I want this machine but I'm having a problem getting it. It's not the price that really bothers me, I mean, that's what Jesus invented credit cards for, it's the wife. How the fuck do I convince my wife that I should get a $1600 pinball machine??? I guess I could take the track of, "Bitch, it's my money so get in line before I check your ass," but that tends to lead to jail time, or so I've heard. I want it really bad, though. Pinbot is the crack-wizard of pinball games and I played it religiously growing up. My best run was 17 free games in a row, three from match scores. I would love to have it. But is this the economy for buying toys? I mean, how many of us really know that we'll have jobs in six months at this point? Well, I guess it's not that bad, I know I'll have a job, but raises are definitely in question. Is this a time to go into more debt, even for something as fresh as my own shiny new pinbot machine?
If she doesn't see the credit card statements tell her you won it in a contest. If she does then you have to buy her something of equal value....think jewelry or a sybian (which are much more fun that pinball). http://www.peoplesc.com/sybian.htm
That was a great pin, wasn't it? I didn't look too closely, but at that price, I'd expect it to be fully shopped/playfield waxed/new glass, etc. They take up a lot of room, and they're pretty high maintenence - but I think it'd be worth it. If you keep it in good condition, you shouldn't ever lose money on it. Unless you lose the coin box key. LMK if you're serious about getting this, or if you actually do get it. I might be able to dig up some links to places of interest. Good luck with it!
Heck yeah. I thought those pins were the best era. Pinbot came out a little after "Black Knight" which was also fresh, there was a pretty cool "Funhouse" game that came at the end of that era. I was never very fond of the later games that all had movie themes and dot-matrix screens. Those tended to have astronomical replay values and always looked slapped together, like it was all just one machine with a different back. I like Pinbot especially because, sniff sniff, my dad used to take me to the arcade when pinbot first came out and we would play pinball together as kind of a father-son bonding thing (not like the father-son bonding that some people around here are used to, Tommy710). We also played Galaga. My pop was like the Galaga wizard. He hit levels 40 and 50 on that machine regularly. That was pretty cool because he spent fewer quaters that way and I could dump them into that buggy-ass "Dragon's Lair" machine. There were so many cool games back in the day.
On a different note, I was adding a new feature to a laser table after the production guys went home last week and it got me to thinking. I bet you could build a pretty cool, not Fresh but pretty cool, pinball game with simple relay logic and the right parts. I was coming up with a table design when I looked for parts online... Damn, you don't buy pinball parts, you buy the parts of the parts. That's crazy. They sell the coils separate from everything else, even the coil sleeves. You'd have to buy six or seven parts just to put a bumper together, and then get a bunch of photoreceptor switches and figure those fuckers out. I can handle prox-switches and microswitches, but I've never gotten busy with photoreceptors directly before (although I have used them indirectly). I guess building my own table will just have to remain the dream that never was to be.
That 'homebrew pin' idea sounds great... Some people start with parts and end up with hotrods, why not make your own pinball machine? As far as the Galaga goes, one of these days I've got to get one of those... Right now, since space is a concern, I'm going more for variety, so I couldn't really justify having another 'slide-and-shoot' space game. I'd like to snag a SmashTV as my next cab, then later on down the line pick up a SFII cab and load it with boards like Final Fight, MKII, etc. PM me if you want the website for the place I buy most of my arcade parts for (cheap).
