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Hi all, hope you are well. I'm doing great! While I'm no longer an active user and have no plans to be, I figured I would drop in and share some history for pinball's sake...

About a year ago I uncovered a completely unknown big mystery surrounding Williams' "Spacelab" pinball machine that started with a confused look at a new-to-me Spacelab machine that was different than everything IPDB had to offer, and ended up in much research and a large-scale write-up, finally leaking all the details to public view via my website and Facebook groups in December of 2019. I held off on posting this for a few months, but figured since IPDB finally caught wind of details on Spacelab "A" and created the new page for it, that I would share the great story here.

A full documentary of the discovery and a detailed overview of such can be found here (information collected and posted online in Facebook groups for a few years, written through the beginning of 2019, posted December 2019), I would love to post here but unfortunately it utilizes a lot of tables and images which really can't transfer well, the page is free and isn't running ads or anything, just seems there isn't any kind of table formatting here: http://thegameseum.com/spacelab2/

Also features ample pictures, which were the first to hit the interwebs and were very different that the IPDB photos at the time (now known to be the converted Spacelabs), which is what inspired me to dig deeper.

AFAIK Spacelab ("A") now ranks as the world's rarest pinball machine that was released and isn't a prototype - beating Williams' notorious "Black Gold" by about 30 machines. Based on very deep research and questioning around the community, the only 2 known to still exist are owned by me and a gentlemen named Don.

I am also running a serial number registry on the page due to the unique circumstances of these machines. If you would like to be added (even anonymously), feel free to reach out somehow!

IPDB is still seeking a schematic and I have one that came with the machine, but I need to locate it. I remember it had a ton of great USA/Italian options on it, really fascinating piece!

I hope you all enjoy the read.

All the best,
Steven

I would also like to take the time to sincerely apologize for my past actions here years ago as a teenager (when I wasn't in the best or most experienced place and made a lot of embarrassing decisions), and hope my random one-off post with good intentions doesn't cause a ruckus, it's solely for my burning love of pinball and something I wanted to share with you all - enthusiast to enthusiast. It's a time I am not proud and I hope you understand I was young, naive, surrounded by people here trying to get under my skin - and as a result turned into something completely opposite of who I was, especially now, but even back then. I would like to take the time sincerely apologize to all of you, especially those I interacted with in an negative manner, and hope we can more forward as adults. I don't plan to return to the site fulltime, but still would like to express my deepest and most sincere apologies, and an apology to the site moderators for the ruckuses and my negative expressions of Pinside itself, which is something I feel we are all very blessed to have as a resource, including those who volunteer a clearly large amount of their time to moderate it. The internet at 16 is a tricky thing, and all of your teenage mistakes end up resonating a lot longer and ended up in front of 5,000 people instead of 5, which only made things worse and added fuel to the fire. It is not a time I am proud of. Very sorry, and with the fire now died down and no longer affecting anything, I hope it is clear my apology is genuine and I truly mean it rather than just trying to avoid criticism or appease anybody. Hope you enjoy Spacelab "A".

All the best,
Steven

Thanks GPS. It is my pleasure. The fire of pinball still burns strong inside of me and I feel very blessed to have discovered this machine, and it will surely be the last one to leave if it ever comes to that!

If you're ever out my way, stop by the museum - drinks on me.

I also just noticed after my article they reached out to James Loflin (a kind man with many wonderful pinball assets! I bought some great production artwork from him over the years) and he seems to have contributed a diagram to the page, which is awesome. Before writing I was in contact with the Strong Museum and planned to purchase photocopies of the entire portfolio of Spacelab to see if I could dig up anything related to this to include on the page, but with the cost being a little nonsensical for what at the time was a private discovery (and possibly more for distribution rights - bit of a gray area for free use) and no guarantee I would find anything, I decided to pass until a later date and never ended up getting back to it... the stuff's not going anywhere. Said drawing and possibly even more documentation is likely in that portfolio.

It was also curious to see IPDB added one thing to my findings, that a knocker was not installed from the factory. But it is

My knocker is in place as well as the jack, which is why I didn't note anything related to the knocker on the original page.

In the IPDB photos it appears Don's jack is present (which they wouldn't stuff and wire in, if it wasn't to be added), and likely Don's knocker was simply unplugged, unscrewed, and removed by an operator at some point in the last few decades.

Knocker is alive and well in Spacelab "A"!
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Since IPDB was looking, I just went through my Facebook and found these pics I took in February 2019 of what appears to be the last existing schematic. It is not like other schematics, the ink is more like some of the factory documents I've bought from James Loflin, and almost appears it may be the master copy... but also could be just a coincidence. It is a full size Williams schematic (aka giant as hell)

You can see where I took a picture of the unique USA/Italy option found inside of the cabinet. (Which I will also attach a picture of below)

It's in the back of one of my tractor trailers somewhere. I'll have to dig it out sometime, although probably more historical than needed for tune-ups. God I hope it's not lost, the last thing I need to lose

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Hi Jay! Hope you are well. I'm also not an active user and haven't been on the site in months so I wasn't implying that you weren't checking Pinside, because I don't post here either and have never mentioned this here. I felt like you may have misread the tone of my post... this was more of a "Check out these cool findings... also they ended up IPDB, which is cool" rather than anything close to a "Grrrrr IPDB didn't credit me!" kind of post. Sorry if it came off that way.

