Craig Snelling learned how to repair arcade games out of necessity. It was the summer of 1984 and he was 14 years old, living with his parents in Glendale, Calif., when his favorite game, Mario Bros., broke.The video game scene already had exploded with the introduction of the Commodore 64 home computer and Atari console, but the science behind the games was a mystery to most. Repair manuals were rare. Google didn't exist.

That didn't matter to Snelling. He wanted to play.

“So I locked myself in the garage and figured it out,” he said.

Soon, Snelling had accumulated a couple machines in his garage. A friend suggested he sell them. He did and has been ever since.

Today, the 42-year-old lifelong gamer owns Billiards 'N More, an arcade repair shop, game room and store with two locations in Las Vegas and plenty of business.

"The hobby is huge," Snelling said the day before heading to Hawaii for a weeklong vacation, his first in more than 20 years. He always feared going crazy being away from the office too long.

Snelling likes his job. He makes good money, too.

He earns enough repairing and selling arcade games to employ 14 workers and pay $3,000 a month for commercials on the CW network. He stars in one, sinking an eight ball in the corner pocket of a pool table.

Despite the prevalence of console and smartphone gaming, there's still strong local demand for retro pinball machines and arcade games.

There's the Pinball Hall of Fame on East Tropicana Avenue and a small arcade at the Riviera, where the Pinball Hall of Fame once stood. The Cosmopolitan’s Secret Pizza houses two pinball machines and an arcade game, which Snelling supplied.

Then there's Insert Coin(s), the "barcade" on East Fremont Street. Snelling sold the bar's owner, Chris LaPorte, more than 40 machines from his personal collection for more than $30,000.

Snelling still has plenty of machines left over. He keeps them in storage units around the valley but a small collection fills an 800-square-foot game room in his 1,600-square-foot Henderson home. The room is outfitted with pinball machines, arcade cabinets, big-screen TVs and beanbag chairs. It is a favorite spot for Snelling's 16-year-old son, a Call of Duty enthusiast.

Snelling's customers are mostly collectors who know what they're looking for before they call. Sometimes, however, a customer comes in looking for a billiards table and ends up taking home a pinball machine.

The shop's titles include Rocky and Bullwinkle, the Addams Family, the Sopranos, Star Wars, Attack from Mars and Jurassic Park. Prices range from $1,600 to $13,000.

Snelling recently sold a Monster Bash pinball machine populated by the Wolfman, Frankenstein and Dracula for $12,900. His Attack From Mars game, which pits players against aliens trying to take over the world, goes for $12,000. A Twilight Zone machine, one of the most popular in the pinball community, runs $8,000.

"It's a roller coaster," Snelling said of the arcade business. "There will be three days when you don't sell anything, and then you have a $40,000 week."

Snelling makes a good portion of his profits doing repairs and modifications.

Most of his machines have been updated with new graphics and LED bulbs. Original pinball machines used yellow incandescent bulbs under their boards, leaving their features flat.

For $500 in parts and labor, Snelling cracks open the machines and installs colored LEDs. If there are water graphics in the game, Snelling installs blue lights to make the features pop. Green lights go under trees and grass, red under red images.

The Attack from Mars machine, one of Snelling's favorites, originally had gray spaceships. Snelling made them pink and added blinking red eyes to the game's four-armed aliens.

"Modding is huge," Snelling said. "Why would you want to keep it original? I don't know. It looks 10 times better."

Installing LEDs takes about five hours. Because the machines are so heavy and difficult to move, Snelling often goes to clients’ homes and works there. Other common repairs include replacing burned connecters and changing out flippers.

Snelling's toolbox isn't very big. He relies primarily on two pieces of equipment: a multimeter that checks voltage and a circuit scope that monitors computer chips.

And while Snelling admits he’ll always be a gamer, he said his favorite part of the job is the reaction he gets to a job well done.

“Some people almost get teary-eyed: ‘Oh my God, I never thought it would work again,’" he said. "It’s a feel-good moment.”

Snelling can relate. It’s the same feeling he got in 1984, when he finally heard again the music from his Mario Bros. game.



Via vegasinc.com

Our friends over at Pinballnews.com have a great article on the new P3-ROC board as well as news of custom games that will be shown at this years Pinball Expo.

