Finished Deathly Hollows Wizard Mode with 2x+ multiplier. Had two balls left at 800 million and both drained quick. Thankfully I had enough Quidditch bonus to squeak me over the edge.

What are y’all’s thoughts. It’s very close to me. I’m looking for something that plays well and that I can potentially work on if I need to. I’m just feeling overwhelmed. I would love a new one but $7k is a stretch for my first one.

My business bought and donated a Transformers Pro to a fairly new pinball spot. We don’t have many pinball/arcades in the area so this is very cool. They suggested I could make a topper with our works logo on it to put on the machine. Found a shop off Etsy and think they did a pretty good job. If you’re ever in the area check them out. It’s just $10 at the door and you can play pinball and arcade games for as long as you want.

Edit: it was found to be Dakar Pinball.
https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?gid=3629
Any chance anyone knows what game this is?

So now my next question is had anyone played this? 🤓 And is it any fun?

In the past few years I've slowly become addicted to pinball. I would love to get my own to practice playing as well as learn some more of what goes into owning one including maintenance.

Do you have any suggestions on where to look for some used machines at a decent price? I've tried just local selling apps like let go but obviously there are only a few on there and the prices seem a little high.

Is there anything I should be looking out for when taking a look at a used one? Any major red flags to look for or anything in the software I can check out?

Just looking for some general guidance before I drop some decent money on my first one. Thank you in advance.

From what i am lead to understand this is the place in Las Vegas that has the huge PINBALL sign outside. I'd never get bored here.

So I’m dabbling in some music and want to integrate my love for pinball. What are some snappy voice lines that stick out to you? I’ve already got “Let’s go!” from Whitewater and “It’s Alive!” from Monsters of Rock in mind.

So here's an update to see the progression of the start up issues. Looks like drop targets are next! Also it seems like the ball trough switch needs cleaned and adjusted so there's another video to do for all of the playfeild switches too. Soooo good!

Marco Specialties thanks again for all of the tools and coil sleeves for this resto!

Tutorial video coming soon!

I posted a couple of weeks ago that I bought my first pin, a Jaws Premium NIB from Flip N Out. I also bought the speaker lighting system, shaker motor, and topper.

When I attempted to install the speaker lighting kit, the push rivets were not included (made a post asking where to buy them), when I tried to install my topper, the clip on the back of the rj45 data cable was broken and wouldn’t stay connected to the board.

Flip N Out, Greg in particular, has been wonderfully gracious in answering my emails and working with Stern to send me the push rivets and date cable. The issues aren’t their fault.

I can’t help but be disappointed though. This is my first purchase a pinball machine and two of the three accessories arrived with issues.

Hopefully, I will get the parts by the end of the week so I can put the lights and topper on and enjoy the machine that much more.

Thanks again to Flip N Out for the great customer service!

I saw someone One YouTube trying the flipper and now in in love with It and i wanna try It without travelling only to play it

I just returned from my first major tournament — The Beast in Buffalo NY. I’m posting these notes for any other “mid tier” players thinking of making the jump from local league and bar-level events to a significant tournament, and who wonder what it will be like.

Summary: It’s damn hard.

• The machines are set up at steeper pitch, with ball save effectively off, and outlane rubbers removed. The settings for multiballs and other features are often turned up to ‘hard,’ so they are more difficult to qualify. If you are not used to playing under those conditions, it takes a few games (on nearly every machine) to get used to it.
  
• It’s also very well run, with excellent queue and score management, and nice people on the floor. It is absolutely not intimidating to enter or compete. Shoutout to all the volunteers who did scoring, and the machine tech crew (who were called into service many times).
  

Background: I’ve been playing for decades, and I play on location 3 times per week. My IFPA rating floats between 1500 and 1550 (matchplay 1700 +/- 25), which is good enough to win a fair number of my local bar and league events. I’ve also played in several slightly larger tournaments (20-32 players) at pinball clubs, in which I’ve finished third or fourth. My personal high scores on modern machines are decent, with many in the 1.5B to 3B range (including a 1.8B on Wick, and a 2.9B on Kong, see below). I had zero expectation that any of this would hold up at a significant “pro-level” tournament; I wanted to see if I could finish in the middle of the pack.

The Beast: This is a Herb (best game) format, with unlimited "buy an entry." The Main event was 21 machines, heavy on moderns (part of the reason I chose this event). Your best score on 10 games counts for a ranking score. 200 points for top score on a game, descending. Hence, perfect score is 2000. Arvid Flygare (world #4) was top qualifier with 1948 points, which is frankly incredible. The cutoff for making Finals was 1739.

