In my little town growing up, there was an old brick building just under the rail road track bridge.  It had probably served as a dozen things in the past 100+ years, but I always remembered it being an old service garage.   One day, in likely 1982, it was converted into coin-op arcade.  I couldn’t believe it.   Thinking back, even then, I recall it being in a little sketchy of a location for kids, and not really the safest place to ride your bike… but things were different in the 80’s anyway.    I remember this place well.  It had a little hand-made bike rack out front large enough for maybe 3 bikes.  The concrete stairs up to the glass doors were old and crooked.  There were many rooms connected together and the floor was uneven.  The weight of the 50 plus arcade games probably didn’t help that old building much.     In the back, right in front of the counter with the attendant for coins, was the Tron machine.   It was likely their prized machine and it was obviously very different from all the others in the room.    This arcade was probably in operation for only a year or two before it mysteriously closed up.    That was the last time I had even seen this game, until now.

Now that I have restored many pinball and video machines of the era, can I truly appreciate how different this game really was.   Generally, when a machine is designed to go along with a movie, it suffers greatly due to the overhead of licensing and timing.   Of course, this game didn’t get everything that was desired and thus left out the Discs of Tron 5th game. However, there are many items so significant in this machine that it is worth noting.

First and foremost is the cabinet design.   It’s odd diamond shape cabinet was certainly not loved by operators because you cannot get a hand truck on the back very well.   It also had odd shaped wood access panels that I believe probably broke often.   So I imagine it was carted from the side and man-handled through narrow door frames.  However the shape goes very well with the theme and allows the monitor and enclosure to be very dark and roomy.

The control panel and surrounding plastics were very well designed.   Curved clear acrylic panels with fluorescent graphics were mounted above and below the control panel along with ultra-violet lighting to result in a very futuristic look.   The monitor bezel was designed to have a three dimension look and feel and an MCU graphic was mounted behind it to make you feel like you were actually inside the movie.   All of this extra plastic and tooling had to add to the game cost significantly.

Lastly, the circuit design was also very much ahead of anything of the time.   The power supply board also housed a battery backup circuit so that game scores would be saved.  This was a pretty complicated design back in the day.   It also served as a separate analog power supply for the audio circuit – which had 2 separate channels for simulated stereo sound to reduce audio feedback.

The game board itself was so complicated, that it required 3 separate, double sided PC boards and ribbon cables connecting both ends.  Needless to say, finding a working TRON board set is hard to do.     This game in general can be very expensive to build – easily twice as much than a comparable Ms. Pacman or Galaga machine from the same company released the year before.

Restoration

This machine was a trade in for a pinball machine that we had sold earlier in the month.  I took this trade in because I had been looking for a Tron machine for quite some time.   Of course, I was informed that the machine mostly worked and that it already had new side graphics (so that was a plus).

In actuality, the game boards were a complete loss.  They had burned traces and so much rework that they could not be salvaged.  I was pretty disappointed.  However the side graphics were applied pretty well and the cabinet was in excellent shape.

This machine went on to get the following treatment:

• New acrylic control panel surfaces (top and bottom)
• New control panel and spinner graphics
• New joystick
• Rebuilt coin door and all metal hardware
• New monitor
• Like new Tron PCB set
• New power supply adapter board (made to replace the old board with newer battery backup technology)
• New switching power supply
• All Lighting replaced by color controlled LED.   This allowed us to program the color of the MPU, marquee and acrylic pieces.  When set to slow fade mode makes you feel like you are actually inside the game.   It’s very cool.

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

Description

This legendary electro-mechanical pinball is the higher end commercial 4-player model. Built in 1976, this is the last production year before all pinball machines went to solid state electronics (first generation of the microprocessor). Only 16,155 were ever made, and not too many exist today in this condition.

Captain Fantastic was a “Tommy” inspired game picturing Elton John as pinball champ Captain Fantastic. David Christensen did the artwork for this Bally game, using a lot of bright reds and blues. Piano keyboards appeared throughout the game, which was one of the first featuring custom-designed bumper caps with drawings of Elton John’s face. The back glass pictured a crowd scene based on the movie Tommy. This game also features mirror lines worked into the back glass art for a dazzling reflective effect. The background crowd features some of the artists friends as well as other historical figures. Greg Kmiec created the playfield design, which has a pleasing, uncluttered arrangement of targets and bumpers, plus four flippers.

This machine also comes with a special bonus: matching framed album cover – Elton John and the Brown Dirt Cowboy (which incidentally also won album of the year in 1976).

Restoration

This machine started with a very low 30,000 plays in it’s lifetime – which shows in it’s all original and untouched playfield.  Hairline cracks exist in the paint (as would any play field of this age), but no wear marks.

• Top side playfield was entirely dismantled, cleaned, polished and waxed.
• All posts were replaced
• All rubbers replaced
• All bulbs replaced.
• Plastics cleaned and are crystal clear (no yellowing).
• Pop bumpers were replaced with custom Elton John tops.
• Drop targets were replaces with custom Elton John units.
• Every single wiper contact was cleaned, filed and re-aligned.  This took a long time but necessary for long term reliability.
• New fuse holders.
• New bridge rectifier for bumpers and thumpers
• New flippers (4)
• New flipper mechanisms (4), linkage, wipers etc
• New bell coil (the other 2 worked fine).
• Works exactly like it is supposed to.  All lights, modes, alternating circuits, score wheels, over-the-top buzzer, lockouts etc work perfect.
• coin door and trim polished.  Slight dent in coin door.
• Replaced legs with chrome models
• cabinet just touched up, but no damage and fade.
• Backbox touched up, slight wear on top that was touched up.
• New locks
• Coin mechs and lockout work

WWF Royal Rumble (Data East 1994 Widebody) Pinball

This machine worked for the most part, but was in need of a full tear down.  Found a couple things wrong, bad lighting circuit and a couple of melted coils from failed circuitry.  We also put in new drop targets.

This machine also suffered badly from lamp heat damage – so we did a full LED kit on it… and there are literally a ton of bulbs in this widebody.  Added some color changers in strategic spots and now the game shifts moods nicely.

Again, I kind of agree with the positive reviews on this machine.  It is a under rated pin, and kids absolutley love this thing.  The other pins in the room get completely ignored when this is on.   It’s Time To Rumble!

If the following isn’t an awesome example of before and after, I don’t know what is.  

Before LEDs

After LEDs