I wasn't the one who reached out to you about credit, and while I appreciate whoever did, it's not really one of my priorities in this. I think it's cool the information is getting around.

I wasn't offended by the lack of credit and was just sharing my article and noting that it seemed to effect IPDB, I didn't claim we spoke, or anything you mentioned - I simply said it's now on IPDB. I am a little surprised and confused by the tone of your reply, and given the tone, I hope the person who contacted you wasn't rude or anything, but then again, it wasn't me. I will edit the title though to remove any mention of IPDB...

This is clearly what happened, and I'm assuming Don also provided you most of the info... which he clearly took from my site. Every little detail (even the serial number format bit, the stars, the backbox insert, etc.) is nearly copied word for word. I've been throwing the discovery around for quite some time (as well as Don's name which I found years ago via IPSND during my research and noticing his serial format matched mine, attempting to establish contact, which is likely how he heard he had the "odd" Spacelab) before I published the article, and the December 2019 release of my article clearly inspired Don to reach out with the details later in the month. I wasn't calling anybody at IPDB a crook or anything to begin with, and assumed somebody had passed the details to you rather than you ripping the details directly from my page, and was simply noting they were now on IPDB and even plugged your site. All in good faith, I didn't expect anybody to take a negative angle to it... none intended at least.

I'm just trying to share the story with Pinside, and was excited to see my details made it to IPDB - no matter who it went through. Sorry if it somehow came off as anything other.

But now that you mention it you never heard of my page or my machine? Your page conveniently even mentions the "2 Spacelabs we are aware of", one surely being mine, unless there is another Spacelab you are aware of. (Which I would love to hear so I can add it to my registry - if the owner is willing) There are no other machines registered on IPSND, including mine, so I'm not sure which #2 you were referencing. If #3 exists that is great to hear.

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All the best,
Steven

Or hey, maybe it's all a coincidence! Either way is fine... I'm just proud to discover it and release it for the very first time without any information being available, which was the point of the article and this thread. Thanks again and sorry if the tone of my thread came off wrong Jay.

Steven

Hey Isochronic! Woof, what a novel!

I think you misunderstood the purpose of the thread and I was just happy to share the information - I am passionate about pinball. Note that when the page was released in December 2019 the information was not available anywhere online. I was not aware that the IPDB later found out the information until today, which inspired me to post here, but not for any reason related to IPDB - it just sparked my memory of my article and it got a lot of praise on the EM pinball groups and after a re-read I figured as I reposted to the EM pinball Facebook group due to many people asking about it (where again, it's getting a lot of positive reception) that I would share here to Pinside too.

It really isn't that complicated. All is well!

And that I did. I did all the checks you are mentioned in your posts - nothing - nada. Over 500 people had a joy reading it over the EM Pinball forums on Facebook, and it was brand new news to them - many of old age and 30+ years in the hobby. It wasn't available at the time of publishing on any page of the internet, so it really was a discovery. Not trying to embellish...

In a group of over 5,000 EM enthusiasts, filled with many old timers, all were surprised and nobody brought up that they "already knew". It did not previously exist anywhere on the internet at the time of publishing... literally. I almost ended up in eBay China with how deep I searched.

Anyways, I can tell what direction this is already heading - not sure why people need to dig deeper and start throwing stones over something pretty cut and dry - it's a pinball story, and the first publication of it. Enjoy it, or move on if it's not worth your time as you say.

Best,
Steven

Thank you, and I hope to see you stop by. No hard feelings by any means...

I get very excited over pinball. I make a life emphasizing the interesting facts of pinball to the masses (not to earn any extra - just because I really feel the passion and love to share), and the page is primarily directed towards laymen. When you try to tell a layman and a collector how cool a pinball machine is, you end up sounding like a jerk to the collector, I guess. If you thought this was bad, you should hear my cousin talk about it Pez collection! I bet if I was a Pez collector his 1960's Batman would sound a LOT less cool. Perhaps I was a little over the top about the Spacelab discovery, but it's still quite clear nobody discovered it beforehand so it's not dishonest, and even if not and somebody 40 ago years magically knew, I was still the first to present it to people (if tree falls over alone does it make a sound kind of thing?), and more importantly put a LOT of time into the write-up consisting of mostly theories that turned out to be true, and I was enthusiastic and proud of it. That's all - didn't think it would end up offending anybody. It doesn't seem to bother anybody over on the EM Pinball Facebook group and they actually enjoy it and even build further excitement upon it (and message me asking about the game a whole ton) - I'm not sure why displaying passion here bothers people... but that's all it is... perhaps it is not a problem on my end? It was the same way when I was young, and while I've grown in all the other departments, I'm blessed with enough people in my life who encouraged me not to let that pinball passion die even if some don't like it. No good reason to squash your passions.

