Round1 machines are still a mixed bag of little issues but the last few times I've been through there I've spent some time talking to some of their general techs and managers about standard care and feeding for pinball machines and specific issues some of their machines are having. Even opened up the machines a few times so I could show them things.

They seem genuinely interested in fixing them up and improving the general maintenance but what they seem short on is tech staff, particularly one with pinball specific knowledge whether it's through working on them or just having spent a lot of time playing. Even asked me if I was looking for a job (I'm not). I doubt they're looking for someone who only works on the pinball machines, but if you know someone who plays a lot of pinball looking for a job as a general arcade tech, they'd probably be very interested in talking to them.

They've got a great lineup of late model Sterns, so it's more a matter of someone who understands what the issues are and how pinball should play so little things get corrected quick and before they grow. The actual care for them is pretty standard for someone who knows what to look for.

Chuck. who maintains the machines at MOM's, asked if I knew anyone interested in running tournaments there. I live too far away to take that on but if it sounds like your wheelhouse he'd love to hear from you.

Mom's Organic Market in Abington. 15 machines in a separate room attached to the market. Opened during covid. Owner of the company is apparently quite the pinball fanatic.

https://pinside.com/pinball/map/where-to-play/15111-mom-s-organic-market-abington-pa

done.

There's a few photos of the games/area they're in on the pinside map.

Not much of a seating area. A few stools. You can grab a drink or a few items from the cold case in the supermarket, but they don't have a service cafe or anything. The room with the pinballs is actually where that would be in most MOMs locations, but this one has pinball machines instead. Not that I'm complaining! I know there's plenty of places to eat up in that area, but both times I went I just fell into a pinball haze for hours until it was time to go home.

It's clean and well lit. If something eats your quarter or there's another issue they want to hear about it so it can be fixed. If it's a gamebreaking issue they will actually shut the machine off until Chuck comes through. I've been there twice now and the few minor issues I'd reported after a 4 hour marathon the first time had been addressed by the next time I was there 2 weeks later, which is higher praise than I can offer for many arcades with multiple techs on site, let alone a supermarket.

As I understand it, the machines are out of the company founder's collection. There's an older location down in College Park, MD that has 38 machines such that I've been trying to rationalize "errands" I need to run down that way so I can check it out. It appears to have quite the community built up around that one. It's clearly being done for the love of the game.

quantumjosh

I'm guessing there's a series of switch tests in the service menus, but probably only listed by number so unless you have the key that maps numbers to physical switches you've got your work cut out. Do you have a manual for the machine? Gottlieb's can be tough as the owners of the IP have gone to some length to remove scans/photos of the official manuals/schematics/etc from the internet. I'm sure there are digital copies of the manual floating around private channels, but you'd have to ask the people who have them directly as they won't be on public sites like IPDB.

If it's a failure in the actual switch you can likely pinpoint it pretty quick using a multimeter and simple continuity tests (power it off first), but if there's problems in the matrix or on the board itself it gets more complicated. Someone experienced in repair can work it out when they're actually in front of the machine of course, but without the schematics its a lot more trial, error and wire/circuit tracing unless its something they've seen before specifically.

I don't know their rates, but if you feel like paying someone who knows what they are doing the 2 that come to mind:

Pinballgallery.net in malvern can work on their site or make housecalls, and they've got quite a few 80s Gottliebs in their parlor so they should be familiar.

tntamusements.com in bucks county does a lot of work on machines from the late 70s to early 2000s. I'm not sure if they do housecalls. Their shop is an absolute madhouse. I bought a parts machine from them once and actually seeing it in person was wild. Room after room of parts, boards and machines packed floor to (warehouse height) ceiling.

