Pacific Pinball Museum • Hacker News Board

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#31

Post by pipnonsense » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:17 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #22

vgeek wrote: post #19

https://www.pinballmap.com/ As already mentioned, The Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas is probably the most well known collection on a national level. Pittsburgh has two good collections-- Pinball PA, with various solid states up to modern machines, and Pinball Perfection, with more old (wood rail) tables and rarer tables like Banzai Run and the often-broken Circus Voltaire. There is a growing number of public colle…

I wanted to add Modern Pinball, in NYC to the list, but sadly they closed due to COVID. While it was a small shop, they rotated machines frequently and had a number of historic machines available for play. Also the legendary Steve Epstein was involved in the business. Steve ran Broadway Arcade, which at its height in the 80s had over 144 pins. It was my local arcade growing up and sat where the Times Square Church an…

I am going to the PHoF in Vegas this weekend and hopefully you (or anyone who is reading) can help me with some doubts I have. Do I need to bring cash, so I can change into coins there to play? Would they accept international credit cards to buy coins? (I am not from the US)

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#32

Post by jnovek » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:21 PM UTC

vgeek wrote: post #19

https://www.pinballmap.com/ As already mentioned, The Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas is probably the most well known collection on a national level. Pittsburgh has two good collections-- Pinball PA, with various solid states up to modern machines, and Pinball Perfection, with more old (wood rail) tables and rarer tables like Banzai Run and the often-broken Circus Voltaire. There is a growing number of public colle…

I had a Visual Pinball cab in my living room for a few years and I would tweak the emulated machines to get close to gameplay on real games that I could play nearby. I could get it pretty close -- certainly enough to learn the ruleset and flow of a game. After a certain point every copy of a particular table plays differently and V-pins were sort of another variation of a table that you could find in the wild.

The big thing that was missing (at the time) was good nudge support. I did have an accelerometer in my cabinet but nudging never felt very realistic.

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#33

Post by duxup » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:39 PM UTC

As a web dev I am as excited at the idea of going there as I am by their website. What a fun website, it's just a happy site. The site just looks fun.

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#34

Post by quartz » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:43 PM UTC

busterarm wrote: post #22

vgeek wrote: post #19

https://www.pinballmap.com/ As already mentioned, The Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas is probably the most well known collection on a national level. Pittsburgh has two good collections-- Pinball PA, with various solid states up to modern machines, and Pinball Perfection, with more old (wood rail) tables and rarer tables like Banzai Run and the often-broken Circus Voltaire. There is a growing number of public colle…

I wanted to add Modern Pinball, in NYC to the list, but sadly they closed due to COVID. While it was a small shop, they rotated machines frequently and had a number of historic machines available for play. Also the legendary Steve Epstein was involved in the business. Steve ran Broadway Arcade, which at its height in the 80s had over 144 pins. It was my local arcade growing up and sat where the Times Square Church an…

I'm so sad about modern pinball closing. It was such a gem.

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#35

Post by chriscjcj » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:54 PM UTC

I've been here numerous times. There's a lot to like. When you walk to the left side, there are some very old machines going back to the very beginning of pinball. They're interesting from a historical perspective, but not so entertaining to play. Still, it's neat to see how the art evolved and the fact that you CAN play the really old machines is really cool.

I do have a few complaints about the place.

1. The place is loud. And I guess that's not really their fault. If you get a bunch of machines that make noise all in the same room together, it's just going to be loud. However, one of the most wonderful things about these machines was the strange, unique, and beautiful noises they made. I was excited to find a couple of my favorites, but just couldn't hear them over the din of all the other machines. :-( It would be amazing if they could install a headphone jack on at least the digital machines so that if you wanted to play and really listen to the sounds, you could bring a pair of cans and immerse yourself. At the very least, they should disable attract mode on everything so that it only makes noise if someone's actually playing it. That might help a bit. 2. Weak coils. It's so frustrating to play a pinball machine knowing that you should be able to maneuver the ball to certain places but can't because the coil that's actuating the flipper is just shot. Williams' Black Knight was one of my favorites back in the early 80's and they have it. But once the ball falls to the lower field, it's pert-near impossible to get it back up there because the coil has just lost its oomph. 3. They purportedly have many more machines in storage and will swap certain ones out periodically, but I haven't seen that all the times I've gone over the last few years. It seems to be the same selection. I'm always hoping to see Xenon when I go, but I never do. When I ask about it, they tell me they have one in storage and that it may show up soon when they rotate machines, but it always seems like the same ones every time.

