Because everytime I go somewhere to play a freaking machine some idiot owns it who doesn't take care of his crap and I waste my money as my balls get stuck, half the stuff doesn't work, it's so annoying. I even call the guy....any ways, where's that site that tells you where are the places to play are in your town that gives ratings and such? Ok, ok pinball, itself doesn't suck, obviously, but TAKE CARE OF YOUR MACHINES IF YOU WANT TO GET PEOPLE TO PLAY THEM.
Oxo
I feel your pain..
3 months ago, I would stop by every week and put 50cents into an Indiana Jones that still had the right flipper broken.. did that for about 2 months.. X_X
although, I am grateful now that an Addams family is sitting in it's place ^^
BTW, nice pic Taximasta
Unfortunately, the situation has become somewhat of a Catch-22. Operators aren't as quick to fix the machines because they don't produce the kind of profits they used to. The casual player simply isn't there to support the maintenance costs. At the same time, even dedicated pinheads are less likely to play the machines if they're broken. A vicious cycle indeed.
WE go to Salem Willows arcade, just North of Boston. 22 pins but each week the games are in progressively worst shape or not On at all.
I guess that's expected as crowds peak during the Summer months. Most people are playing the old video games anyway compared to Pball.
Went Saturday night and TOM, which hasn't been working for months. had the DMD out of the Head. TZ, CV and a few others were Out of Order, Getaway rebooted at start of multiBall. many had weak flippers, etc.. AFM and Sopranos both had weak right flippers.
Yea it's sad but these Pballs take a lot of abuse and probably get played more than HUO. Since we usually always go at night I have never seen the Owher there just Attendants, etc. If I get a chance to go in the daytime I'm gonna see if I can chat him up and see why the PBalls seem to go neglected. They probably don't have a good onsite tech and are reluctant to shell out good cash to a Pro to fix them.
Yea, it makes game play frustrating but I suppose it's better than no PBall at all.
The Stern locator seems to be pinballrebel's but with no update or it pulls the data from the site periodically but doesn't remove the old ones so there are a lot of double/triple and old postings.
I coordinate a pinball map (pinballmachine.org) but I don't generally include condition info. Some of the map contributors do. There are just too many games to track. And if I say some game is in poor shape, I feel I have an obligation to report when it's in better shape, otherwise the listing continues to say it's in poor shape and the op loses money.
The other thing is that with so many collectors nowadays with all these minty or "better than factory" HUO games, the location games are always going to pale by comparison. Think of all the time and energy people pour into their home games to dial them in "just right". If an op spent that much time on every machine he'd be broke in a week.
Originally posted by jonnyo:
"Think of all the time and energy people pour into their home games to dial them in "just right". If an op spent that much time on every machine he'd be broke in a week ..."
Point well taken.
Ops don't have to dial their machines in, just make sure they work. I mean, the DMD games even have a dot to tell you when a switch is bad.
The hardest problem to ID, IMO, is a weak flipper. The coin collection dude would have to actually play the game to find that out since a quick flipper check wouldn't show it.
Sorry, I started this thread then went M.I.A. Funny thing is there is only one guy here in Ft. Collins with all these machines....and they ALL have problems. I feel like yelling at the dude. I did call him. He's nice and wants to start tournaments. I felt like starting a list with the problems with the games that I could see but it sounded to tedious. Honestly, I'm not sure he's as big as a pin head as he probably should be or they wouldn't look like this.
Ah well.
Still on the search. Paintball is looking much more enticing at the moment.
Played an AFM with shallow flippers. Can't make the lock ramp, flips too weak. No tilt, though. So I went for the saucer and got replays easily, at 1.8B. Played for an hour on 50 cents. Broken?
Played Creature. More shallow flips. Can't hit the whirlpool during multi. Went for Move your Car twice. Got two replays. Broken? Replay at 60M. Easy.
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