Stopped by round 1 yesterday and could tell something was up just by the number of people running around repairing (non-pinball) games that have been out of order for months. I asked a guy I know there and the claim is that the repair backlog of their prolonged shortage of mechanics finally caused enough machines to be offline for long enough that it got the attention of corporate and they dispatched some sort of strike team of traveling mechanics to go spend several days there fixing all the broken stuff. He claimed that at least one of the people dispatched had a lot of pinball experience and would be going over the pinball machines and hopefully fix a bunch of issues they've accumulated and do some standard maintenance/dialing in and show their in-house techs the ropes.

I'll believe it when I see it but fwiw at least 10 different redemption machines that had been powered off and/or disabled since at least mid june were up and working again with 3 different mechanics I've never seen before running around with all kinds of tools working on other stuff throughout the arcade. JP was working after being turned off for the last month, but I don't know why it was turned off in the first place. The other games that were on felt the same as the last time I played them. I'll check back in a week and hopefully be pleasantly surprised.

Stopped at University pinball today to see if anything had changed since an employee told me they'd have pinball again 'eventually' back in March. No pinballs, and the employee I talked to today said it was forever.

Hoping that's inaccurate but not holding my breath.

Meanwhile, round 1 did code updates finally. Theyre still 'waiting on parts' for some machines, but the fact they did any maintenance at all at least makes it believable they're working on it.

The arcade in the Berlin Farmer's Market in South Jersey has a Pro. On the one hand Jersey, on the other hand shorter drive from Philly than Quakertown.

How does the Quakertown Farmers Market do on maintenance? I'd been meaning to go check it out, but I've gotten lazy about driving distances father than MOMS/ & Pinball Gallery just to scout smaller spots.

Their maintenance is generally decent. I've never actually seen an employee but there's clearly someone working on the machines because anything that is starting to get suspect is fixed by the next time I go.

I feel like the flippers on the AIQ are on the weak side but not unreasonable. Everything is hittable, just felt like some shots were a little sluggish. I haven't played another AIQ so that may just be intended with that game. That bashspinner the whole game centers around takes a ton of punishment, so maybe they just designed it with lower power.

I always wondered how that place exists. Legit "drop quarters, play games" arcades without gimmicks mostly died out years ago. Everywhere now relies on redemption, barcade type stuff or hourly places like pinball gallery and yet that place feels like I'm in the mall in the mid 80's-90's and somehow everything gets maintained despite only being open 4 days a week, but my new wholly made up fantasy is that whoever runs it just really likes to play pinball and set it up to stash a bunch of machines as cheaply as possible.

Works a normal job somewhere else but on the days the market is closed he's there "performing maintenance" which naturally requires hours and hours of "testing." As long as the coin drop is enough to cover rent anything additional just gets plowed back into repairing/replacing pinball machines keeping the net profit a few bucks above 0 after expenses and depreciation are factored in.

It really makes sense when I think about the games there...

The pinballs are the only things that are new or notable. 5/10 of the most recent sterns. The other ones are all highly rated by the community generally or at least recognized as being better than you'd think at first glance. Simpsons Pinball Party, South Park, Shaq and some billiards game who's name is escaping me.

All the arcade games are just random old stuff picked up opportunistically that never changes and rarely breaks. Not crap, but little that's new, classic or otherwise notable other than maybe that weird looking submarine thing next to the pinballs. Whatever could be picked up cheap on the secondary market that is flashy enough to reliably gets kids to drop a few quarters when their parents drag them to the farmers market.

Says they have 10 locations but the only one that comes up on here or pinball map is one in IL Anyone been there? Looks like ~20 games and they have some stuff from the 80s & 90s in addition to the more recent stuff. First time I've seen a mega-arcade-bowling-restaraunt-redemption-chain having something beyond the the latest from stern. I can't see things like Earthshaker, Fireball or TAF holding up in a place like that without an experienced mechanic. Maybe they actually maintain the machines?

Stretching the limits of "Philadelphia" here but the city proper is mostly a pinball desert so I drove about an hour deep into Jersey today to check out Starcade in Hamilton and Level Up in Somers Point. Totally worth the trip if you don't mind a bit of driving.

