Would a Bally RADical work for you? It'd save you a lot of bucks

Or a BMX pin

Stern offers this on their website. But I think there is a minimum amount. That's probably how Supreme and Can Crusher got made.

Short answer: yes

Not as short answer: How much money do you have to spend?

For someone to make you a custom Pin? From the ground up with all new equipment and programming a rule set with animations?

100K

do you want to have an existing game rethemed, or a completely new game layout and software?

oh that's not even close
unless you mean like a hobbyist making one for someone

I'll bet it's at LEAST to $1M to make a new game from the ground up including engineering, software, artwork and tooling. The more existing parts and code you could re-use the better.

Pinballdepot.ca

$3,500+cost of machine you want rethemed. Includes new PF, all new parts on PF.

They had a booth at Expo.

I certainly wouldn't want to do one for less than that. $100k probably wouldn't even really be all that tempting once you figure in all the time, materials, testing, at least a couple whitewood iterations, sounds/music, voice actors, graphics, animations, etc.

$350k, and I might actually run some numbers to try to figure out how feasible it might be and if it's worth my time (so I wouldn't be working for pennies per day).

But also, I'm not interested at all in BMX. If I'm going to spend 2-3 years developing a game from the ground up, it has to be something I'm actually somewhat interested in. And 2-3 years is probably optimistic, at best.

3D printing, molds, and vacuforming would save on tooling. Otherwise, tooling could be $10-$30k for an injection mold, depending on how complicated.

A laser cutter isn't *too* expensive as industrial tools go, although there are cutters you can outsource to, which would probably be ideal for one-off stuff.

A lot of the concerns of mass production aren't going to surface, since you would probably be making less than 5 games. But, then you have the expense of one-off stuff and the difficulty in finding places to outsource to who are only interested in high volume. There are some benefits and drawbacks.

I assuming they don't customize sounds then? They only work from an aesthetic point of view of the re-theme?

If it's a DMD-era game you could use a PinSound board to redo the sounds -- straightforward but time consuming. But then you're stuck with a mis-themed DMD. I can't believe they're doing custom dots or any coding for $3.5k. (Also, their website appears to be down).

They're not. It looks like they do a new art playfield with the same layout, new parts for the playfield and new decals. No electronics/sounds/animations/rules changes just a cosmetic change like the 80s kit games.

Website was up and running a few seconds ago for me.

I'm such a novice when it comes to the coding aspect of pinball. I'm curious how much time and cost it would take for someone to add certain music or voice clips to a 90's DMD pin with Pinsound.

I have a Pinsound ready to install in my DE Jurassic Park, just haven't got round to it yet! Of course I'll be using a sound package designed by someone else.

My impression is it's relatively straightforward to do a custom sound package on Pinsound as well, but if you're trying to do a semi-professional job I'd anticipate many, many hours of work finding the sounds you want online and editing them to the appropriate volume and length (I'm no expert but I assume you'd need sounds of the same length as the original sounds being replaced, to avoid overlap). Whether you find that fun or tedious depends on your personality, but if you're paying someone else to do it, it's not going to be cheap.

But I don't know if there's a way to replace the DMD animations without re-coding the entire game and running it off of a PC installed in the cabinet. Which would be a huge undertaking and would require serious programming skills.

When I had my JP DE, Pinsound with EndProdukt's sound package was FANTASTIC. He did a great job.

I wouldn't even know where to start, what software I would need, to even sniff sound customizations on my own. I would rather pay someone to do it for me as long as it doesn't cost an arm and a leg.

There is a thread here (or on the pinsound forum) on how to do it. It's beyond me but not by much as i pretty much understood where i'd have to start learning for each step. the software is already developed and it's pretty intuitive apparently.

To get a movie theme done professionally wouldn't you have to have rights and permissions?

its a grey area
a one of machine probably wont get the attetion of copyright owners
5 games built for sale will get their attention

Are you trying to build one pin or several? (same theme)

ShitB was able to make Predator on the cheap in Mom’s basement. No clue how much time they invested.

I think a lot of this depends on how polished of a pin you have in mind. Big difference between homebrew and something with the production quality of a Stern.

Yup, big difference between a production-grade game, a decent homebrew game, a rethemed game with some customization/alterations, something cobbled together from parts, and a game with just some new artwork slapped on it.

Prices will certainly be different in each category.

A guy did a pretty sweet retheme for a WWE wrestler...try to search for the thread.

John Ross still does rethemes I believe - https://pinballplus.com/

LTG : )

I would suggest you find a Bally Radical and simply pay someone who is an awesome artist to make you a new translite, and new cabinet artwork.

Bally Radical is already 1980s skateboard themed, and all the playfield art, sounds and music is totally themed correctly.

Look it up on YouTube.

rd

Not sure if they ever posted what the final tally was on Despicable Me but Bas of the Pinball Amigos would be a good place to start for cost on a ground up build with lots of used/borrowed parts on a original theme.

Im making a rethemed ‘Walking Dead Simpsons’. With custom music/sounds from Cleland.
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Man that's super impressive

It wants me to want a twd finally. As a huge horror genre and Simpsons fan if twd was released like that it would have been a must buy nib for me. Have you started a thread or have more info on this project?

Thank you.

No thread yet. We are still working on it. Soon there be a new thread about it.

Amazing to see this just appear looking so polished and complete. I love what you have done with the art!!!

If you stick to existing mechs, a proven commercial control system and a proven software framework you need to invest about 5-7k for all mechs, software and electronics. Pay an artist for artwork (a few k). Somebody for molding/designing/printing the toys (a few k). Design and production of ramps/rails/wireramps 5-10k. Software depending on complexity 10-20k. Animations for LCD or DMD 1-20k depending on complexity. Sounds 5-10k. Then add somebody for overall design and project management (20-50k). Just a rough estimate for a simple one-off.

Retheaming might be cheaper. Change artwork (design and print) 5-20k. Control system and hardware about 2k. Software 10-20k + sounds + animations + audio as above.