Tales of the Arabian Nights (TOTAN) pinball is one of my “grail” pins… meaning, a machine that I’ve been looking to own for quite some time.   These machines are very hard as most collectors hold on to them forever.   These machines are considered the most beautiful pinball machines ever made due to the machine layout, style, music and theme.

We were lucky enough to actually have 2 machines to restore.   They both were in reasonable shape considering, but suffered horribly from incandescent lamp burn and the resulting heat damage.   The heat from the standard bulbs over time charred the play field and dried out the inserts causing them to lift off the play field.

 THIS GAME IS FOR SALE

Cabinet Restoration

• Original artwork was salvaged.  Color keyed repairs and wood damage repaired.
• clear coat re-applied over entire surface to lock in the repairs and prevent any further sun damage and abrasion wear
• New legs, misc hardware, buttons
• Restored coin door

Circuitry Restoration

The latest release of the WPC series of circuit boards have become more reliable with less parts with one exception, the power driver boards.  Williams did away with separate bridge rectifiers and went with cost effective power diodes to do the same function.   However, these items do not disperse heat well at all.   Ironically, the diodes that drive the general illumination (that did all the damage to the play field) also caused a lot of heat damage on the driver board.    Anyone who says LEDs don’t save pinball machines are crazy because if this machine had been converted earlier, all of these repairs would not have been necessary.

Playfield Restoration

The play field was fully dismantled and cleaned.   All inserts were cut out, cleaned and leveled.  Multiple series of automotive clear coat and water slide graphics were necessary to get the play field flat and ready for paint work repair.   The burned natural wood area was re-colored and hole damage was repaired and painted.   Multiple airbrush layers were locked in with more automotive clear (I can’t even count how many)… and finally the whole play field was final wet sanded and buffed.

The following items were also upgraded

• Wareroom rail was epoxy coated white for a different look as was the skill shot
• Scimitar blade was plated in nickel for an unbelievable look
• New apron
• All new plastics
• All new ramps
• All LED conversion
• New pop bumper assemblies
• New rubber and balls

Before and After

Holiday orders are keeping us dancing so our inventory is changing quick.  However, we have some machines coming ready soon.   Of course, custom orders always take precedence over our own inventory, so if you see anything you like here, inquire today.

Williams – No Good Gofers Pinball  – limited edition run, one of the very last machines built by the Williams / Bally company (Dec 1997)

Williams – Fish Tales Pinball – Super fun original title when pinball was king and Williams was turning everything into gold.  Awesome game

Williams – Alley Cats Shuffle Board – 9′ long shuffle alley.  Restored, full LED display conversion.  Super nice and one of the last shuffle alley machines made.   This machine is READY to GO today

Valley Cougar 8 Professional Darts - full size soft tip dart machine.  Play one of many built in games or play against the intelligent computer opponent.  This has every bell and whistle made.

Millipede / Centipede Multicade – Super nice Millipede / Centipede machine converted to multicade.  With 25″ huge monitor.  Only one available

…. more coming soon in Dec news update

Pinball machines used to made from a complicated set of relays, motors, wheels and contacts which allowed the games to have basic sets of rules.  Around 1977, solid state machines were being designed which incorporated the latest technology of micro processors, memory and various integrated circuits.  This cutting edge technology wasn’t even available to consumers until IBM and Compaq introduced them years later in the form of large desktop computers – but at ridiculous prices.

The pinball industry was one of the leaders in this new technology in the early 1980’s.  The Bally Company continued to design high tech machines for the gaming industry and soon released one of their most complicated and resulting best selling machines of the decade: Eight Ball Deluxe.

Eight Ball Deluxe was designed to continue the success of the popular Eight Ball pinball machine (with Fonzi on the back glass).  This time, Bally added many more rules, complicated shot combinations, and speech synthesis.   The result was a masterpiece and is still revered today as one of the best pinball machines ever designed.

