OK old man, hurry up and get that machine.

If you hurry you can join our club called the "Old Farts with Broken Parts".

P.S. Glad you saw the EM light as we always keep it lit on Pinside EM.

Ken

I resemble that remark!

Oh, Oh. I see another "What's the best ......" Thread!

Welcome to the "Club".

BTW, that LIGHT is an incandescent bulb, not an LED!

So, was it hard to concentrate on that first game with a raging erection?

You're in good territory for finding EMs at least. Not so good from fending off the competition though.

(Still plenty to go around - no worries!)

More research is good. Play more games and try out Single players vs Multiplayers as they generally have a different Ruleset. Plenty of EM's left so take your time looking.

Ken

Play as many as you can. Personally I love Gottlieb games but other makes of em's just don't hit the spot for me.

I think you may like Gottlieb 2001. Great art, 20 drops and plays fast if set up well. 2 inch flippers.

http://www.ipdb.org/search.pl?any=2001&sortby=name&search=Search+Database&searchtype=quick#2697

You'd think with that Stray Cats avatar you'd have figured out retro rules a long time ago. Anyway, congratulations on your epiphany. It always feels good to have a breakthrough moment like that.

If your in Minnesota stay focused on finding desirable Gottlieb wedge heads.

welcome to the world of real pinball...

soon you will get a machine, and you will discover the other joy of em pinball, which is fixing them...

not joking there, it's very satisfying to make something work when it didn't before... and there are several really sharp people here who provide gentle guidance...

there's a couple threads in the em forum that might help you find a game... follow along on these two:

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/some-nice-looking-em-classics-just-came-up-on-cl/page/103#post-1564626

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/some-nice-looking-em-classics-just-came-up-on-ebay/page/38#post-1564783

"we" also converse about many other things on those threads...

a few other things for an "new" em person...

this is a link to "clay's guide".... worth reading through several times...

www.pinrepair.com/em/index.htm

this is a link to a thread where i relate how i learned to read an em schematic... it may or may not be helpful...

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/reading-schematics-how-i-learned-maybe-it-will-help-others#post-1548629

also, it's never a bad idea to get in the habit of reading "tech" threads, even if at first you don't understand them... from experience, it starts to make sense after awhile...

again, welcome...

Strato / Super Flight is a Fast fun game. But may not hold your attention for long. Pay close attention the back glass as most are going bag. Look for obvious flaking as well as cracks in the ink which will eventually turn into flaking. A have seen a number of people over the years looking for Back Glasses so don't expect to find a good replacement if this one is bad.

Also, concerning the Targets. I have seen operator bend them outward to make it much harder to hit them. In fact, when the game is dirty and weak, impossible. They should be standing straight up and properly gapped so that a hit will score the letter. The posts guarding the targets may even have two mounting holes for liberal and conservative settings. Keep that in mind when playing it.

It is probably a very good starter game. Depending on condition, I would put the value in the $300 to $500 range. As it is not a very sought after EM title. Others may feel differently.

Probably best not to decide that Joker Poker is the machine you must have. Although I really don't see any reason why not.

Some things to help narrow down a search:

- project, or plug and play? (will make a difference in cost)

- they are electromechanical devices, so even if plug and play, will develop issues over time. They can be expensive to have repaired, if you don't do the work yourself (but they're easy to work on)

- 2" or 3" flippers (very different playing styles; the two you played so far are 3" flippers)

- single vs. multi-player; single-player games usually allow a ball-to-ball strategy during the course of a game, whereas a multi-player will reset the playfield for each ball, making it seem like a new game each time

- artwork/theme. Matter of personal taste mostly.

- brand. Suggest sticking to one of the main three (Gottlieb, Williams, Bally).

- budget. Reconciling how much you want to spend with all of the above will usually pin down the list pretty well. Sometimes the list will be empty though, which means some other variable needs to budge.

There are several EMs for sale in the metro area at any given time usually.

yea, make dirtflipper work a little harder...

Wedge Head refers to the shape of the back cabinet holding the Backglass. There are also "reverse" wedge heads that have been flipped over by the manufacture to look different.

yup it is...

if you look at the "head" of the machine, notice how it is shaped like a "wedge"... thus "wedgehead"...

If you want a crash course on EMs and try some more sometime, just PM me. Fair warning though, it's exceedingly difficult to have just one EM.

