movie or the TV show to know where all the stuff comes from?
 
I would like to get a really complex, full on everything hazzy cazza pin to keep me entertained forever. It would complement my 3 vintage games which I am hand restoring to the hilt to keep around for playing now & then but mostly to admire the retro art....
 
I don't think a single pin can keep you entertained forever, but it might take that long to see all the modes in Simpsons Pinball Party or Lord of the Rings.
 
Yes. In the last two years, I have had over 10 + machines moved in and out of my room. I currently have an Addams family and Getaway for sale.

It is a pricy endeavor. BUT - i learned alot (technically and cosmetics) over this time, and that experience is invaluable. I can take a pin in any condition and feel confident that i can restore it to shine.

The most important outcome is that i end up with the games that i like / guests like. Since Pins are rare in the wild, and pinmame IS NOT the best way to judge them, one must bring in to weed out what they feel best with.

As I said, many games came and went (LOTR, Simpsons, Twilight Zoneetc). For the most part, with Pins, you can come close to getting what you paid for it, which helps - during the harder times i still saw games going close to their known values.

Right now, I am selling off some Pins to make room and expand into Vids (Tempest, SW, Robotron, Stargate, Gauntlet and a 465 in 1 vertical is my starting vid line up - waiting on them to get here!).

Again, i needed to get to a lineup of Pins that I always play / love. What did i end up with? The games i cannot depart with. They are - Stern Spiderman, Stern Batman, Stern Ironman and Attack From mars.

STERN? Huh? When i got into collecting pins it was for retro / early 90's reasons. Well, those games are all gone. I found out somewhere along the way that the stern games ROCK and are amazing. The three stern games i have now are all different and brilliant. If you can, get your hands on an Iron man - yes expensive but that thing is a modern day classic - out of every Pin i played (many) it may be the best. Trust me on this.

Good luck with this. It is a great hobby. Also, i have met many pin heads like myself along the way and that community is tight, helpful and very active.
 
I also picked up a nice jurassic park... stinks like tobacco and it cleaned up nice. With a little cabinet work, and a couple of switches it will be an A-. Not enjoying the play. Hopefully the switches will make the difference. The head won't turn from side to side. The gears in the motor seem messed up. The T rex still picks the ball up so I'm not overly concerned. I know until I fix it it will bug me a little.. (anyone ever repair the motor rather than replace)

Congrats on the machines, sounds like a nice setup.

For the Trex fix on JP, that has been covered in this forum several times, but here is the short version:
Make sure that you have the latest ROMs in the machine, the older ones can cause damage to the motor. Go into diagnostics and see how it works, verify that all of the switches operate. Most side to side problems are caused by bad solder joints on the left-right relay that is located closer to the flippers than to Trex. Remove all of the solder off of that board and re-solder the connections, replace the connector for good measure as well. If all of that does not fix Trex, you can then remove the assembly and clean up all of the moving parts. Finally there are replacement motors available, but you can open up the motor and rebuild it, it isn't easy, but it can be done.
Make sure that the control room switch works, without it, the game is a very poor player. There is a diode on the control room switch that often breaks, there is even a service bulletin for it. Fix that diode and the game will play completely differently.
Don't judge the game until you make it to "system shutdown"

Mike
 
The balls won't release? (anybody have a hypothesis)

Go through the menu options and activate the solenoid that releases the post that holds the balls from entering into play. If this fails then you need to verify that the solenoid works or if there are other issues. I has tweaking things on mine and adjusted the post and it then took me about another 30 minutes to get it back up and running. The adjustments were very critical and something kept binding. If this all works correctly and they don't release during the game check your settings. I believe there is a way to disable the extra 8 balls from entering into play.
 
Landed a pretty nice addams ....

...I also picked up a nice jurassic park...

Dr. Hammond cloned dinosaurs to create Jurassic Park ...Data East cloned Addams Family to make Jurassic Park pinball. :) ...the DNA got mixed w/ some Funhouse & Whirlwind, too.

If you're not enjoying JP that much, sell/trade it for something else. The dino is cool - but the gameplay is Addams-sorta-but-not-as-good.
 
Right now, I am selling off some Pins to make room and expand into Vids (Tempest, SW, Robotron, Stargate, Gauntlet and a 465 in 1 vertical is my starting vid line up - waiting on them to get here!).

Robotron and Stargate? If I may make a suggestion (as a Robotron addict who sucks at SG, but....): Either of these cabs would make a great conversion to a WMS multigame with the jrok WMS jamma. The jrok runs the actual ROMS on the original processor, so timing is exact (not emulated). This board has Defender, Stargate, Robotron, Joust, Splat, Bubbles (great game!), Sinistar (can run horizontal), and Blaster.

This would look nice in an original Robotron or SG cab. (Mine is in a SG cab.) You need to modify the cp (a few MW cp graphics/patterns are available online). The only real cp difference that's significant is that the left joystick will be an 8-way (instead of the 2-way on Def/SG), so the Reverse button (Flap for Joust) will be a bit further from the stick.

Anyway, this would let you have even more great WMS games in a single cab and give you room for more pins!

I also think Stern makes some great pins. Not a huge fan of IM as I've played it a few times but at $1 a pop, the ball times were way too short for me to keep at it. Surprised you didn't like LotR. It has passed CV as my current preferred home game.
 
I love my addams family. The game is now my new favorite.
 
id love to get an apollo 13!!!!


bad switch or coil?

I was in a guy's warehouse a few weeks back. He had two Apollo 13s and two Tommy's. I'll be back visiting the place in the next week - it's pretty tempting to try to make a deal, but so far, I've been mostly messing with WMS/Bally systems. I'm kind of scared of jumping to another MFG and having to stock up on all kinds of different parts. I've been lucky to mess mostly with WPC machines lately. But that Tommy is calling my name... I must resist...
 
Robotron and Stargate? If I may make a suggestion (as a Robotron addict who sucks at SG, but....): Either of these cabs would make a great conversion to a WMS multigame with the jrok WMS jamma. The jrok runs the actual ROMS on the original processor, so timing is exact (not emulated). This board has Defender, Stargate, Robotron, Joust, Splat, Bubbles (great game!), Sinistar (can run horizontal), and Blaster.

I am really interested in one of those multi-games. How does Sinistar play on that system? Didn't that machine have a 16-way joysick?
 
Sinistar

I am really interested in one of those multi-games. How does Sinistar play on that system? Didn't that machine have a 16-way joysick?

The JROK board supports a 49 way joystick. Sinistar is a vertical game while the rest are horizontal so it doesn't really fit in with the rest in a cabinet.
 
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