Our Machine

We picked up a donor Eight Ball Machine about a 18 months ago and started collecting parts for the machine.  It was in reasonable original condition, but did not operate.  As well, much of the plastic parts were brittle and broken.   The playfield was worn a bit and the cabinet was pretty dinged up.  However, it was sound and all the components still existed, so it was an excellent candidate for restoration.  We just had no idea how long it really was going to take…

We started by gutting the entire machine and putting all the parts in various boxes.   We attacked the cabinet first and stripped it down to the wood.  The cabinet was repaired, and went through stenciling and a 4-stage paint process including automotive clear.

The playfield was also stripped, sanded down to the wood, repaired and received new reproduction graphics.  The playfield was also clear coated 4 times and cured over 2 months.   In the meanwhile, we bought all of the remaining Eight Ball Deluxe plastic pieces we could find in order to come up with a single complete set of new parts.

The circuit boards were repaired, including the unique combination sound and speech synth board.   A new MPU and auxiliary lamp driver board were sourced in order to drive all the LED lighting that replaced the old incandescent bulbs.

A new coin door, legs and hardware rounded out the package.

Before And After Pictures

The Bride of pinbot (BOP) is a unique machine in all of pinball.  This is the second in the Pinbot series, and arguably the best one of the group.  Only 8100 units were ever created.

This is the only pinball machine that shares the same circuitry as the legendary Williams Funhouse, and if you haven’t noticed, Funhouse has exploded in value by almost 2x in the last year.  We expect the unique nature of this game and lineage to follow the same value trend.

Bride of Pinbot shares much of it’s playfield similarities with Pinbot and Jackbot, where the right side contains the skill shot.  They also share the concept of a translucent mini pachinko style upper playfield on top of the 3 pop bumpers.  The rest is all unique to the BOP.

The main playfield toy takes up a good portion of the back of the game:  the 4 faces of the Bride of Pinbot. This object is a large spinning cube that also doubles as a mini playfield used to lock balls and show the state of metamorphosis.  The object of the game is to guide the Bride through her multiple stages in becoming human, to the dismay of her husband Pinbot.  Only videos can truly show what this is all about.  Add to this one excellent techno-inspired sound track and light show.   The special backglass is created to show lightshow animations as well as point values.

This game is fun and tough because of it’s quick ramps and short playfield area in front of the flippers .  Nothing like this game will ever be reproduced again.

Restoration

We’ve restored a few Bride of Pinbot machines in the past.  Here are a couple restoration photo montages:

Summer 2012

Video

Winter 2012/2013

Bally actually came out with two versions of the Mata Hari pinball in 1977 and was right in the middle of changing technology from electro-mechanical (relays, contacts and basic operation) to solid state (circuit board with programmable memory and deeper rules).   This of course was their first iteration of solid state pinball, but they basically retained the design through most of the decade, so their initial iteration was a success.  Future machines were enhanced with digital sound and more advanced lighting – as seen on machines such as Xenon.

What makes this game very unique is the fact that it uses chime boxes to generate sound (same as the electro-mechanical versions) – which makes this a bell-ringer solid-state pinball machine !

Bally was at the pinnacle of pinball at this time and made some beautiful machines with thought provoking themes.  The colors and artwork on the Mata Hari is robust and seductive and makes for a wonderful piece of functional art.

Restoration

This machine came to us by way of trade in.  It wasn’t really worth that much as it was worn to the wood all over and had many broken parts.  Because of the theme, it was bumped up to the top of the list for restorations as I just wanted to see how nice we can make it (within reason).

The results are much nicer than I had planned.  Not only is it stunning to look at, but it plays fantastic.  I had no idea these machines could play so fast…

This machine went through:

• Cabinet stripping, sanding, repair and 5 step automotive paint process with clear coat protection
• Playfield stripped and sanded.  All new artwork, custom paint under the plastics and multiple coats of automotive clear coat.
• New plastic posts and rubber
• New plastic artwork
• New drop targets
• New flippers and linkages
• New Pop bumper assemblies and caps
• All metal polished
• Wood rails sanded and painted gloss cherry
• Full LED installation
• New PCB
• Repaired driver, transformer  and lamp boards
• New coin door
• New legs and hardware
• Near mint backglass with the unique dagger inscription

Pictures

Before

After Cabinet

After Playfield

Video

We were given a little bit of a challenge – restore a completely non-working Kiss pinball machine and keep it under market value.  Well, why not!