Anyway... I don't want it to seem like I'm bad-mouthing the place. It's great and a lot of fun. I would go more often if they could fix the annoyances. That's all.

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#36

Post by vgeek » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 5:58 PM UTC

mhink wrote: post #27

vgeek wrote: post #19

https://www.pinballmap.com/ As already mentioned, The Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas is probably the most well known collection on a national level. Pittsburgh has two good collections-- Pinball PA, with various solid states up to modern machines, and Pinball Perfection, with more old (wood rail) tables and rarer tables like Banzai Run and the often-broken Circus Voltaire. There is a growing number of public colle…

> As already mentioned, The Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas is probably the most well known collection on a national level. I've heard that a lot of their games have various maintenance issues, is this true? On the other hand, I've wanted to get over there and play the only remaining copy of The Pinball Circus!

Any routed machine will require maintenance, but I believe they have 2 or 3 part time techs based on what I have seen in my few visits. I don't recall experiencing any blatantly broken machines, but there were a number with weak flippers and worn/unwaxed playfields. Maybe <5 machines unplugged each visit?

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#37

Post by uranium » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 6:10 PM UTC

chriscjcj wrote: post #35

I've been here numerous times. There's a lot to like. When you walk to the left side, there are some very old machines going back to the very beginning of pinball. They're interesting from a historical perspective, but not so entertaining to play. Still, it's neat to see how the art evolved and the fact that you CAN play the really old machines is really cool. I do have a few complaints about the place. 1. The place…

Have you spoken to Michael about the coils on Black Knight? I took a pinball repair class from him once at the Crucible [it was awesome--highly recommended if it's ever offered again!] and he specifically covered how to juice up flipper solenoids. He cares a lot about play experience, but I'm sure he's also pretty busy with that many machines to maintain.

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#38

Post by TylerE » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 6:18 PM UTC

vgeek wrote: post #19

https://www.pinballmap.com/ As already mentioned, The Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas is probably the most well known collection on a national level. Pittsburgh has two good collections-- Pinball PA, with various solid states up to modern machines, and Pinball Perfection, with more old (wood rail) tables and rarer tables like Banzai Run and the often-broken Circus Voltaire. There is a growing number of public colle…

No mention of maybe the best of all of them, Silverball in Asbury Park? They own over 600 machines, of which they'll have a few hundred on the floor at any given time. Games run the gamut from the latest licensed stuff to purely mechanical games from the 50s.

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#39

Post by jydftshdrga » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 6:18 PM UTC

itake wrote: post #25

relwin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a) Convert your game to run the P-ROC system: https://pinballmakers.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page Then run this code (or modify it per your needs): https://github.com/mypinballs/indianajones b) or repair your game.

There are software-only bugs (game design decisions?) that I'd like to modify. I found that source code, but they also have made modifications from the original and don't include the original assets. I emailed the creator asking for what hardware they are running for this.

both the poster above you and the repo tell you what it runs on -- a p-roc controller (which hooks up to a pc)

if you want to modify the original game, you're going to need to get into 6809E disassembly and manual rom hacking.

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#40

Post by ElijahLynn » Mon, Mar 20, 2023, 6:19 PM UTC

There is also Next Level Pinball Museum > https://www.nextlevelpinballmuseum.com/ in Hillsboro, OR (30m outside Portland) and it boasts "One of the World's Largest Arcades with over 475+ pinball and arcade games on free play!".