Archive for the ‘Videos / Picture – Restoration History’ Category

Bally (Midway / Williams) thankfully had the foresight (or dumb luck) in allowing the designers to bid on their next pinball machine.  Rather than go the simple route of making a product tie-in to some current fad or movie release, the Bally/Midway/Williams company realized that not all great ideas came from top down. The result […]

Among the pinball collectors and enthusiasts, the Demolition Man machine is considered a “B” title and thus does not get that much attention.  Often, that also means it stays on route longer collecting money where the “A” titles are consumed, restored and put away forever.  This is yet another case of – the collectors got […]

1967 was at the height of the space race and everyone wanted to share in celebrating the United States’ remarkable technical prowess.  The Williams Apollo pinball machine was created to capture and relive these moments for patrons in the back alley bars and bowling alleys.   About This Machine This machine was produced in limited […]

My Story It had probably been 8 years since I had walked into an arcade when we decided to go to Dave and Buster’s one evening for something different to do.  Inside the game room area, was the typical layout of shooters, driving sims and kiddy redemptions.  Of course, what we went for was for […]

I’m a huge fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger.  Silly, I know.  His movies are pretty campy and most of the products that bare the name seem to be marginal at best.  However, the Terminator series of movies (particularly Judgement Day) aligned well with the peak of pinball in the early 90’s to result in the creation of […]

  Ok, so what’s so special about Comet you say?  Well ok, it’s considered by most as an average pin from the 80’s.  Sure, I’ll concede that.  However, it WAS just an average pin from the 80’s.  Something changed my mind about this machine that was worth writing about. I see a lot of pinball […]

Another classic Gottlieb “wedgehead” pinball from their arguably most sought after period. True to Gottlieb’s single player design, the Skyjump is packed full of great features.  The great think about a single player  Gottlieb machine is that it still uses the same number of relays and logic circuits as the multi-player pinball machines.  This allowed […]

Many of you my age (ahem) may remember this ominous bar-table size stand up arcade in the corner of the arcade.  The one everyone crowded around as they watched 2 people frantically spinning over-sized trackballs in opposite directions. This machine was something totally different.  Black and white monitor.  Simple design.  Head to head action football […]

The “wedge head” pinball machines are part of a unique series produced by Gottlieb in the late 1960’s to mid 1970’s.  They are called this because of their unusual shaped back boxes.  As well, these machines are just a little bit smaller than machines produced by their competitors Bally and Williams in the same era. […]

Here we have an original 1980 Williams Firepower pinball.  This machine was the pinnacle of technology, even for Williams at that time.  This system used the full potential of the System 3-6 MPU board, with extended memory addressing.  Also, this is the first pinball machine to use real time speech synthesis. Firepower also introduced 3- […]