Starcade's lineup is a fantastic mix of stuff from the last 40 years and the machines in mostly great shape. Tilts on the tighter side, but fair. Bunch of classic arcade games too.

Level Up has a TAF and 4 stern pros. TAF was off waiting on parts, but the 2 Sterns I played were great. The Deadpool might be the most dialed in location machine I've played in a decade and JP was on point too.

Just to avoid any confusion, Level Up has another older location in the same mall as Starcade but it only has a Super Mario Brothers that is currently being repaired.

"Media Game on State" showed up on pinballmap this morning. https://gameonstate.com

Haven't been there yet, but it says they've got 7 games. Decent list including the first Godzilla I've heard about in the region, and it's an LE, so I guess I'll see you all there this weekend.

edit: Pinballmap says LE, but the stock photo on the location's website is a pro. We'll see!

Don't thank me. Thank the stupid little python script I wrote that that queries every location in the pinball map API once a day and lists everything in the area ordered by recently updated!

They're usually pretty quick to update pinball map. They must have got it right after I was there a few weeks ago. Good to hear there's more than one in the area though.

Gotta extract it out of a bigger script that scrapes a lot of random crap, but I should have some time to do that tonight or tomorrow.

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/tlastowka/pinballmap/main/whatsnew.py

Originally I was mucking with the entire api so there's a few classes implemented. You could strip it down to 3 or 4 lines pretty easily for what it's actually doing. The api is pretty straightforward if you wanted to add other functions. I never got around to using the lat/long distance search rather than pinballmap's built in regions but I imagine it would be pretty easy.

If you run it from the command line it'll dump the philadelphia region. If you just want a different region, edit the script. Or import dump_region_locations_by_last_updated function and feed it a different region. There's also a list_all_regions function that will dump a bare list of available region names.

needs python 3.6+ for fstrings.

Glad it did something neat for you.

I spent some time messing with the distance from address calls instead of region. It works, but a minor annoyance is that for whatever reason the api doesn't include the location's website url (and probably some other stuff) in the location document when accessed with that function, so it requires a second call to the api to pull the extra info.

Always good to have more games on location. With all the stuff that didn't make it into the pro I'd been hoping someone would get a prem/le, but pinball map says they're both pros. Darn.

Spent a few hours a Mom's today. Godzilla isn't actually there yet despite being on pinballmap. I guess I should have read the notes.

Games are playing well though, and as usual every issue I saw the last time I was there has been fixed. The place really is a treasure.

Was anyone else there today? Saw a few people I hadn't seen there before who appeared to know what they were doing.

On a roadtrip last week I made a pit stop at the original pinball MOM's in College Park, MD. WOW. Nearly 40 machines, premiums all over the place, darker but not too dark with lights angled in a way that there's not a touch of glare on the glass anywhere. Only had an hour before I had to get moving again and so many different things I wanted to play that whenever hit an extra ball I felt a pang of regret thinking about the games I wouldn't have time to get to.

I love our MOM's just the way it is but if it grows up to be like it's older brother I will love it even more.

Anyone know what's going on with the Delaware Pinball Collective? They were just getting started organizing before normal delays and covid stalled out their location search, but they appeared on pinballmap the other day so I'm assuming they're close to going live if they aren't already. It's SW of Wilmington about an hour from philly, but that's not really any farther from Philadelphia than most of the other locations many of us hit regularly.

Website looks like it's been updated, but doesn't give any info about what days/hours it is/will be accessible to members or if membership is open to members outside of DE.

I sent them a message on their contact form so if they get back to me I'll post any relevant info here.

Sweet, any idea what their operating hours are? Only thing holding me back is wondering how often I'd be able to get there between traffic and work.

They also wrote back to me with the same info. Hopefully the hours will open up a bit more once they're up and running but I just signed up. Can't wait to check it out.

I sent you a PM so I could blather on without clogging up the thread.

I just spent close to 6 hours there. Dynamite.

Last I heard Godzilla @ MOMs was apparently just there for the release party.