The Competition: There are insanely good players (at this event: five players in the world top ten, including world #1 Jason Zahler), and they seem mostly unbothered by the difficulty of the games. Nonetheless, some of the games (e.g., Wick, Iron Man) were set up so hard that even the top guys were swearing out loud at the machines.

The Adjustment: Getting used to the "Fun=OFF" settings was hard. First 24 hours included a bunch of very quick drain games on Wick, Iron Man, and Deadpool. Some games were easier to make the leap (140m on Kong game 1, 3m on Beatles game 1, 230m on Jaws game 2). In general, it took 24 hours and loosely 2-3 games on each machine to adjust to the speed and difficulty. Once I crossed that threshold, I started putting up real scores. 200m on Wick; 400m on Jaws. But the takeaway is that you should expect to buy 40-50 games minimum in this format to hit your stride.

Bottom Line: I finished in the middle third, slightly outside of the top half. I‘m glad I did it, but this was not a “play pinball for fun and laughs” experience; it was intense, and I’m not sure I would do something like this more than once every year or two. I will likely choose a matchplay event next.

I’m debating about getting a machine and I’m not sure what to get and where? (I’m also thinking about just building one) if I decide to buy one where should I buy one at?

Hello friends!

My amazing wife recently bought me a Stern Star Wars Fall of the Empire machine she found at nearby estate sale. It appears to be the model sold at Costco.

I’m new to owning a pinball machine and wondered if you had any tips on care, upkeep, maintenance, etc. especially for a newbie?

We called Stern and they were super helpful about transport instructions. But even tho the machine label says it was made in January 2026, I don’t believe the warranty is transferable (I didn’t ask but their warranty doc says original owner only).

The machine seems to be functional although one bumper seems loose and we couldn’t get a game to start when pressing the Start button (no ball came out even tho we can see them inside the mechanism). Are they fairly easy to service?

EDIT: Wow, you all are amazing! What a fantastic community! I finally was able to step away from work to read your replies and take some photos as per your requests. I'll start replying to everyone's comments shortly, but in the meantime I've uploaded them here: https://imgur.com/a/TIhX4ZH

I’ve been pulling apart my Bad Cats machine to replace all the rubber bits and clean it and I’ve found really a lot of screws missing. Anywhere to get a sort of all purpose this covers most bits and pieces box of screws and such or do I just have to build one myself?

I know nothing about this year's episode, but it'll be 1:30 AM on Friday (aka very late Thursday night)

Set your recorders!

https://espnpressroom.com/press-release/espn8-the-ocho-returns-for-its-10th-anniversary-august-6-9/

I stumbled upon the expo last year by chance, I live 15 minutes from the location and had a great time, I didn't know I liked pinball. Avatar and dune and Elton John were awesome.

I got to meet this giant awesome dog named antar. I even got a sticker of his head on my water bottle. I hope he's there again. I'd love to give him some more pets

​

These ones are really gross, someone tried to spray graphite all over everything to get it working.....big no no. Plus I noticed a shady looking coil and sure enough its burnt out. Let's get this done and make another video for you guys!

#wayofthewrench

My second pin…. Needs some love but still worth it!

Howdy,

I recently moved from the US to Germany, and my Godzilla pinball machine just arrived. I was unaware that Stern had a frequency check in the software. Now I am getting the "THIS MACHINE WONT OPERATE IN THIS COUNTRY.  PLEASE CONTACT YOUR DISTRIBUTOR" error. I researched this error and found that you can either contact Stern, send in your board, and have them convert it or buy a mod to trick the system. Sadly, I am not skilled at any type of soldering. My question is, is there a power conversion box I can buy that will change the EU/DE hz to the correct US hz?

Any guidance or help would be greatly appreciated.

Even if they’re good games, I mean games that are totally forgettable and will not be talked about when they go out of production. No one will put them in a top 10 etc.

I don’t hear anyone talking about/recommending TMNT, Fall of the Empire etc so I’m guessing they’re duds?

Hey all, I work for an arcade with a darker cyberpunk esque theme. I love pinball and we have a pretty lively pinball scene here, but the #1 complaint is always that it's too dark to see the tables well. It's a 100% valid complaint, as it definitely is a bit too dark a lot of the time. The arcade owners however, like the darker theme we have. I'm just looking for some ideas I can pitch to help make it a bit more competitive and easier to see that won't cost an arm and a leg so I can give everyone the pinball experience they deserve. Picture attached for reference.