This machine was brought to us literally in pieces.   Since this is a Kiss pinball machine, everyone seems to have a place in their hearts for it.

Restoration

• Cabinet repainted (3 colors)
• Back box rebuilts, repaired and hand painted.
• Displays repaired
• Backbox wiring repaired
• New MPU board
• Driver board, transformer board, sound board, lamp board and AUX lamp board completely rebuilt.  Not one of these darned things worked right.
• Playfield stripped, sanded down, repainted, cleared and new graphics installed.
• All new playfield parts (except plastic artwork – which was flattened and reused)
• New legs and hardware
• New coin door
• LED conversion
• All metal polished

Inquire

We’re currently working on this level of affordable high-end restorations on the following machines:

Xenon

Eight Ball Deluxe

Pictures

The before and after pictures tell the real story here.

BEFORE and AFTER

This just in:

• Kiss Pinball: full restoration blog.  Check back this week for lots of pictures and a great story
• Bally Xenon : If you liked the full restoration of the Kiss Pinball… then you’ll love this machine.  We’re going over the top on this one and it’s going to be a beauty.   Currently still available for a new home.
• Williams Blackout : a classic 80’s pinball with classic Williams sound and play.  This will be restored to keep this pinball inexpensive but still super reliable.
• NBA Fastbreak : We have this unique beauty ready to go.  Check out the pinball inventory
• NFL Blitz / NBA Showtime arcade : in original cabinet and graphics.  RARE!  We’ve had to turn down people all summer because we could not get this machine back in stock.  We have ONE.  Check the arcade inventory for more information.  Will not last long.

Not many people have heard of this game, probably due to it’s low production numbers.  However, most people have seen and played it’s older siblings:  Bally Eight Ball and Bally Eight Ball Deluxe (1981).   The Eight Ball Deluxe is considered one of the best designed pins of the era and also has a universally loved billiards theme.

The Stern Sharkey’s Shootout is a re-release of the Eight Ball Deluxe pinball with modern technology:

• Better graphics on clear coated playfield
• DMD display and animations
• Better lighting
• Better rules and depth
• Way more reliable hardware
• Added ramps and playfield toys.
• Multi-ball

This machine also has some unique features:

• Magic Eight Ball – where it captures the ball and awards various prizes
• User controlled outlane pop-up save posts and center save post.   Use the extra flipper buttons individually (or pressed together) to pop up save posts.  This is a very unique and fun feature to pinball.

Drop Targets:

• The drop targets in this game are very well used.  Each target is associated with a ball number.  Play Eight Ball or Nine Ball as the game modes progress.
• In Trick shot mode, the game will set up and light certain targets (and drop the rest).

The truth behind this game:  originally this game wasn’t very special to me… because it played horribly.  The reason was that half of the game didn’t work correctly.  Once the machine was reconstructed with new parts, the game rules really showed.  By far, this is way better than the original game from which it was modeled.

Restoration

This machine, which upon initial view appeared that it only needed some cleaning and TLC.  Well, after finding out that much of it did not work made me understand why it came to me in the first place.

• Full teardown, cleaning and waxing of playfield.
• Full LED replacement
• Backbox color changing LED bar – we pulled out the ugly flourescent light and went with a color changing LEDs.  This was such an improvement!
• New DMD display
• All new drop targets and stickers
• New slingshots
• New EightBall motor assembly.  This is often ignored!
• Retextured legs and new hardware including cabinet protectors
• Refinished cabinet
• New molding
• New rubbers and balls
• All new pop bumpers and fixed and mylar in this area (this area gets a lot of use)
• Cliffy protector kit on hole.

The result is night and day… and from the pictures, you can tell this is a beautiful and  modern machine!

Pictures

You would think it would be easy to keep up to date with monthly news.  I don’t know where the Summer has gone.

