They had told me they wanted to cut back to 6, and that only lasted for 2 weeks. Its pretty sad, that a location with such great potential got the games, thinking that the pinball players would line up to play the games. They did zero promoting and Art discussed having a tournament there and they were not interested.
As any operator or collector will know, the repairs on these games are a never ending battle. Its pretty sad, that when you see a tech playing the game, and something major does not work or work correctly, they do not even realize that there is a problem.
Art and I told them to fix the safe on sopranos, and what did we find, that they cleaned the game and the safe was still broken. The garage door on TSPP was broken for months, and the tech tried to fix it, and gave up. The metallica electric chair (sparky) broke and stayed that way for months until i told them the day before finals and they actually fixed it.
We would give them a list after each monthly session of what needed to be fixed and you were lucky if 50% got taken care of. They did buy a lot of "as is" routed games that needed a lot of work when they first got the pins.
I hope we can get a suburban similar to Logan Hardware, The Emporium or HQ Beercade sometime soon. Thanks to Rob, Brixes is our best suburban location and Galloping Ghost does a pretty good job of maintaining their games too. And they are 2 blocks apart !!
Wheaton, IL