Welcome to the club! It seems to take a while for those only exposed to 1990's
or later games to discover EMs. The next level of pinball awareness is
pre-flippers and bingos.
Steve

you should be able to find something in that price range...

what you are going to find out is that "playfield and backglass" are the biggest drivers of price in the em world for any given machine... especially if a repro/replacement backglass is made out of unobtanium...

it's a bit different than in the "modern pinball world", in that most em collectors are also "em fixers"... so while i would never "prefer" a non-working machine over a working one, whether it works or not isn't nearly as important as "is it all there?" and "are the cosmetics good?"... just something to consider when thinking about how these things are valued...

judging from the op's description of his feelings in the first post, if he was exposed to a crash course on your collection of toys, you likely would have to contact a doctor after 4 hours...

And it didn't cost $500.00; not that I know anything about that stuff.

step back and take a breath, move slow don't make any rush purchases. research is you friend!
if you move to fast these em reproduce like rabbits
welcome to the CLUB!

breast?

imagesCARSGFWN-854.jpg

EM's aren't really deep, just addictive as you nearly get there often but you don't!

i am VERY VERY tempted to take that and run with it, but alas, this is a family site...

Hi Big! Welcome to the dark side!

I'd check your local craigs list. If nothing is there, or nothing you'd want then keep an eye on it. The best deals usually go quickly so the more you're on top of it the best chance you have.

I think a working project machine is just perfect for a 1st timer. Me? I like to buy them cheap as possible which means non-working and a lot of labor required.
Cabinets and playfields can almost always be fixed. The main thing I inspect and look for in a junk machine is if everything is still present. Last thing I want is to get it home to find a target bank or stepper (etc) had been taken apart and never put back together again... and the associated box full of parts are missing.

You mean the "light side"!

Ragu- So where did you play a "Golden Arrow"? I just picked one up and am in the process of shopping it. I agree, it's a great looking and fast playing game, but has a very shallow ruleset. There were only 7 wedgeheads made after it, so it's near the end of the long run of classic Gottlieb wedgeheads. Long ago, I felt the same way about woodrails that you recently felt about EMs. When I played some that were properly shopped and played as they were intended to, it was a revelation to me. Surprisingly, many of the woodrail games have fairly deep rulesets and many ways to achieve a replay. Hope you find that first EM soon. Keep in mind that generally the multiplayer EMs have shallower rulesets than their single player counterparts. That is due to the fact that relay logic simply can't store each player's individual progress during the game and so must reset (targets made, etc) at the start of each new ball in play.
Welcome to the "light side"!

Welcome to the world of "EM's"....I was lucky that I was introduced to pinball via "EM's"...Guess

that's why I never developed the prejudice towards them that "some" Pin heads have....Enjoy!

Cool. An EM on location? Not very common these days. See if they'll sell you the "Golden Arrow"!

Do you see the light? scene from Blues Brothers

Welcome.

Most everyone like the Gottlieb's including me, but if you're a space guy keep on the lookout for a Williams Space Odyssey or Space Mission.

The backglass is a classic.

And you'll have the famous Steve Fury who knows every aspect of fixing the game. Plus I'll chime in some.

One thing a bout EMs is that there are many of us on here that are willing to help and there isn't a problem out her that one of us hasn't seen.

I'm also a classic car (67 Chevelle SS) and a tinkerer so we'll get along fine.

Bert

I used to have a hard top and a convertable 67 along with a 66 hard top which was the (The galloping ghost)

Ken

Had a TR6 back in the 80's. with those unique Michelin red walls.

I still remember trying to keep those Weber carbs in sync. I'd be on a date and have to stop and sync them.

But a fun car.

I Had a -
'68 Galaxie
'68 XL convertible
'57 Fairlane 500
'62 Corvette
'48 Willys CJ2A
'72 Capri
'69 Mark III
'67 Falcon
'63 Ranchero
'68 Coupe de Ville convertible
'74 Jenson Healy
'63 Scout
'79 Scout II
'63 J-300
'72 J-4000
'78 Wagoneer
'86 CJ7
'68 Javelin
and a few others I probably forgot about. But I'm down to one Toyota Tacoma- the perfect pin hauler.

OK. You win o-din.

Ken

I like convertibles!

EMs are fabulous when shopped properly. They're a super fun part of the hobby since most (even nice ones) are not that expensive, they can be fixed without knowing your way around a circuit board, and often parts are interchangeable amongst manufacturer eras. (there are many people stripping old playfields for art + parts)
For me, 70s Gottlieb can't be beat, but I've yet to really explore machines from the 60s.

There is our common denominator. Mine was yellow and white tutone.

Yep. The last one I sold off was a nice '72 SL175

Yeah, I started working on cars when I was a teen, and then made a career out of it. Some of these cars were left for dead at shops I worked at and I brought them back to life. Others were recycler finds. Some were trades, and a couple were on my want list. I rarely had more than three or four at a time. When gas hit $4 a gallon, I decided to find a new hobby.

I hear ya on that! Some forget that Ford also made a car in 1957. A real eye catcher.
57ford012.jpg