We’ve been busy with a lot of custom orders and will have some restoration articles coming very soon on the following machines:

• Prototype F-14 pinball
• Full restoration of a very very bad Kiss pinball.
• Update to the Gottlieb Playball blog – did another restoration, this time with LEDs and a couple more items.  It’s certainly worth the look.
• Another WWF Royal Rumble restoration – will update the respective blog on that machine.
• Our STERN Sharkey’s Shootout is finally finished.  It had a lot of broken elements.  Before it wasn’t so much fun to play… but now that everything is working (restored and with better lighting to boot), it’s a lot of fun.
• We’ll be starting a big restoration of our Bride of Pinbot shortly.  It’s going to get the full treatment and lots of chrome.  ooooh shiny!
• Did a nice restoration on a 1986 Williams High Speed and an Arctic Thunder arcade.  We’ll just put a couple pics below.
• Had some pictures of our Stargate and Getaway restorations from earlier this summer (see below)

Misc Pictures from late summer:

Multicade (1981 resto/upgrade)

Midway 1999 Arctic Thunder

Williams 1986 High Speed

Williams 1992 High Speed II – The Getaway

Gottlieb 1995 Stargate

Go Braves!

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 is an uncommonly excellent pinball machine – based off a very strange and low budget British mystery-science TV show – Dr. Who.  I wasn’t at all a fan of the show… in fact could only watch it for a couple of minutes before flipping to one of the other 3 available channels at the time.  But, I remember enough of the show and legacy to know about this machine.  Initially, I wasn’t at all interested in even giving this pin a first chance.  Thankfully, I had the option to purchase and restore one.  Being a Bally DMD, it was a simple choice.

Before I started the restoration,  I read the bio on the designer and the background leading up to the production of this machine.  The story is quite fantastic and really helped in understanding the depth of passion that went into it’s design and software programming.  Finally, after turning on the machine for the first time (which I didn’t even do until after the restoration), I was very surprised in it’s game rules, flow and depth.   Actually, had the machine not already sold to a customer, I would easily have kept this machine for myself… and to this day, really wished I had.

Unique Features

Usually, I don’t bother with stating features of a pinaball machine, as it can be easily found in the various wiki sites.  However, as I have played and restored enough machines, I wanted to point out items that stood out for me:

• Custom GI lighting sequences.  Usually the general illumination lighting is On/Off and sometimes level of DIM.  However, this machine (while having the basic features),  also has multiple GI controlled circuits, which allowed the software to apply lighting patterns for different times in the game.  Very noticeable and cool effect (especially with LED lighting).  The backbox also has multiple separate GI circuits for animation.
• Use of pop bumpers.  I enjoyed the around the back path to the top of the pop bumpers – which are used to increase the multiplier bonus.  It becomes one of the many focal features of this machine.
• Different ramp paths.  This machine has a left/right ramp orbit (like many machines), but the left ramp shot has a neat cellar door feature that interrupts the flow.
• Time expander – mini playfield.  Yes of course, the main toy in the game.  Very cool moving platform with 3 levels and integrated perfectly into the game.  Not overdone, not oversized and not the entire purpose of the game.
• Moving Dalek topper.  What a cool feature… makes you want to look up while he is barking at you.

This game is as fun to watch as it is to play.

Restoration

This machine was probably on route for a couple years at best before it was shopped and sold to a home.  There it was played very mildly for the next 15+ years before coming to me.  It was very well preserved, with the obvious impacted dirt and various broken down elements that you would expect on a 20+ year old machine.   The cabinet and backbox were literally blemish free.  The playfield and plastics were without damage.  This machine was a great start, but still needed to be taken down to the wood and rebuilt.

• Flame polished ramps.
• Removed and rebuilt time-expander playfield.  Broken optics and VUKs
• Polished and waxed playfield and plastics
• New pop bumpers.  Originals were in pieces.
• New slingshot assembly
• New flippers and linkages
• Full custom LEDs.
• Under cabinet LED flash light effect.  See the video below!
• New balls, legs, cabinet protectors
• rebuilt sound board and DMD driver
• Moving Dalek topper.  Thankfully, this machine had the original fixed Dalek topper.  It was removed and modified to move and flash along with the game’s original software programming.