Quoted from Coindork:I've been thinking about this a lot in lieu of current events.
Now that ARA is supposedly made whole, Dutch Pinball is reportedly in possession with all these parts (supposedly enough to build a couple hundred machines).
It seems the biggest equation so solve here would be how to make the EA whole in a way that makes economic sense.
If they don't have the funds to start manufacturing these again, what about other alternatives?
Maybe I'm way off base as I haven't put that much thought into the logistics, but what if they shipped the EAs all the parts in the cabinet to build their machine as a kit?
Sure, it would be a lot of work on the EAs part, but seems like it would be worth it.
If you paid $8500 up front, the last 40 games sold out at $12,500 so there is economic as well as the emotional incentive to do it.
They could ship a cabinet with everything included to put the game together at home.
It might take you a few weeks to a few months or longer depending on your skillset, but at least they would get something.
Or if there is a good pinball tech in your area, I'm sure they would put it together for you for around the cost of a restore or full tear down shop job.
With really good instructions you would only need a basic knowledge of tool and soldering.
I know its not the ideal situation, but I was running scenarios though my head and thought of this.
Have you ever stripped an entire Playfield top and bottom And disassembled all the mechs for cleaning / restore? There’s a TON of parts, and given there’s no manual for TBLthat I’m aware of, there’s currently no help to assemble all this so that’s quite a lot of work to put together enough documentation for someone to get it out together correctly. It’s unlikely all the little needed screws, nuts, washers, etc ( maybe even a few critical parts) would make it into every cabinet. Some of the pf divets could be off, all kinds of assembly crap could go wrong. They’d HAVE to have full harnesses supplied but that leaves a ton of soldering. If you e ever restored a game fully you know how critical all the tear down pics are. W/out those,and without any memory in the harness to lay it out, and with (likely) missing parts and similar but different hardware pieces.... yeah that sounds like a friggn nightmare. The instructions would have to be damn good with full color pics.. talking something like a DILE manual quality here.