Release: Sep. 7, 2013

The biggest hurdle any potential home pinball machine builder used to have to overcome was not finding a cool theme. Nor was it designing a killer playfield layout with interesting shots and ingenious toys. No, the hardest part - and this continues to affect commercial pinball manufacturers today too - used to be creating a control system to make everything work.

Getting flippers to flip and bumpers to bump may seem easy enough, but when you start adding complex lighting effects, display animations and deep rules, suddenly the task becomes far more complex. Complex enough to defeat many budding game builders.

But all that changed in 2009 when Pinball Controllers started selling the P-ROC board.

The P-ROC gave game developers a ready-made control system which provided the bridge between custom game designs and the sequence of instructions to drive them. Game builders could hook up their lamps, solenoids, displays and switches, sit down at a computer and tell the P-ROC what to do with them.

But if that wasn't exciting enough, the P-ROC could also take control of existing machines from Williams, Bally and Stern thanks to the multitude of connectors around the outer edges of the board.

Suddenly, everything other than the actual playfield layout was fair game for changing, because - let's face it - most games have room for improvement in one area or another.

So if you want better display animations, deeper rules, more interesting objectives, more balanced scoring, less-annoying quotes, funkier music, or even stereo sound, it was all possible by installing a P-ROC.

It still wasn't exactly a trivial task of course, since even rules or effects you wanted to keep from the original code had to be re-written for the P-ROC, and that's in addition to all the new features. But far more time could be spent developing the fun parts of the game, instead of working out how to design the basic framework of the underlying control system.

The pinball world really sat up and paid attention when Barry Driessen and Koen Heltzel revealed the work they had been doing to upgrade The Machine - Bride of Pinbot.

The most obvious feature was the addition of a dot matrix display to replace the original's alphanumeric variety, but below the surface they had completely rewritten the rules to make it less of a one-shot game, while adding amazing 3D animations to the display, numerous gameplay modes, and a brand new stereo soundtrack.

Several months later Dennis van de Pass began work on improving his Demolition Man, rectifying the deficiencies of the original rules by adding multiple modes, making the multiballs more varied, and adding a two-stage wizard mode.

Since then, many other game designers have either taken existing machines and re-themed them or built their own machines from scratch, using a P-ROC board to drive them.

To celebrate their achievements, this year's Pinball Expo will feature a special display of P-ROC-based games.

Gerry Stellenberg of Multimorphic (owner of Pinball Controllers) has arranged for eight custom games and their designers to come to Expo and display their machines on the Multimorphic stand alongside the company's P3 pinball platform which is also based on P-ROC technology.



Read the rest of the story here pinballnews.com

That was fast! As we patiently awaited an update of another playfield drawing from JJP's upcoming, "The Hobbit" pinball machine which was finally shown last week JJP has been quick to release yet another picture in record time. This time detailing the center section of the playfield and what looks to be an action-packed design with cues from the #1 rated Williams game, Medieval Madness which incorporate pop-up trolls into the design. What will be included in this game is yet to be known. 

Along with classic design, auto kickback feature, a cross playfield ball launch and at least 4 flippers, this game looks like it will satisfy those looking for the "classic" look and feel of the Williams / Bally design along with the outstanding build quality that JJP is known for in their games.

See the press release below.

Greetings Pinball Fans,  

Today we are happy to release another section of The Hobbit Limited Edition Pinball Machine playfield.    

Click here to view the middle and lower portion of  

The Hobbit Pinball Playfield  

This will be a 4 flipper game with multiple shots from all 4 flippers. The upper flippers are very active with the game rules.  

As a reminder, as of September 1st the price of The Hobbit LE will increase $500 to $8000.00. We ask that you are current on the payment schedule for The Hobbit by 8/31/13. Those who are not current will see a $500 increase in the price of their game after 9/1/13, making their game $8000.

We will proudly show the full playfield before the end of August. This is going along better than WOZ as much of the basis of the platform is already created.

If you missed this in the previous update, click here to view the top right portion of the Playfield 

JJP Distributor, PinballSTAR Amusements is happy to announce that in conjunction with the fine folks at the PAPA 16 event this week in Pittsburgh, he will be running a WPPR points side tournament on a Wizard of OZ on Friday 10-5.     

