Pinball Hall of Fame in Vegas

[hd474]

Hi everyone,



this is my first post, so far I just uploaded some backglass images.

Short introduction… My name is Jens, I’m 61 (that sounds much worse than it really is…) and I‘m from Dusseldorf, Germany. I’m a mechanical engineer and fascinated from almost all technologies. Main hobby is restoring old things. I did some motorcycles (only Harleys, of course), some old, mechanical slot machines (Jennings, Mills) and other stuff.

I’m a pinball guy for nearly all my life, I had my first own machine (“Fantasy” by Spanish maker Playmatic), when I was 17. Many more followed… My favorite games are Bally’s from the early 80’s, which I consider “the golden age of Pinball”. Centaur, Eight Ball Deluxe, Fathom and many more, I had them all. And was glad to be able to sell for a few hundred bucks, no internet then, prices were low. Last game I owned was “Attack from Mars”, which I restored completely. After the job was done, I sold it. My interest is now more on restoring rather than playing. Enough about me…

I just wanted to describe my experience during my last visit to the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas. I’m a frequent traveler to Vegas, normally I go there 2-4 times a year, I just love the place! I’ve been to the PHOF at 3 different locations, first 2 were on Tropicana, now it’s on the South End of the strip. Everytime I read a review about it, it’s bad. Too many broken machines, Tim is unfriendly, the whole place is a mess and so on. My opinion is different! I still think, it’s a “must see” when in Vegas and I like the variety of games there. I have to say, I have no interest in new machines, where you have to do “missions” and other stuff and I don’t like TFT screen in pin neither. I tried “Foo Fighter” and didn’t like it… Game play sucks, graphic sucks and all other things didn’t found my interest. But (!!!) this is my very personnel opinion!! My focus were the old games. I’m really interested in EM 1-Player games. Reason for this is simple, you couldn’t find them in Germany at that time. Most, if not all pins imported to Germany were 4-player games. And I also love the old (50’s and 60’s) Arcade games.

I would estimate that around 30 - 40% of the games were not working. But I didn’t care. There is so much to see, so many rare games, I always enjoy my time there. When people complain about the number of broken games, they might underestimate the amount of work to keep all games up and running. During my time at university and sometime later on, I worked at a local arcade and there were about 10 pins. My target was to have them running at 100% perfection level, so I spent some hours there every day. And all machines were Bally/Williams/Gottlieb SS types. Latest one was “Terminator 2”. Everyday something was broken. I understand when people who own a Pin complain, if something does not work, but the numbers of pins in the PHOF is so huge, that maintenance must be a nightmare. Especially if you consider the number of EM games, which are pretty easy to repair, but all repair normally take some more time. I also have spoken to Tim on some of my visits. He is an ok guy (wouldn’t make it to my best friend though), but I can imagine, that it’s not fun to talk to private pinball owners, who claim to know everything. He is doing this not for business, but for charity. Therefore I think, he deserves respect.

On the down side, I think the new location is not good. I mean the building, the sign outside, the position of the PHoF is great, much better than on the Trop. But inside it looks like a big warehouse. There is no clear concept, which machines are just stored and which are there to be used. The whole interior doesn’t make you want to stay longer than it takes to play your favorite game or just to have a look. The old locations were better from this point of view, but there were somewhere in the middle of nowhere. It wouldn’t take too much to change that, but I think it’s getting worse.

When I go next time to Vegas, the PHoF will be again one the places I’m planning to visit. Can’t wait for September… J



Jens

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

Wow, thanks for the nice report, Jens.

Good to see the place has customers, but I agree-- it also looks like the machines were just kind of 'dropped off' there without being arranged very attractively At the very least, the walls could also use some posters, too. Or maybe some inexpensive vertical LED lighting, so as to reduce the look of that huge, awkward overhead.

And I also love the old (50’s and 60’s) Arcade games.

Me too, and I don't think there's any kind of digital preservation project for them. By today's standards they're pretty simple in gameplay, but some of them could be pretty ingenious. I did a little mockup of a simple one here, but the helicopter games are really more to my taste.

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Btw, if you ever get interested in visiting the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania area, there's an interesting arcade / warehouse you might visit called "TNT Amusements." Unlike Tim's place, the arcade is small but nicely furbished, and the warehouse behind is chock full of activity in terms of games being worked on by staff. The owner, Todd Tuckey, is a real character, who loves to talk about history, the games, and likes to show off how they work.

Here he is in the warehouse area, getting in to the guts of Midway's Stunt Pilot, showing the mechanical workings as well as the gameplay. (I recommend skipping though this video to the good parts)