Maybe last year there was a young man by the name of Curtis who displayed probably 2 times the excitement in pinball Facebook groups at an almost daily frequency and finally did get 25% of them fired up (would have been 3000% if it was on Pinside - lighter atmosphere in the Facebook world and the guy posted at a level where day 1 would have been Pinside suicide), probably because it came off like bragging, but when I spoke to him he promised it wasn't, and I saw it in a different light. I think a lot of people just mistake excitement and passion for bragging, I guess. He was a nice kid a little younger than me and just as obsessed with the EMs and he reminded me a lot of myself. A few months later he ended up leaving the groups and quitting the hobby just because of the negative comments - it really hurt to see that, all that passion literally killed and never to return. We need people like him. Hard to watch that fire behind's somebody eyes disappear due to other people and never want to see something like that go down again.

Not the first time my flaming love of pinball and exaggerating at times has had people rolling their eyes at me, but it comes from a place of pure passion, and it doesn't hurt anybody. It won't be going anywhere. Hope you understand.

Never trying to brag, just to share my passion with others, especially those with like-minded interests. If I liked to brag an EM pinball machine would probably be below many other things, this is pretty nerdy in comparison and not something I would put on a T-shirt or a car window decal. I really don't think anybody is jealous of my pinball machine... but interested to learn about it? Maybe, and I'm happy to share! (Or maybe they're not interested, and that's okay too, I advise those who don't like my content to just keep on scrolling and not wasting their time on it and read something they enjoy... I'm putting it out there but not shoving it down anybody's throat)

More proud and passionate of the write-up with no information to go off of besides my own machine, and being able to share the information, than I am of being "first" - I promise you that. But it was, so that was nice too, and makes for a great reveal to many people who were waiting over on Facebook!

I actually found Spacelab to be quite fun. It's probably the add-a-ball rules that make it a big help, and the "over the top" scoring system that tracks scores past 99,990 that both Skylab and Spacelab-conversion lack is pretty cool too. (And lighting the a star on the backglass, if that's your thing) More well-needed with the increased scoring amounts of this version, not very hard to roll it over.

Not the quickest or most intuitive game I've ever played, but I found it to be fun for what it is. Most rare games have a bad habit of being not so great (otherwise they would have made a bunch - Gottlieb's Road Race/Stock Car comes to mind... rare for a reason), but this one luckily rode the coat tails of Skylab which Williams thought was good enough to do a full run of, and was rare because of a different reason than "it bombed at location testing", which is a welcome change.

I could see how playing it on replay mode would be a little stale.

Most bunch it with Jubilee/Darling, but this don't realize these games have slightly different features like the sides of the field each activating a different SPACELAB letter (it's spelled that way on all 3 games), rather than just being 10 point switches, so there's a little more objective in it than the infamous Jubilee & Darling which are more of putting the ball around for points and seeing which of 4 players gets bored first.

Good in a bigger collection. Only game to own besides the rarity and history factor? Ehh, would have to think a little harder on that one... but I think it's fun for what it is. Again, could be worse - could be Road Race!

Also, the Spacelab "A" moniker is on the instruction cards as described in the article, I did not coin the name. Figured it was fitting enough and official enough to start referring to it as that.

Thanks Electrocute!

Didn't expect a bump after a month. I'm doing alright, but it's a shaky time for all for sure... survival mode is a good term, we're all in survival mode. Coincidentally my very good friend Todd Tuckey (who misses our weekly Applebees outing as much as I do) described the Gameseum COVID situation REALLY well this morning on Kaneda's Pinball Podcast... the whole episode is a fantastic listen. Unexpected shoutout, but he speaks the truth... unfortunately some didn't have as many savings - I try to keep a big cushion at all times, and it saved me well. Definitely keeping all fellow arcade operators in my thoughts!

Timestamped link:

https://soundcloud.com/kanedapinball/episode-474-todd-tuckey#t=22:39

Oh god, it is. Well that's an awful shame. I reached out but not really expecting a response 4 days later, and traveling across state lines doesn't seem like the best idea. Hopefully somebody could grab this. (Heck, if somebody here got it, I'd be interested in purchasing it, in the future)

Sucks they left it outside after "it worked a few weeks ago". Always sucks when something lasts for decades and THEN some idiot destroys it. It'd be different if it got wet in 1980.

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Spacelab "A" #2 came home with me (for free)! Besides some cabinet warping the game is actually really nice. Mint inside. The inside of the body and the playfield never saw water. All mechanisms are free and nice condition. Apparently it wasn't out there more than a week

Playfield is REALLY nice, nicer than my other one. Glass is scratched in the weirdest worst way but the playfield is great... low plays

Now all three known to exist reside in Pennsylvania... two with me, one with another.

This one also has a factory knocker like my other one btw

The cabinet is actually still pretty solid and isn't moldy so it wasn't out there long. Just some minor delaminating and warping, will probably need replaced, but is actually waaaaaay better than I thought

Since it was up on legs at least no standing water and always dried up pretty quick. Better than a flood. Really not so bad honestly, I am shocked!

Serial number 173753 (lowest), my other one is 173764 (highest), and the other one owned by another collector is 173757. The range is now officially at 11

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