     

WPPR points awarded and over $3,100 in prizes and giveaways. All proceeds to go to the PinballSTAR Amusements charity fund towards donation of WOZ machines to Children's Hospitals. For questions regarding this please click here for more info or email Joe atSales@PinballSTAR.com  

Johnny Beaver carries a piece of paper with his pinball high scores written on it. He uses it as motivation to top his previous score. It’s also a way to relive his best moments.

Beaver, 32, is part of a quietly growing the pinball scene in Corvallis. Pinball lovers are slowly expanding the availability of pinball machines in town. And they want bargoers who are focused more on beer instead of the game to join their community.

The Northwest far surpasses other regions in number of pinball locations, according to international machine tracker pinballmap.com. For example, Portland has 246 pinball locations, Seattle has 102 and Eugene is listed with 13, but insiders say there are far more.

Corvallis has five. Beaver and Brian Morrissette, the 18-year-old godfather of pinball in Corvallis, struggled to name even that many.

“(Pinball is) a growing renaissance in America, especially in the Northwest,” Morrissette said.

Contributing to the movement are men in their 30s and 40s who want to relive the game they grew up playing. In the past two years, Morrissette said, the number of collectors in town has at least doubled.

Jeff Obermann, 43, is one of them. He thought his grandparents having a pinball machine in their basement was the coolest thing in the world. He resolved that when he grew up, he would own pinball machines.


Play every pinball game Corvallis has to offer with this interactive Corvallis map. See what each location has to offer by viewing Corvallis pinball map in a larger map.

Now, at least 10 machines are practically stacked on top of each other in his kitchen.

Ben Metzger, 31, is hoping to provide people of all ages the same thrill he gets when he plays pinball. His restaurant and arcade, The Dam, is scheduled to open sometime this fall and will showcase at least a dozen 1970s and 80s era pinball machines, some rare.

Metzger is already building his collection with the help of Morrissette. Metzger keeps three in his future kitchen, where he plays his favorite machine -- Gottlieb’s 1981 Mars God of War -- because the dark basement workshop scares him.

He knows The Dam will make more money from beer sales than 25 cent pinball games, but games like the vintage Panthera 2 are converting guys like Beaver into a zealous community of pinballers.

-- Emiko Bledsoe, Parkrose High School sophomore

See the video here 

May and June are gifts to hockey fans. Most nights, you can find NHL playoff games on television or on the radio. As I was watching the Chicago Blackhawks play in the Western Conference Finals and the Bruins dismantle the Penguins in the East, it occured to me that I had a photo that just might presage, in an odd way, the 2013 Stanley Cup Finals.

There I was in March at Bottom Lounge, a Chicago bar/restaurant/rock club, which the locals told me is a destination for fans of the NHL’s Blackhawks. A nicely preserved pinball machine near the bar caught my eye, because it featured an image of a smiling Bobby Orr, a hero of my childhood. But something was wrong.

Wait … many things were wrong! The illustration of Orr had him wearing a Blackhawks jersey. He did play for Chicago for parts of the 1976-77 and 1978-79 seasons, but he scored only 6 goals in 26 games, and by then his injuries had robbed him of that special Orr magic. Imagine Babe Ruth enshrined in Cooperstown as a Boston Brave or Joe Montana immortalized in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a Kansas City Chief. Orr was, and will forever be, a Bruin. He tallied 264 goals and 624 assists over the course of 10 seasons with Boston and lead the spoked B’s to Stanley Cup wins in 1970 and 1972. Orr is still one of the most beloved sports figures in the Hub O’ Hockey. I would think it would be difficult even forChicago fans to remember him in a Blackhawks jersey.

The image also incorrectly depicts Orr as a right-handed shot. He was left-handed. Continuing the litany of hockey errors, the goalie is wearing a Team Canada jersey. Ah, yes, that vaunted Blackhawks/Team Canada rivalry. It only existed on the backglass of this particular pinball machine. Finally, fans of good marketing will have noticed that the words “Power Play” dwarf the words “Bobby Orr” a bit like Zdeno Chara dwarfs Nathan Gerbe.

But two details are painstakingly correct: the goalie on which Orr is putting some kind of hellacious spin move is utterly bamboozled and off-balance. This happened a lot to goalies who faced Orr. And the peeling paint makes Orr’s knees look as if they’re shattering like cheap vases, which was the case during Orr’s short and uneventful stint with the Blackhawks.


via http://onlyagame.wbur.org/2013/06/06/bobby-orr-pinball-machine