I believe the one I played at the MD location is there for the long term. As far as I know the games at 2 MOM's with pinball are all from the owner of the company's personal collection of machines so seeing it in both locations did seem weird.

More of a restoration thing, but does anyone have a good source in the area for random ICs? I'm restoring some system 6 boards and each time I get a section working and move on to the next it reveals another IC that needs to be replaced. They're usually only a few bucks so no big deal but the shipping on all these tiny orders from marco and mouser is killing me.

They're another good online source but I meant a place I could call to confirm they have whatever chip and then go pick it up that day. Like the hole in the wall plumbing/heating supply places that have a storeroom with every arcane valve or control assembly ever made in the last 100 years.

The turnaround time for shipped orders is bad/worse than the cost of shipping. I have a huge stock of commodity transistors and passive components on hand from years of electronics projects but whenever I hit upon a dead/suspect IC I'm dead in the water for a week.

I guess I should just order 2 or 3 of every chip on the boards that isn't absurdly expensive just to have on hand.

I had one a block from my house for years. Sometimes I'd be over there 5-10 times in a day while working through a project. Years later the old sign still sits atop a pole in the parking lot mocking me every time I walk past.

The microcenter in villanova has stepped up their DIY supply in the last few years enough that it's saved my butt a few times for simpler components but for ICs they've got few if any.

I'm a little closer than you but can only get down there 2-3 times a month due to schedule conflicts and it's totally worth it. On a family membership you'll cover the monthly fee in one visit compared to a coin drop location, let alone one with a collection that wide and well maintained. Everyone I've met so far has been cool.

Hyndman's Arcade @ the Berlin Farmer's Market a few minutes over the bridge in South Jersey added a Mando Pro to their lineup.

Insert random nostalgia about Spaceport in Quakerbridge mall back in the 80s and pushing past the crowds playing the newest video games near the front to get to the army of classic pinballs hidden in the back. I still remember the day I discovered that the 60s era games had manually controlled troughs and you could put all 5 balls in play at once if you felt so inclined.

Not that I needed an excuse to head over there again but this will do.

Was in the area so swung through Round 1 in center city to see if things improved at all since last fall.

Good News: Things improved.

Bad News: Still a ways to go.

I pointed out a few low hanging fruit to a mechanic. I'll check back in a few weeks and see if it helped.

Hyndman's at the Berlin Farmer's Market is changing ownership soon. Confirmed from multiple sources including the current owner Mark. From what I hear the pins are staying so I'm not panicking but I think this calls for some tribute.

I've been to Hyndman's with increasingly regularity over the last few years as many of my other haunts shut down, replaced their pins with newfangled stuff or just went to hell. It became a true lifelife post-pandemic and in the last 12 months I've been there almost every week after I discovered the location I've been able to walk to for 20 years replaced their last 3 pins with redemption machines.

I've encountered Mark a few times over the years emptying coin boxes or fixing machines. We know some of the same people but I don't know him personally. I always thought he must have an interesting story

The one thing I've known about him for a long time is that he runs a damn fine old school arcade like the kind I grew up in.

No frills. No redemption machines. No pounding music. No loyalty clubs. No food and drink. No tokens or swipe cards.

Just a dark room with fully stocked bill changers and packed with machines owned by someone that gives damn. The machines weren't always pretty but the setups were fair and when a ball got stuck or a flipper broke you didn't get that sinking feeling that it would stay that way forever.

A few weeks ago I had a day off from work so I headed out to play and found him working hard fixing machines. I hit upon a temperamental flipper on AIQ so I pointed it out to him and half-jokingly offered to fix it if he had the parts lying around. From the look he gave me I figured he thought I was crazy but later he showed up with a box of parts and asked if I could hold a flashlight for a moment. We got the flipper fixed along with a few other random things that can use an extra set of hands and interspersed with the typical shop talk I finally got to hear a bit of his story.

