Everything Else

I am now $7000 poorer, but it went to a good cause: a well-restored Williams DCS Star Trek: The Next Generation pinball game, with new opto board, repaired cannons and launcher, and a colour dot-matrix display aftermarket upgrade. Should be delivered next week after he's done fixing the launcher and will complement my Stern Whitestar Sopranos table -- the Sopranos isn't a pinball classic but it's a good game for any skill level and was the first machine I got to learn inside and out by playing it at (where else?) a pizza shop.

I'm sorely tempted by the Slugfest he also has in stock, but I'm not sure where I can stash it that doesn't look dumb.

My favourite was William's Creature from the Black Lagoon!

MOVE YOUR CAR!

Wife has wanted a pinball machine for some time, but I want one I can fix up myself as a project. The problem is that neither of us have a "favorite" table to seek out and work on...

Gorgar for me, or Xenon ("Tube Shot!")

I'm old.

guardian452 wrote: Wife has wanted a pinball machine for some time, but I want one I can fix up myself as a project. The problem is that neither of us have a "favorite" table to seek out and work on...

Well, the TNGs break a lot ...

Electromechanical or solid state?

bluecode wrote: Real pizza shops have stacks of Bari pizza ovens, frizbee-shaped aluminum pans of dough, a counter, two or three Italians who can't speak much English spinning pies in the sky, and a hand-operated Expresso machine. And maybe a stove for cooking meatballs and pasta and sauces, but this is always "in the back" so nobody can see what went into to Mama's recipes. Anything more than that isn't a pizza shop

Actually, there's more to pizza than you might dream of. Check out Clifford Pickover, "Calculus and Pizza", fire up your Mathematica and start playing For additional fun, try George Legendre, "Pasta by Design"...

Be sure to post some pics

I was about to say the same thing!

many '80s pinball machines used really exotic plasma or EL displays. your color upgrade is LED?

Yes. Outgassing DMDs is a real problem. :-/

I'm pretty sure the DMD in my Sopranos is also an LED display.

Bump.

So at some point I decided to keep an eye out for a data east "star wars", because we are star wars fans.. but then I found this site:
http://howtobuildapinballmachine.wordpress.com/2014/01/

I'm good with electromechanical controls (it's kinda my day job) and I can be not-bad at woodworking too, if I take my time. Seems like there are decent sources of old parts around (e.g. flippers, coils, etc), or I could buy a junk machine for the cabinet and get a lot of bonus parts gratis.

This is handy since I found FCB pinball on iOS and have been playing it quite a bit, since I haven't played a computer pinball since, uhhh, space cadet, I'm very impressed. I would be willing to build it in real life. I've spent a lot of time playing it and it is a fun table in virtual-land. Not to mention it's also one of the few free games on iOS that aren't hamstringed by timers or in-app purchases (viz. southpark from a few weeks ago...).
https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fcb-pin ... 06943?mt=8

To real pinball fans: Is this a good idea? How do home built games stack up to just buying a real one? The design is solid and I can pilfer the sound, gameplay, and graphics right from the app. Maybe cheating, but I'm not a very creative person on my own.

Candidly, design is substantially more important than fabrication, and even those articles admit that a used game is still less expensive than a home-build (and likely to be better designed unless you're an expert player who understands ball flow, therefore more fun). I'd keep looking for the DE Star Wars. That's a pretty fun one, actually. I played it at the Pinball Hall of Fame in Vegas.

Anyway, as promised, pix.

Wow! Those are beautiful but talk about when worlds collide...

Yeah, they're a bit of a culture clash together. I'm saving my pennies to do an LED upgrade of the general illumination and translite bulbs on the TNG (I'm keeping the Sopranos machine stock -- the incandescent GI look suits it, and the translite is already fluorescent). That should make it even sexier.

guardian452 wrote: Is this a good idea? How do home built games stack up to just buying a real one? The design is solid and I can pilfer the sound, gameplay, and graphics right from the app. Maybe cheating, but I'm not a very creative person on my own.

go on, work that wood and give us some drumming. do create some drum loops to go with it, sample the wife for bonus points or for losing the ball

chc, you need a third one man, one with a dolly parton kind of thing maybe?

I don't have room for three there, but I'm thinking about where I could horn another one or two in.

Think I'm ready to start building the playfield and cabinet, but I have a lot of other things going on. Aside from being super-busy at work I've been collecting parts for another electric sports car project (have a set-aside power converter, OBC, and about 28 usable kWh of lifepo4's set aside to go into my old mazda, and just picked up a borgwarner egear with trashed bearings).

Anyways, I have the layout and artwork pretty well aped from the iphone. I uploaded a video, still concerned about what a real pinball-wizard thinks of the design. (don't worry, I wouldn't be able to do something from scratch anyway) Don't want to invest the effort on something that isn't going to work in the real world.

vimeo down sampled the file to 30fps, sorry.
https://vimeo.com/117046028
(and let's ignore the fact that I'm not good at pinball especially with a touchscreen )

duuuudeee..!!

I used to cut school in the 90's and with my $2 in lunch money I would play TNG pinball and Black Tiger for the whole day (and $1 actually went to a can of soda and a bag of chips..). Holy crap - flood of memories, and now I've just realized that Im old

It Never Drains in Southern California is this weekend. I'll be there (I'm competing, and scorekeeping for several of the heats). All skill levels welcome!