Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Interesting Parallels

This is topic Interesting Parallels in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 01-13-2002, 11:56 AM:

This is my first post to film-tech and I'm kind of nervous, so please bear with me.

My hobby is refurbishing and restoring late-model solid-state pinball machines. Modern pinball machines (say, 1990 and newer) require a LOT of maintenance and general TLC if they are to work as their designers intended. Heavily-played pinball machines deteriorate rapidly if neglected by their owners. The owners of games you see on location (such as in theatre lobbies) are usually route operators who run amusement machines at many locations. As a group, route operators only care about the bottom line, and have no particular interest in or love for pinball. It just provides income.

The parallels? As in film, there are dedicated pinheads (and even a few route operators) who love the games, and who get as much pleasure (maybe more, as in my case), from keeping their games in perfect cosmetic & working condition so that players will have the best possible playing experience. I mean, pinheads fret over things like what is the best playfield cleaner, who makes the highest-quality rubber rings, even who sells the smoothest and most-perfectly-round pinballs (BIG debate over that last one!).

In my case, although I am not in the film business, I am interested in everything that goes on in the booth to put on a good show. From hanging out here, it's evident that a core group of "film handlers" works hard to do better than the corporate-mandated minimum, with the goal of making the show as good as it can possibly be. It drives home for me the fact that there is "passion for the craft" in probably all fields of endeavor. The general public may unfortunately be oblivious to this fact, but they know whether they enjoyed a show (or playing a game). They may not be able to articulate *why* they had a good experience, but we know the answer is the people behind the scenes who care about doing a good job, even in the face of all the obstacles thrown in their/our way.

OK, this is getting too deep, so I will stop now. I just saw some interesting similarities between what you do and my hobby...

-dave

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 01-13-2002, 12:13 PM:

David,

Welcome! If you are interested in "Film Done Right," as we like to call it, you have come to the right place. You are absolutely correct in your observation about the similarities. I find, however, that the problem is not so much with corporate executives who don't care, but most of the operators at the theaters. To them, it is just a job. Try working at a theater where none of the other operators share the passion. Believe me, it is frustrating!

BTW, as you may have noticed, we have our debates too -- what is the best way to clean a projector? What is the best kind of splicing tape? Best kind of splicer? (Seems like that one of our big ones.)

So can I get a good deal on one of the 25th Aniversary Star Trek pinball machines?

Ken

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This one time, at Projection Camp, I stuck a xenon bulb....

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 01-13-2002, 01:05 PM:

Ken, Thanks. I didn't mean to blame corporate owners for all the woes in your business, although they are the starting point for setting local policy. You are right, it's the local people who make the difference.

Star Trek 25th Anniversary is my favorite Data East game. Data East games are generally not not highly-regarded among pinball snobs, but I really like this game myself. By the way, Data East was bought out by Sega, which in turn is now Stern Pinball. Stern is the only pinball machine manufacturer that still survives. Williams (which bought Bally in the early 90s) got out of pinball in late 1999. Pinheads generally favor Williams games. Data East games are somewhat scorned, somewhat unfairly. But I really like Star Trek. Anyway, I don't have a lead on one for you, sorry!

You work for Regal, right? PLEASE move to Eugene and help the local Regal location (Cinema World 8) get its act together! They are falling apart at the seams. Used to be a GREAT place to see a movie, especially in the big auditoriums, 3 & 4. They have so many problems now I cannot enjoy movies there any more. I will save that story for another post perhaps...

-dave

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 01-13-2002, 01:11 PM:

David,

Sorry to hear about all the trouble at your local theater. Unfortunately I am not in a position to move right now, as I am finishing school. (Out-of-state tuition is a biatch!) Perhaps if you send me an email describing some of the problems, I'll talk to someone about getting a certifier out there. No guarantee that the operators being "certified" would help, but it's a start....

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This one time, at Projection Camp, I stuck a xenon bulb....

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 01-13-2002, 01:38 PM:

BTW, how much does an average pin ball machine go for? I'm sure they're all different, but can you give me a range? I would love to own a pinball machine. I love that game!

Posted by Dennis Atkinson (Member # 345) on 01-13-2002, 01:52 PM:

Some of the first arcade machines were made by the same companies in NYC that made movies. They packed up, sold the arcade venture and went to California to make movies in the sunshine.