Turns out he's been running locations and fixing pins in Jersey for as long as I've been alive. Sometime in early 80s I encountered pinball and it quickly became a fascination that has followed me to this day. The exact location is long forgotten but it was somewhere in Jersey. I mentioned the first machine I actually remembered by name was Firepower. He had 20 at some point. It's a long shot but it's possible one of them was my pinball awakening. Who knows?

All this was on my mind when I headed out there last night for my weekly trip. I've never been a great player but I've improved quite a bit in the last year and a lot of that happened here. I guess those thoughts put me on point last night. Started with a new personal best on AIQ and following a few heartbreaks over the last few weeks the final game of the night reclaimed GC on Mando.

This is the way. Thanks Mark.

aiq (resized).jpg

mando (resized).jpg

When Rush first showed up there the spinner was there and worked. A few weeks later it stopped detecting hits. It's been removed entirely for at least 2 weeks. The record is noncollectable which breaks the gamewide combo system. Every mode/feature that involves shooting that lane is crippled or impossible. It's basically just a wood chopper as it is.

Glancing at the thread I got the impression it's somewhere around DC. Did I miss something?

As for pinball machines in comic book shops the next level in the Hamilton Mall in NJ has a few pins so the idea is not unheard of. The staff members there say it gets them some traffic. I certainly bought a few things and I'd never have gone in there otherwise. It's a bit far to make a trip for 4 or 5 pins with so many larger collections closer to the city but they're fun, well maintained titles that are difficult to find on location and 50 cents a game. Starcade and their much larger collection is in the same mall so when I go there for a day pass I usually stop in for a few games of Deadpool or Ghostbusters first and usually walk out with a comic or something else.

Glancing at pinballmap TS4 is there and Halloween is still listed. I don't see Wonka but I'm not sure if that's a recent change.

Kiss replaced JP Pro a few weeks back but it might be a different trim. Person who told me didn't catch which it was but figured that was better than having the wrong game listed entirely. If someone knows I can update it.

I had been dreading swinging through there to follow up. Thanks for saving me the trip! The problems on JP and SW have been present (at least) a year. I reported them and other problems to various mechanics and managers last summer. When I was there 2 months ago the other problems had been fixed so I had some hope and reported those 2 again but it doesn't sound like it helped. I don't remember spot being stuck on Munsters when I was there.

You're right that maiden is playable but it's mostly a tribute to the particular worker at stern that assembled it and the relative lack of stuff that can break on Maiden pro. As far as I can tell it's never received any maintenance. There's early signs of dry rot in some of the rubbers at this point and the shooter->loop.

From a few I've been to and comments about others on pinball map it sounds like maintenance is a near universal problem for round1 company-wide. After the games are installed they're just allowed to degrade. A few of them seem to have one hero mechanic who holds it together for awhile but eventually they all fade away.

It just seems crazy to me that they have millions of dollars worth of Stern's flung all over the country but apparently nobody who plays pinball. There's 6 machines at most locations that have them and it'll be the first/only exposure to pinball for a lot of new players. Maybe it's time for the Stern Army to do some nation building just to protect their image.

News on this dried up for awhile but 2 weeks ago someone asked on their facebook page if it was still happening and the response from tilted was "Opening this Winter."

If you're going to Hyndman's I'd recommend going early. The closing time hasn't been consistent lately. Usually it's not too bad but had one day where they closed at 4.

About the same drive time as Pinball Gallery would be Starcade in Mays Landing NJ and MoMs in Abington, PA. Any of those 3 can justify a day trip. Rush hour to/from any of those can be nasty so plan ahead. The hours at the latter 2 give you a lot more wiggle room for that.

Hyndman's has some sort of arrangement with the store next door to close the place at the end of the day. I don't know the details but only certain staff of that store are able to do it. For a long time it was reliably around 7-7:15 but a few thursdays in the last few months it was around 6 and once I got there around 3:45 just in time to start a game and get the 10 minute warning they were closing at 4.

Starcade traffic isn't as reliably bad in standard rush hour but add in an accident or shore traffic and it gets ugly quick.

