There will be many happy people this day!

Stu - What's the status on the Bally Old Chicago backglass that you teased us with a while back?

Why is the bottom area flames pattern so different than on the original ? Much thicker on the CPR glass, especially middle bottom and bottom right.

Star trails around the title are also not the same color as the original ?

Still, it does look awesome but buyers should take note of these differences and make sure they dont care

Maybe it's the camera or maybe it's my monitor, but the blue and orange look "off".

I love this although I must say I am a little surprised the masking is different....
I think I am going to pull the trigger!!

original
http://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=852&picno=59226&zoom=1

repro
http://www.classicplayfields.com/photo177.html (second pic)

Original:
original.PNG

CPR:
cpr.PNG

For example:

The fireball between player 3 and 4 is unmasked on your repro and on the original it is masked from light.

Highlights of the cape are unmasked on the repro and masked on the original.

and a few other minor differences as well around the left arm.

Not saying these are bad or incorrect. I have just never seen the differences in the masked areas before.

The composition on the version CPR did is better, IMHO.

Understood, thanks for clarification and sorry for being a pain. I was just wondering why, yours definitely looks better.

I will say I personally like the additional unmasked areas highlighting the cape, the feet area and around the left arm. Whether its original or not I think its an improvement. Are you guys considering a run of playfields and plastics too??? I sure hope its a YES....

Damn - I best get cracking on the restore then.

Fantastic detective work in "Where's Waldo"-ing another CPR layout. There's always sharp eyes peeled to A-B compare and find all the differences, to the point we don't even have to promote our little improvements anymore. You guys find them anyway

Yes, Jetsy Miller made several improvements to the Fireball glass layout. When somebody as strict and perfectionist as Jeff takes on a classic like this (one he too wants to restore in his own lineup of Pinball Pimp'd games carrying his company seal) one makes sure that the opportunity is taken to correct (fairly and reasonably) any historical ugliness, weirdness, or oversight that may have happened decades ago in the rush to bring a game to production. Production where nobody cared about those things. Just pump'em out and get them to operators. Today with repro, we have the luxury of sitting down and making those little changes that can improve upon the past.

Jeff did take some artistic latitude and improve upon the flames near the bottom of the glass. Some of them were simply wonky and ugly, not following the flow and kern of the rest of the flames. So Jeff made it all match better. Nothing that the eye would catch in retrospect, but tasteful re-interpretation of what looked like a rushed job.

The lightblock (masking) on the rear was improved bigtime. As seen in the original look below, there was a really bad oversight in the original design where the theme of glowing edges and highlights was not extended to the cape and comet on the right hand side of the glass. This left an area that looked dark. Literally looked like bulbs were burned out. Once you see it, you cannot unsee it. Jeff decided to balance the entire look, making the backlit highlights tastefully continue over into the right-hand area. Now the artwork will glow with balance, and not look like bulbs are burnt out.

We are aware that there is a small minority that doesn't like us toying with history. But most want us to fix these kind of things, and make their games look better. So we will always try to make small changes if the artist has the correct vision for such improvements.

KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com

Original Fireball Backglass - BACK LIT (dark right hand side)

Bring on the plastics and playfields for Fireball. (hopefully) I see tons of worn out play fields for this title. I wouldn't mind having an extra set of plastics for my game even thought mine are all intact. Your repro glass looks nice but I am a stickler for original. I would have been one of those people that would have paid 500+ for an original OEM glass, but I am glad I didn't have to because my original glass is a strong 9.9++. I have seen many,many examples of Fireball in the past 18 years. All the examples I have seen look like the original NOS glass from the IPDB pics. After saying all this, I would still buy this glass if I had a game that had missing artwork or faded reds. I am tempted to buy one just on the different light coming through in the fireball guy. Keep in mind that IMHO #455 blinker bulbs throughout all the art work except "Bally" and "player 1-4" and "game over" look awesome on this glass and I would never have #44/47's in the "guy"s artwork. Would love to see some pictures of this new repro glass in a game with 47's throughout. I would also love to see a video of this repro glass with #455's. Is this overkill? Maybe or maybe not.

I love the tweaks CPR is doing to stuff like this. It's rather ironic that when they do stuff I really like (Fire, Fireball), the times they leave things "original" I'm left wishing they hadn't (Space Shuttle blue exhaust...arrrrrrgh...it's a pet peeve, okay?). Ultimately the decision should be up to the one doing the work, and it seems like that has been the path of choice at CPR for a while now. If they want the community's opinion on a possible redraw, there's an easy way to find out!