Fast forward about 85 years.
The arcade industry is pumping out games as fast as they can. Many with bugs in them. People are playing like mad. New ideas are fewer & fewer and the craze is dying but prices of the games keep going up while the life of them is shorter. The buyers stop buying as much of the product as fast as they once did.

So the companies decide home video is the best way the cash in on old programs and new. Now the street dates of the arcade version isn't that much diffrent than the home version. Sometimes their reversed!

This is why most game rooms you see today have the larger / sitdown games. Operators believe "the public doesn't have this at home" so it has to make money. Guess what! I doesn't make a diff.
They will wait for the game to come out on Nintendo, small controler and all.

The arcade and film industry are a lot alike.

Dennis

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 01-13-2002, 05:27 PM:

Ken: Pinball machine prices are all over the map. A lot depends on whether you buy from a private owner/collector, or a retail dealer. A good place to get info on typical pricing is http://www.xmission.com/~daina/classified/index.html I only see 1 ST:25th on there now though, priced at $1350. If you're serious, I can do a little digging for you, but that gives you an idea of what one might cost. Be VERY wary of buying one sight-unseen, i.e eBay or some other Internet sellers.

There are a lot of sharks in that business but also some very reputable sellers.

Dennis: The coin-op videogame business is extremely tough these days. Midway recently bailed out of coin-op games entirely -- I think their last title was Arctic Thunder. Its designer was Brian Eddy, who previously designed some of the best modern pinballs including Medieval Madness and Attack From Mars.

-dave

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 01-13-2002, 07:27 PM:

In my haste to make my first post, I managed to violate one of the rules: Never Use A "Teaser" Subject Header.

At least I didn't do that in one of the more "important" forums. D'oh!

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 01-13-2002, 10:14 PM:

Yeah, and another parallel is that pinball machines are going from electromechanical to electronic to virtually all digital. The new PB-2000 pinball machines have a video display in them that reflects the image onto a 45 deg. angle glass plate that projects a Schuftan image (AKA: "Pepper's Ghost") onto the playfield.

It's a nice idea but it's hard to see the ball moving on the playfield under all the flashing images from the screen. The quality of the image is kinda' hazy from being reflected off a piece of glass. Then if the front glass isn't perfectly clean it's virtually impossible to play the game.

Basically, "they" (the manufacturer) are making pinball machines into video games. If that's the case, then why bother paying the increased prices for something I could play at home on my shiny new X-Box? When I was a kid, most pinball machines cost 25 cents for a 5-ball game and you got a free game for scoring over 100,000 points. (When the dials turned over from 99,999 to 00,000... Hence, the reason why winning a free game was called a "turnover".) Now, it's hard to find a 5-ball game for 50 cents. PB-2000 games sometimes even cost $1 and you don't even get free games!

Top this all off with the fact that most pinball machines are poorly maintained and don't work half the time and it's no freakin' wonder I hardly play pinball anymore!

As far as I'm concerned, pinball machines and movie projectors are the two coolest kinds of machines in the world. It really pisses me off when I go into a place and find a pinball machine all dirty and half-broken. It REALLY gets my goat when I mention the fact the the person in charge of the place and I get an indifferent answer like, "Oh, It's been busted for a long time."

If pinball machines are any indication, movies are DONE for!

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 01-13-2002, 10:59 PM:

Randy-

Your comments about pinball machines would fit right in on rec.games.pinball! There's been many a spirited debate there about the reasons for the decline of pinball. Pinball is an analog beast trying to survive in a digital world. Seems like this also applies to film-based movie exhibition.

Anyway, the Pinball 2000 platform was an interesting experiment, and sales of the games did pick up when they came out. But Williams only built 2 models on the PB2K platform before pulling the plug on pinball completely. Revenge From Mars and Star Wars: Episode 1. Neither game showed off the capabilities of the platform to full advantage. Anyway, moot point since Wms bailed out of pinball. The remaining mfr. Stern Pinball builds what they call "mechanical action pinball", i.e. traditional games with a dot-matrix display.

When I was in grade school (I'm giving away clues to my age now), I was the nerd who wanted to run the 16mm Bell & Howell projector in class. I was also very interested in pinball machines, even that early. You are right about them both being such cool machines!

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 01-13-2002, 11:14 PM:

I was never a pin ball nerd, but I always did like the game. I've never been one for arcades, but that was just about the only game I would play. Something about it. I didn't realize it had such and interesting history, though.

Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 01-14-2002, 10:04 AM:

I often walk into an arcade in a theatre or a mall and look around for the pinball machines. If there are none I usually walk right back out.

I like some of the newer machines like Theatre of Magic and some others. The animations and things are cool.
However... Give me an OLD electromechanical version of Old Chicago any day! There's nothing that can beat that! If you want an electronic pinball machine, my top choice would be Pin Bot.

Posted by Ken Lackner (Member # 1002) on 01-14-2002, 11:53 AM:

When I was younger, I used to watch Nickelodeon a lot. (What kid din't?). One of my favorite shows was "Are You Afraid of the Dark?". Has anyone seen the episode "Tale of the Pinball Wizard"? That was one of my favorite episodes.

Once in a while I'll walk into an arcade specifically looking for the pinball too. I don't play video games, so if there's no pinball, there's nothing for me.

Posted by Dennis Atkinson (Member # 345) on 01-14-2002, 04:32 PM:

When pinballs went all electronic, they got lighter and the companies
said they the cost of making them would be less and the savings would be passed on to the buyers.
25 years later, the Midway / Bally / Williams folks said the samething
when they intro'd the newest pins that were Pentium powered, the ones with the tv in them. Guess what, the prices were higher than ever.
By that time pinball playing was already low.
It takes a lot of quarters to make a profit on a machine that costs around 3 grand.

Dennis

Posted by Christopher Duvall (Member # 284) on 01-14-2002, 10:56 PM:

Hey, I used to be in the gaming biz myself. I ws the pinball and CRT repair guy for Bally's in Virginia Beach, VA. It was mainly out of need because none of the other guys wanted to do the repairs on those things. I took an incredible amount of pride when I worked on the the pinballs. Every week I would break out the bottle of Wildcat and polish the playing field, replaced any dry rotting rubber bumbers, silicon (or teflon)lube the solenoids. It seems nobody does this any more. I hate going into arcades now because these places don't keep techs in the building anymore for general upkeep. Shame.

Your right Dave, Data East Pins are/were not the favs. They always had unique playing fields but the components sucked. I remember the machines always breaking down. The Bally's ones were interesting as well, because they used proprietary solenoids. Everybody used 50 volt ones where Bally's used 43 volt solenoids. However, the machines I hated the most were made by Premier/Gottlieb. God these machines sucked. The arcade I used to run had 10 pins and 4 were P/G machines and usually 3 were down because we were always burning out the driver board or the solenoids kept frying. Hell, I remember losing quite a few logics as well. Memories.........

Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 01-15-2002, 12:19 AM:

My turn to join this discussion....

In 1986-88 I used to work at an arcade that also shopped outside locations and had quite the collection of pinballs, ranging from 70s electromechanicals, to the early digital machines to the state-of-the art pins (at that time Premier's 'Gold Wings' was a new machine)

I remember the early (70s and 80s) Stern machines were like the AMC (car not theatre chain) of pinballs: they used Williams coils and pop bumper covers, Bally neon displays, and Gottlieb and Williams flippers...

I did my share of shopping out pinballs, replacing dead coils and switches, waxing playfields, cleaning backglasses and topglasses, repairing broken coin mechs, changing the hundreds of light bulbs.... etc... Didnt do too much to the electromechanical machines except for playfields and bulbs, the owner of the place was an expert on the older machines. Had a Williams 'Disco Fever' topglass literally explode in my hands (thermal shock, I believe) as I was removing it top service a playfield. Glass everywhere! If I had the room for a pinball I'd have gotten one when the operator gave me a kickback for getting him some theatre locations back then. Instead, I took a jukebox

-Aaron

Posted by Christopher Duvall (Member # 284) on 01-15-2002, 02:30 AM:

I had the same thing happen to me to the top glass of Miami Heat. As soon as I had the glass in the vertical position after sliding it off the game, it sounded like a shotgun and rained glass all over the game room. It was the freakiest thing I had seen then. I have always wondered what had caused that. That explains alot...

Posted by David Stambaugh (Member # 1102) on 01-15-2002, 10:46 AM:

If the glass broke while it was not directly over the game, consider yourself very lucky. If tempered glass breaks over the game, it leaves thousands of tiny shards that get into everything. There is no way to get it all out, even with a shop vac, unless you completely tear down the playfield and clean each part one at a time. This has never happened to me (yet), but the stories about the mess it makes are always the same.

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- dave
Crab juice, or Mountain Dew?