Fantasy fulfilled-well almost!

Those of you who know me will know I can be a little obsessive when it comes to pinball. As soon I obtain and play one game I am already thinking of the next and I became conscious a while ago that this was irrational behaviour and that I was hopelessly addicted to pinball. My rational solution (debatable) was to search for a game that I stood little chance of finding; therefore I wouldn’t change my games as often! 

Several years ago I decided to look for two games that would be a challenge to find, namely Gameplan’s Andromeda or Bell Game’s Fantasy. Ever since then I have watched UK and German ebay without a sign of either. In 2005 I thought a new tactic was needed and as Bell Games were an Italian company, then may be  I should maybe look on Italian ebay. There, under the unhelpful heading of “Flipper” I found my Fantasy!

Fantasy is a 1982 version of Bally’s Centaur. There were probably about 250 kits made but whether they all made it into games is debatable. I managed to find someone in the UK who had actually owned one in the late 80’s and they confirmed that like Centaur it was a great game and of good build quality.

My game really is rough. It has broken and missing plastics, missing boards, a very-very rough cabinet and some fine cracking in the back glass paint work.

This isn’t a financially sensible project as the game cost me more to transport back from Italy than it did to buy the game in the first place and with the missing plastics it wasn’t a viable project but I had already been looking for this game for years so I decided to take the risk rather than give up the dream.

During the next year I tried everywhere to find plastics and got either no or a negative response. Then I spied a big box being sold as “mixed pinball plastics” on Italian eBay which, looked to have a Fantasy plastic poking out from below some others. I bought it and was incredibly lucky because it contained most of the ones that I needed.

Now I can see an end to the project but still have a lot of work to do. At one point I thought of starting with another cabinet because mine was so poor but I have now settled for trying to restore the original. I have obtained boards that are being checked out as I write and need to have the remaining plastics re-made. I thought you may be interested in this game as the art work would grace any “pinball lad’s mag” and who knows you may have the opportunity to play it at some a pinball show one day if it ever gets finished.

Wish me luck!

Eddie Mole