I have a friend who is an operator, and he says Road Show makes the most serious bank of any routed machine, period, of all time, biggest moneymaker, slam dunk, no questions asked.

The Addams Family and Data East Star Wars have been the best for me. These two pins have been earning close to the same for 20 years now, both have taken in over 90,000 coins. I got these two pins at the same time and both have been great earners and I have tried to keep them side by side for comparisons. Sort of reminds me of the classic battle for Best Motion Picture between Gone with the Wind and Wizard of Oz, both were great movies and either would have won if they didnt compete in the same year 1939. In pinball terms TAF gets all the praise and rewards, best selling pin of all time but that DE SW is also good and has created many special memories for families playing pinball together. Twilight Zone may be the best pinball to play at home but it was an operators headache on location. Looking forward to the pinball 70 years in the making with Wizard to OZ to replace these now aging work horse pins. The one picture is from early 1996 TAF is far left and the other pic is from 2010. Great question and looking forward to other answers as each area of the country will probably have a different answer.

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I never had any A list pins on route. As far as lesser pin titles. I use to make the most by far off of Tales from the Crypt followed closely by WhirlWind.

Please let us know if there's a way to know where this operator has machines.
Whenever I make it to Australia eventually, i have to give some coins to this heck of a guy.
That's serious pimping, McKee toppers and all.

TAF so far for me, but MM has only been out on route for 2 weeks, and if the coin box is the best indicator, it should pass TAF in about 2 months.

I loved playing that SM, what an awesome looking machine...

Does anyone have any idea on how FT and/or JM would compare to a TZ? I have a decent relationship with an arcade vendor and would really like to work out a +/- trade for his Twilight Zone. I really think it would be a win-win.

Not what I would have expected. Fun pin, I like it a lot. I'm just surprised to hear that it's such a good earner.

Taf and DE SW are quite the earners, $22500 is a pretty good ROI. That's an average of $1125 per year or $93.75 per month if they were on location for 20 years. And they are still there, still earning, very impressive. I would be interested to know what the cost of maintenance, electricity and consumables was such as rings over that time period.

TSPP makes a ton of money here in San Diego along with LOTR.

FT plus JM plus cash might get you in the range of a TZ???

I personally would have guessed T2 to be a big earner

South Park does really well Taverns, but can't be put in Family type locations.

Lies...LIES!!!! ALL LIES!!!! I did not see Lethal Weapon 3, Maverick or even Baywatch mentioned anywhere in that top 10 list! While it is coincidental that I own the three previously mentioned pins, rest assured that has no influence on my opinion of that faultered Top 10 list!!!! Lies...lies....all lies...shame shame shame. lol

Mine has been TFTC. Like stated above, I don't have any "top" pins. Goldeneye has only been on route one month, but made 1.5 times what TFTC did. Hope it keeps it up. To be fair, every new pin I have added has been the Top earner for the first month. Must be the something new affect. They always play TFTC though.

My buddy owns a route and claims TZ earned a butt load for him. Which is surprising as I heard that it was dud for other operators. He also liked Funhouse and had 4 of them on route back in the day.

On this note, he tells the tales of Street Fighter 2, not the pinball, but the video game. He claims he couldn't clean out the coin boxes fast enough. It was a game changer. He claims he was making thousands a week on those machines. It's cool listening to him tell his stories of the good ole days.

Went ahead and got WOZ and GOT to route after my MM remake did so well. Even though they are doing ok, there is one thing I can take away from this experience. The easier the game is to understand, the higher likelihood of it being a success.

WOZ is a game that I wouldn't recommend for casual players which is my client base. Decided, I would just start buying used pinball machines and make them like new, then route them. Mainly focusing on the titles from the 90's from Williams/bally I have two titles I'm currently working on that will hopefully fit the bill, Champion pub and Revenge from mars. Was able to get both of these titles for less then the WOZ. People complain about the playfield being to small on the GOT Premium, since part of the machine is taken over by the second level mini playfield. On both WOZ and GOT, I get the same complaints a lot that the patrons feels cheated because the ball drains to fast. That last complaint goes back to my point about casual players. There is potential to earn on these machines, I believe it's all about finding the right machines that will hold people's interest after the honeymoon period. Eventually I'd like to build an inventory and keep them rotating through several different locations.
Basically, if the game isn't bringing in at least $80 a week then it's hard to justify it taking up space.

Don't usually post in necro'd threads but I find this topic is still relevant.

WOZ and NBA Fastbreak are top in my lineup of 10 games.

Addams family, star trek pro, big hurt for me. Easy to learn games do the best on location for me as well. If you don't know the rules hit the middle, get rewarded.

Of the month?

Of the year?

Of all time?

Of the Replay Magazine "Operator's Poll"?

Metallica is top for me right now. Also, Wheel of Fortune seems to be appreciated by casuals.