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Pacific Pinball Museum

pacificpinball.org

61–70 of 73 posts

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#61
post #15

Oh dude, looks like they have Indiana Jones Pinball Adventure! This is the pinball machine! I've wanted to play it again for a long time. It had really crisp sound effects for its time, the plunger is a pistol grip you pull the trigger on (with gunshot sound effect!), and intermission games where you punch people. Pretty friggin' awesome. I'm so glad someone still has one running, and I think I'll be visiting this pl…

My parents have one in their house, and it's going to be a huge problem when they die and my brother and I have to fight over who gets to keep it.

[deleted]

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#62

Oh dude, looks like they have Indiana Jones Pinball Adventure! This is the pinball machine! I've wanted to play it again for a long time. It had really crisp sound effects for its time, the plunger is a pistol grip you pull the trigger on (with gunshot sound effect!), and intermission games where you punch people. Pretty friggin' awesome. I'm so glad someone still has one running, and I think I'll be visiting this pl…

[deleted]

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#63
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…

Yes Modern Pinball closed in 2020. It was fun to live a few blocks from there. I think we did two birthday events for my Son there. Always a nice rainy day event for me and my kid. Glad to see a list of these places. There used to be on in New Jersey near Philadelphia and it is now one of the mentioned Bay Area ones.

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#64
post #59
post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP wants to change the software. That's probably easier if you do it with a different CPU board intended for you to mess with things, than with the original board.

I'm not so sure. There are lots of modded roms for older machines, typically to make them suitable for competition. Converting the boards to a new system is major surgery. It might be easier to write the software for a newer system but I'm not sure you save effort overall.

yeah, I feel likes its a huge amount of work to address issues that only appear in 2-10% of games. Also, re-sale value or 'authenticity' might be impacted, although I feel like this type of machine I'd keep forever.

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#65
post #8

I'm glad this exists but at $22 admission I don't think you're going to attract anyone but hardcore pinball lovers and maybe the odd person trying it out as a novelty once and then never returning. Pinball for most people is not an all day activity so an hourly rate seems like it would be a better fit.

If you haven't played pinball in a while, you'd burn through quarters pretty quickly. They're not a quarter per play anymore, it's usually 50¢ to 75¢ for older games and $1/play for anything from the 1990's or newer.

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#66
post #64
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not so sure. There are lots of modded roms for older machines, typically to make them suitable for competition. Converting the boards to a new system is major surgery. It might be easier to write the software for a newer system but I'm not sure you save effort overall.

yeah, I feel likes its a huge amount of work to address issues that only appear in 2-10% of games. Also, re-sale value or 'authenticity' might be impacted, although I feel like this type of machine I'd keep forever.

I own five pins and wouldn’t consider any kind of major modification like that. Regular maintenance is plenty of work without making it one of a kind. Parts are still widely available so original condition is the easiest to support.

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#67
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah, I missed that. > into 6809E disassembly and manual rom hacking darn. I was hoping someone had a c/cpp code dump somewhere :-/. the repo doesn't have assets.

Indiana Jones and all other Williams/Bally pins were written in pure 6809 assembly language up until the launch of the Pinball 2000 project.

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#68
post #37

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.

I didn't.... I was there with my family and just mentioned it to the person charging admission.

Unfortunately, Black Knight wasn't the only machine suffering from it. I went back a couple months later and there was no improvement unfortunately.

I have mixed emotions about it. On one hand, I feel like it's a shame to put these machines out there when they're not really working properly. On the other hand, I feel like I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth. Just having a chance to see some of these old friends again is really worth the price of admission. And I can't even imagine the herculean effort it must take to keep things working as well as they do. Heck, new flipper coils are like $15-$20 a pop. Not sure what the expected life span is, but these machines get a LOT of use so it's got to be just insane and expensive to keep things in tip-top shape. And I really do respect and appreciate that.

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#69
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't.... I was there with my family and just mentioned it to the person charging admission. Unfortunately, Black Knight wasn't the only machine suffering from it. I went back a couple months later and there was no improvement unfortunately. I have mixed emotions about it. On one hand, I feel like it's a shame to put these machines out there when they're not really working properly. On the other hand, I feel like…

I got the impression when I visited that the flipper strength on many games had been dialed down specifically to reduce the maintenance load on the rest of the playfield. It wasn't the same as wild instances of weak flippers where they tend to just be flaky and not trap up correctly.

I don't mind, the goal is preservation after all, and a lot of the SS games can be played elsewhere.

Re: Pacific Pinball Museum

#70
Really enjoyed this spot although we could only stay for an hour or so. The Asheville Pinball Museum (East Coast) is mentioned in the comments but I personally prefer the one in nearby Hendersonville NC (owned by the same folks from what I understand)
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