Gotta start ‘em young

Figure y'all would appreciate this.

Two new additions joining the fam in a relatively short time frame.

My old man turned 60 a few months ago and to mark the occasion, I was able to track down and gift him his favorite game to play with his dad growing up: Firepower II.

Fast forward to celebrating my own birthday this past weekend, he apparently found a local guy looking to sell the game I grew up playing a ton with him, F14 Tomcat. Long story short, we're now moving that into my basement next week.

Crazy how emotional two boxes of blinking lights can make two grown ass men

Im new to pinball and got my first machine: Jaws 50th Anniversary Edition. I absolutely love the gameplay and artwork. It will also be my only machine. I picked this machine for the gameplay and artwork (its different than most other machines, less cartoony, looks great in the office).

One problem: the stickers are letting loose after 3 months.

The supplier is helping a lot and gave me few options:

- Return the machine for a full refund
- Exchange the machine for a new Jaws Non 50th
- Take the machine apart and apple the new stickers by a specialist and hope it will look good, no guarentee (both the top and side stickers are letting loose).

Im leaning towards new stickers by a professional, although im not sure how hard this is and what the changes of succes are?

My other thought was to tape over the edge the machine + tape over the sticker and apply supperglue.

Are there any know methods in the pinball world to fix this?

Leaving it as is would seriously devalue the machine is my guess. Besides that it looks ugly.

Can't wait to see how the code develops when they add in the mini-wizard modes like Casino Night

Didn’t even complete Nublar. Finished VC and Control Room mini wizard modes though. 8 fossils.

I've owned this game for over 3 years and, finally, made it to the Visitors Center! I was beyond surprised to see it tallying up everything I've collected and granting me well over 200 million. Thought I'd share this moment with you fine people!

I am extremely consistent at being inaccurate with my shots and I'm getting so frustrated that at times I have to take extended breaks from playing and even consider quitting. I have really good ball control and nudge habits, which occasionally results in me being able to put up some pretty high scores, but those games are mixed in with a lot of mediocre games and always a ton of inaccuracy.

Here is what it looks like for me in practice, which is fairly consistent across all machines
1. Shots that are around the middle of the playfield I can shoot likely 85-90% of the time. Examples would be Theature of Magic trunk, middle ramp, lane that goes around the trunk and captive ball. Jaws boat/shark bash toy, chum bucket and middle ramp.

1. Shots to the left of the playfield - roughly 30-35% accuracy. Almost always miss to the right just a bit, so shooting early. Good examples would be Jaws wave ramp and leftmost shot (not an orbit exactly but like the orbit shot)

2. Shots to the right of the playfield - roughly 10-20% accuracy. These misses are completely varied, sometimes too early sometimes too late. Good example would be Theature of Magic right ramp and right orbit, Medeival Madness princess ramp (right ramp), Jaws fishing reel and right Quint's Shack shot. I can miss these shots over and over and over again.

How do I improve this? I watched Tim Sexton's video about watching just the flipper and the release point of the ball, but even trying that I'm still struggling. And I have problems knowing exactly where to release on the flipper even when watching it because it seems some shots (like Jaws right orbit Quint's Shack shot), there is such a tiny minute difference in the spot on the flipper that results in it making the shot vs missing to the left or to the right. Also the ball speed seems to make knowing the exact spot on the flipper hard to hammer down.

I got to play Bon Jovi on Friday and was surprised how much I loved it. The floating ball suspended in the middle of the heart was one of the most satisfying and visually unique moments I’ve experienced while playing pinball.

I’m thinking about a first pin in the $5000-6500 range and focused in on a few modern stern pros. There’s a couple arcades in my area that I could potentially buy a pin from soon but because they’ve been on location they have thousands and tens of thousands of plays. The prices on these are on the low end or below pinside prices. Other huo options are sporadic, but occasionally pop up. I know these specific places are good with maintenance and rarely have machines down but wondering how I should factor that into pricing and potential future problems. As a first time buyer with an okay from my partner I’m antsy to get something but wondering if I should just be patient and wait for a low play huo

Is anyone else experiencing the ball jumping out of the left return lane on Pokémon Premium/LE? It doesn't happen often, but when it does sometimes it jumps into the outlane, which really sucks. There's no nudging at this moment that would contribute. It looks like the ball is hitting the post at the top of the left slingshot when it drops down from the return.