I'm sure it will pick up. It looks on the surface that the EM's are struggling to sell out like the solid state. I'd be curious how many EM glass titles were made, and how many are still available.
What's the thought process with pre-promising for the playfields, but not with the glasses. I'm afraid Old Chicago will have the same low number fate.

I'm in for the OC repro for sure.

Sorry to hear about the poor sales for this title so far. I have seen many Fireballs over the years, and to me, it appeared that all the glasses seemed to hold up well. Some could have been lost to accidents.I lost one myself due to a water leak in my storage,but I was able to locate an original for replacement a few years back. The PFs usually have wear, so I am sure there would be a need/demand for those. I hope there will be some additional buyers for this, to keep the flow of BG repro titles going. I think based on my experiences that Fireball Classic could be a good seller, as I have not seen many that did not have significant fade.Maybe others can chime in about that..

Another great looking backglass.
Now, on to Meteor.

Didn't realise CPR made changes to backglasses. How about rerunning Earthshaker but with the pink Caddy?

My Fireball BG was PLASTIC. I have told it may have been a German game??
Very happy to be the purchaser of the CPR Fireball BG.
thx CPR!

to be fair, this past weekend was a "holiday" weekend and even though I tend to camp out on pinside on a daily basis, I didn't even touch my computer to surf the net the whole weekend. the weather was simply too nice to sit in front of a monitor.

maybe with all of the replies that the this thread is getting this morning (west coast people are just getting up and into work), it will continue to "float" on the 1st page and get noticed by all of the people who were among those waiting for this to get re-done

Got my glass yesterday. This really does look great. Finishes a 7 month journey of mine trying to make the game I picked up complete.

Only problem is that now my head looks really bad holding that perfect backglass. It looked pretty good when I was starring at a white board with exposed bulbs.

Thanks to everyone involved.

Any chance you will be doing Fireball Classic?

That seems really strange to me. If I buy a "reproduction" of something, I expect it to be indistinguishable from the original to the maximum extent possible. As soon as someone exerts their opinion over what they decide is "historical ugliness, weirdness, or oversight" they are producing derivative art and not a reproduction.

Of course nowhere is it stated that you should expect an exact reproduction of the original, so buyer beware I suppose. I'd still seek out an original versus buying one of these.

Looks nice though. It would be cool to see a side-by-side backlit comparison of the masking changes.

If only there was a way to agree even more than completely

No matter what you do it is a reproduction its not indistinguishable. Never can be. It is the extent at which one accepts change. There is degree's here. At the end of the day CPR has done an amazing job. Yea some stuff I have had issue with but think about what it would be without. To say buyer beware I think is taking it "alittle" too far. We need more support for folks pouring their heart and soul into the hobby. My thoughts.

I will be buying one, although my backglass is in reasonably good condition. I never committed to a backglass, but would be in, as I've posted on other threads for both plastics and a playfield!

I have had three Fireballs. From a total beater, a German version, and the nicest one you could hope to find that is now in the possesion of Rat_Tomago. And one thing they all had in common was a near perfect backglass. Fireballs are known to have original backglasses that stand the test of time with minimal color or paint loss which may be why the repros aren't selling well.

That's true.

And oddly, the Fireball Classics, even though they are much younger, are ALL bad. The colors faded and the yellow peeling on 99% of them.

The 80s just had more sunshine man!

Yes, mine has the reds faded to a strange dull pinkish-red. And every other FBC the same thing.

The problem is my PF is worn enough to not be worth putting in a new BG even if Stu did make them. It is a fun game but mine will always be a player. Just no ROI on dumping money into it.

(and everyone should just continue pretending FB-2 and Home Model never existed)

There was probably some sort of cancer causing ingredient in the paint they had to remove. Bad for longevity. Good for people.

I've eaten a lot of carcinogenic paint chips in my life but never off a backglass.

Oh wait, there was that totally de-laminated Black Pyramid that one time. Never mind.

Home model, fine, but what's wrong with Fireball II?

The entire reason for the theme "Fireball" is the spinning disk. The backglass showing the flaming balls flying around. And the skill shot, man that is just such a big part of the game.

OK, 2 is not a horrible game on its own, having drops is nice. But it should have had a different title and not Fireball. I guess it is just the disappointment you get when someone says Fireball for sale and you see it is a 2 or Home.