As I continue work on various games, here you will find a link to the YouTube playlists of the entire series of work on each individual game. On the site itself, I will have individual articles on major elements of each project (i.e. rebuilding a certain board, fixing flippers, touching up a playfield, etc.) but below you can find playlists which are broken down by individual games which encompass all the repair work I have done thus far on each game. The videos in the series are ordered chronologically, so often the first few videos will be “before” shots of what the game looked like when I first got it, and you can follow along as I try to bring them back to life, discovering problems, and hopefully fixing them, as well as making plenty of mistakes along the way.
Remember, the goal here isn’t as much to produce a very slick “how-to” series of videos as much as it is to chronicle my experience. Many of these games I’m working on for the first time – and I never edit the videos so sometimes my dialogue or the shots are bad, but the idea is to give you a look, alongside me, as I try to figure these things out and bring these vintage games back to life.
NOTE: Most of these playlists are incomplete, as these are ongoing works-in-progress. As I complete more of the restoration and publish the videos, I continue to add more videos to the playlist.
Thanks for watching!
- Bally Black Rose Pinball – This series shows off a lot of common maintenance issues as well as some custom work on parts unique to this game.
- Mr. and Mrs. Pac Man Pinball – A fun game that has a sound issue that continues to confound me. See also: http://pinballhelp.com/tag/mmpm/
- Gottlieb Jet Spin (Super Spin) Pinball – A game in beautiful condition that I work on preserving and making play like new.
- Gottlieb Top Score (300) Pinball – A game that needs some work to get running that’s going to take some time – mainly first looks for now.
- Williams Earthshaker – This game came to me in really bad shape. Completely non-working and with major damage to both the playfield and the cabinet. I’ve managed to make a reasonable amount of progress but am currently waiting to find a better cabinet to transplant the game into, so this project is on hold until then.
- Bram Stoker’s Dracula – This machine appeared to work but had some weirdness happening on the MPU board as a result of battery damage, among other things.
- Williams Funhouse Pinball repair – Fixing a broken “Rudy” and making the game all happy again. (work in progress)
- Red & Ted’s Road Show – A recent Craigslist find in pretty good condition so I show what it looks like when I first pick it up and drill into the coin door and see what’s inside.
- Bally “Mystic” – Picked up an early/prototype game and will be getting it into shape.
Hi,
I have really enjoyed your videos, especially liked the BSD repair videos – watched each one! Hope you get a chance to add more like these.
Thanks,
Mark
Wow, thank you so much for making the videos rebuilding flippers on the Black Rose. I have had a couple machines for about two years, and the parts to rebuild flippers for a world cup soccer for almost that long. Today I decided to finally “do it” so being a visual learner I went to youtube to “learn”… My experience was almost identical to yours. Watching the video I even diagnosed a broken bushing, long story short I followed your advice down to springing for some lock-tite and now I can make some shots with ease that used to be difficult.
THANK YOU SO MUCH! Keep up the good work.
Hello, I just aquired a bally mr and mrs. pacman pinball and its my first machine. The machine lights up to some degree but thats it, it does appear to have acid damage and maybe a wire hack or two i dont know anything or anywhere to start on this machine. Any and all help to make this investment not become a total loss would be so much appreciated i can send pics or do whatever. You have my email so I hope to hear back from you. Thanks so much
When a machine “just lights up” that usually means the general illumination circuit is intact, but otherwise no indication that the game is near working condition. If the main processing board is damaged and non-functional, you’d experience the same symptoms. The best approach is to check all the boards and connections and if that doesn’t help, then start swapping boards (find someone with a working game or pick up an Alltek MPU) to see if you can identify where the problems are. If you’re not familiar with board-level repairs, it may be hard to dianose a problem when the game won’t boot up.
Hello.I just watched the Top Score fixing video.It was very educational but I didn’t see how you were able to fix the scores from scoring in all different wonky ways.Can you please tell me how you fixed that problem? Thank you.