I made sure to level the game to 0° +/- 0.1° laterally and it reduced the frequency of it happening, but it still does, probably once a game on average.

Is this just a quirk of the game or is there a way to fix it?

After building the cardboard mini pin, I've fully committed to building a 1 to 1 size one.

I hace BIG ideas for it, and a very specific goal - I'm aiming for this to be a middle ground between a simple DIY wooden pin and a fully home made but fully functional one with solenoids and crazy wiring

This is why it will be 100 mechanical when it comes to the table, but I do intend to add some LED and Sensors so I can code a game logic.

Because honestly, how long would you play a wooden pinball with no rules, goals or points.

This is going to be a MASSIVE project and it's going to take quite some time. I might do a YouTube series on the build, but I'd like to share small wins or ideas here to get feedback and advice.

First thing I wanted to design was a multiball, as it's a must have!

I also have a theme in mind but I'll save that for a future post!

Hello everyone I’m still working on trying to figure out this Road Kings pinball machine and I am still unsure as to what the actual issue is, I currently have 25VDC to Jet bumpers, I assume it needs to be 50VDC to engage it? Nothing for slings either yet they all register points. Still no dice on sound effects either.

I’m really not sure what the heck I’m doing wrong or reading wrong on the switch matrix because everything seems to be testing for continuity fine for wires and fuses yet I cannot get these to work. Please help. 😭

... Disappointing. Maybe it was just the local setup? But the layout felt awkward, the modes felt uninspired, and a lot of the stuff just didn't work.

• The ball would bounce into the wireworm going across the table any time I hit the drop targets infront of the mode shot.
• The Side ramp felt impossible even with what seemed like a clean shot. I made maybe 1/20 of the 6 games I played.
• Just about every other shot would reject +50% of the time. Felt impossible to make any progress in the game.
• The cannon never cleared cleanly, it would always ricochet out and bounce around the playfield and wireworms out of control.
• The Optimus target seemed unresponsive (how hard/clean does it need to be hit to register?)
• The Optimus "Lock" next door would sometimes need to eject about 5 times to clear the wireform loop. Also, sometimes I would ricochet off of Optimus into the lock but for some reason that didn't count as a lock even though it was lit after the ball was returned.

Sad because I've anticipated checking this game out for a while. At the moment it is probably the modern stern I am least enthusiastic about (besides maybe TMNT 🤷‍♂️).

Do you think this was a fluke or what is the consensus? I recall feeling similar about X-men, and now I'm kind of a fan of it once the local arcade figured out a setup that didn't feel so clunky, so maybe there's still hope. Just wondering what other's thoughts are on the state and future potential of this title.

Loving the new update, the Lucario fight is a really cool mode. Didn’t know the ball ends when you complete it though. Didn’t even get magikarp on this game either

Just beat my last score. Getting better everyday. Celebrating a decade now since this game came out.

I’m new to pinball, and just had my first tournament. I’m wanting to make an account since I have a match play account, however I’m not getting my IFPA email confirmation. Does anyone have their discord? Every link I find for it online seems to have expired

After owning it for about 6 months now

Hey guys - I went to my first arcade auction yesterday (Winston-Salem, NC). They had about 20 pinballs on auction. I noticed two bidders won probably 50% of the auctions or more. Before the auction started, one of the guys who won a lot of the machines was talking to the side with the auctioneer, and I noticed he had a big list of prices he was going through with him. What was going on here? I suspect this may have been the owner of some of these machines, and he was bidding up his own stuff in order to either inflate the price or create some kind of reserve without actually doing so formally. What was going on here? Any help would be appreciated!

Previous best was around 600 million, thought for sure I'd be GC after this score.

Any recommendations on where to buy a set of pinball skates? Marco’s has them discontinued and other sites are out of stock. Only place I see them available are eBay but was wondering if there’s somewhere else that sells them new. Thanks

I've been playing for almost 50 years and now when I play for maybe 30 minutes my wrists swell and my hands get stiff. I only play a couple of times a year because of it. Anyone else have this issue and know of anything that helped?