Yeah, maybe a few groans out there, as I read a few past threads about building custom pinball machines. But I'm curious and pipe dreaming! Let's say you wanted to build a custom machine with the modern bells & whistles and had the resources to do so. How much would it ballpark?

Parts are...I don't know...$1500 or so?

Let's say you have no technical skills--you're the business guy or whatever. You'd need to hire: Someone to draw up the "blueprints" for what you want your field to have, someone to create the custom features on the field (ex: the Gene Simmons head), a graphic designer, an electrical engineer (?) of some sort who could make all the parts work together, a programmer who could program your fancy ruleset.

Then you gotta call them all back after beta testing to work out the kinks. Even if you lured a few college graduates to keep the cost down you're still talking about employing skilled labor for months, at least.

There are ballpark numbers, but I'm wondering if anyone has actual numbers they spent on such a project. Or how a place like Spooky or Heighway got the ball rolling with their first titles.

I saw a couple sites online saying they could build you a custom machine, though I didn't ask for any quotes. And after getting my butt kicked on Metallica, Iron Man, Tron, and AC/DC this afternoon I'm curious!

$8000...holy cow. So the pins going for under that ($5000-7000) are benefiting from mass production?

Makes sense, given their resources. Do you think the smaller boutique places are spending that? I've only seen videos of the Heighway and Spooky stuff, but their operations look smaller while the games appear to be the same quality.

Maybe that's the next generation of pinball, putting them together with junkyard parts. Landfill chic.

They were trying to sell it as a one off?

Yeah, never pay retail. Then I wonder about a startup wanting to enter pinball production. They would need to create a prototype, no? It would be crazy to jump in with 1000 units not knowing if there were a market for them.

Wasn't America's Most Haunted limited to 150 units at $6000 a game?