Thanks for the intro BR, he's correct. Bought my XF from the Banker.

I put Cointaker's 555 Premium Warm White Super's underneath the playfield, it looks sharp and all
the inserts look bright and really pop with each individual color.

The XF's is a pin that people either love or hate. Being a super-fan of the show I love the pin. For those that say the pin is "ugly" I'm of the opinion "what do you expect?" The show was always a very dark show, alot of the characters from the show aren't warm and cuddly comic book color vibrant in nature. Every piece of art on the pin ties directly back into the show. If you don't know what something is on the pin you should ask someone that knows the show.

The show, and the pin weren't created to have a brilliant color pallet in mind, so I'm really left shaking my head when people say the pin is "ugly". If they had created this pin differently I doubt it would have stayed true to the show. Looking at the playfield, it has a dominant blue color, the inserts look great and during multiball when you hit a jackpot the pin really explodes with color. Want fireworks? Go to 4th of july celebration.

The XF's pin doesn't drop her panties and give up the points just because you started a game. It's a pin that makes you work for the higher tier point scoring. Hitting the ramps takes precision flipper skills, which might be the reason some people find it boring. Can't hit the ramps, you're gonna have a crappy experience in playing this pin.

Having the pin setup with the right settings based on your skill level as a player will greatly
enhance your having fun/not having fun with this pin. Having multiball set on extra easy you don't even have to work for getting it, it will happen as soon as you start a game. Having it set for hard or extra hard is best for those wanting a challenge.

Hitting the right ramp will open up the trap door, hitting the trap door opens an "xfile" which will display on the dmd, each xfile when completed will score certain bonus points. Several of the xfiles, when done correctly can give you more time in completing it which rewards can be massive if you constantly hit each ramp needed to keep the timer from running out.

The multiball jackpots can be huge when done correctly. Hit the left ramp 2X, then the right ramp once, then hit the file cabinet straight ahead for the super jackpot, and you can continue to do this if you hit the ramps in this sequence, and continue doing this without the timer running out. The more you hit the ramps and get confirmed jackpots it delays the timer from ending.

Going through the upper gates that spell out E B E will give the player multiplied bonuses, and hitting the pop bumpers a certain amount of times will enable the 20K scoring for every bumper hit.

For a person to say this game is "boring" I definitely know there's no way you mastered this pin and played through every xfile through the trap door. If you have done this, post a pic of your score and I'll believe you.

The one thing I found from playing is that if you have the pin set at factory settings you will always open xfiles through the trap door in the same sequence every single time you play. This for me got repetitive, so I learned how to change the game settings where the xfiles that open through the trap door are in a random sequence. This is great because going with the factory settings you might not open some of the xfiles before the game is over, so if you're always getting stuck seeing the same one's over and over it helps keep your interest in the game because you're going to get random xfiles to play through.

The one xfile that is your goal to get to is the episode "blood". This one is different from all the rest because it's one that requires you to rapid fire balls off the flippers into the file cabinet, there is a time limit. Once Blood is complete the pin goes into a brief period where it stops, pin resets and you continue playing, adding to your total score. You will not get to the blood xfile until you have completed ALL the xfiles, blood being the final xfile.

To say you've completed the Blood xfile, that's an accomplishment. If you're still saying that XF is boring, you either haven't completed everything there is to do within the game, or maybe you're one of the top players in the pinball world and it was no challenge for you at all.

I haven't completed ALL the xfiles to get to Blood in one session. I went through the game with the glass off, manually placing the ball through each xfile to see what the end game was and what it looked like, viewing the dmd through each episode.

SO...that's my thoughts. I think it's a great pin, very undervalued and very underplayed pin by a huge majority of players. Don't judge the book by the cover, which I think people do with this particular pin.

Have fun out there!

I can attest to the Banker's taste in pins. He doesn't buy garbage. The pins in his collection
are super clean and alot of them are close to mint condition.

The playfield on my XF was 100% mint,no imperfections. It is flawless.
The cabinet had some minor issues, but nothing to keep me from buying it. Nothing really bad like huge dents or missing chunks out of the wood.

The thing about Chris Carter is that during the time leading up to the first XFiles movie being released the show was the cool show to watch at the time. It was getting alot of press and the internet buzz was huge over the series. Making money for Fox didn't hurt matters either.

Carter was so hands on involved with the show I doubt he could not be involved with the creation and development of a pinball machine that was going to be around for a long time after the series was over.

I'm a sci-fi geek, so for me it's pretty cool to have it in my house, in my movie room with my other XF collectibles. It just screams XFILES bitches!!!

The one thing about the pin that's the biggest pain in the arse is replacing bulbs underneath the ramps. Getting to the bulbs in the pop bumpers is something I haven't done yet. Right now I have 2 out of 3 lights out. One weekend I've got to take the left ramp off and get those replaced. The entire top of the playfield is filled with the ramps, and getting to other bulbs in this area requires taking those ramps off. Same goes for lower part of playfield where you have left side and right side red targets. To get to those bulbs, remove ramps. I was able to do this by partially removing screws to lower portions of the ramps, removing plastics covering the target lights, lifting up on the ramps and removing/installing new bulbs. It was probably as difficult doing it this way than removing the entire ramps, removing plastics, replacing bulbs. My upper playfield needs a good cleaning, so that's gotta happen sometime in the future.

That review's been long overdue. At one point, and I know within the last year the XF was in the top 200 pins on pinside. During the first year I've been on here it was hovering in the 195-200 range on the list. New additions to the bottom of the list have knocked it out and off the list.

It's what I call one of the Rodney Dangerfield pins, "it get's no respect".