I'm guessing this is the same uncle joe's that was in willow grove mall but isn't on pinballmap anymore. They had a Diner, STTNG and a third which I think was another one of the older titles on that list. Closer + expanded collection... I'll take it!

That star trek tng had some ephemeral but recurring issues with the mechs and under-field ball handling that it could use a nap anyway. Recently balls for various multiball modes were getting delayed and then popping out at the worst possible moments 10-20 seconds late. Hopefully it gets a deep tune-up before it goes wherever it goes next.

I'm really going to miss the Funhouse. It's been mostly reliable the last few months and always fun to play. It's possible I played the last full game on it as late monday the next person who stepped up to it had a ball get lost in the subway that ball search was still looking for when I left 10 minutes later.

Pinball Gallery's Funhouse appears to be off the floor at the moment too. Hopefully not for long. If anyone needs me I'll be in the corner sulking.

I believe it! The tech's @ barcade have actually done a great job the last year firefighting the issues as they come up. I've been amazed how many random things they've managed to fix on the fly week to week over the last couple months. It's just new things have been coming up faster and faster to the point it probably needs a deeper overhaul than can be done on the floor of the bar.

I'm planning to check out Uncle Joe's this weekend and they've supposedly got one. I didn't realize RR had the 2.0 kit. They're out of my normal radius but I guess I'll be making a trip sometime soon.

Stopped in there today myself. Games are in great shape. Setups are pretty player friendly overall other than ball saves including multiballs seem reduced from typical default settings. Tilts are about average for a location game. It's definitely a good spot.

Had a chat with the guy who owns the place too. He's been in the business for a long time and seems to be happy about it. Mentioned 1 or 2 minor issues I'd noticed on the pins and was quite receptive to the feedback and wanted to hear about everything which is always a good sign. Also said they're planning to do some sort of competitive stuff at some point once they get a little more established at the new location and build a clientele. Not sure if tourneys, leagues or both so if you're there and you see a guy who looks like he owns the place be sure to let him know what you might be interested in.

Haven't been there yet myself so can't speak to the experience but Bellefonte Brewing Company on the western edge of Wilmington showed up on the map recently with 7 machines and I heard through the grapevine it'll be 12 soon. Current list looks like an assortment of early 90s machines. The Apollo 13 got my attention because I've been unsuccessfully trying to find one ever since I heard about the 13 ball multiball. Anyone been there?

https://pinside.com/pinball/map/where-to-play/17449-bellefonte-brewing-company-wilmington-de

Checked it out myself and was actually pretty decent. Games aren't going to win any beauty contests but they play fine overall save one that developed an issue which they immediately shut off and started working on. Staff is enthusastic about pinball and the beer is good too!.

4 times over several games. Drained almost all of them almost instantly first time but kept > half of them in play for awhile on latter ones. Replay scores in general were on the low side but that game was exceptionally low so every coin drop was good for 3 games at least. I'm sure that will change over time as more players find the place.

Tokens @ Uncle Joe's are normally on a sliding scale of 4/$1 - 120/$20. Was there last week and there was a sign on the change machine with a 140/$20 special Mon-Wed. Not sure if it was a one time thing or weekly but a good chance to stock up if you'd normally be there on other days.

2022-11-15 18.07.33 (resized).jpg

Uncle Joe's added a Mando Pro a week or 2 ago.

The ownership change at Hyndman's seems to have been finalized. It's now called "Fun Stop Arcade." Stopped in today. Looks like they have all the old machines and added a bunch more pins. Didn't get to play too much as a power outage affecting the area took down the entire farmer's market but no major issues on the few games I did get to play.

Anyone been to tilted10 in willow grove yet? Wondering about the condition/setup of the machines and pricing.

It's on 5 ball, but it's sometimes starting on ball 2 or 3...

It's also playing for 1 token despite saying 2 tokens so I didn't worry about it.

However many balls you end up getting it plays decent enough. Nice to see an EM in the wild.