I don't think it's one of Stern's best selling games of all time based solely on the theme. The theme and music certainly help, but it also has a solid layout and a great ruleset.

I think at the time it came out, it stood out for many collectors and was uber over hyped. In the current world, it has taken a steep drop on the secondary for good reason. On route i have heard from many that it did not do as well as expected. Like i said, it did not last long here.

It isn't a poor earner for me. Of course, mine is the premium/LE. For years, ACDC LE was in my top half of earnings each week and only in the past few months has the game dropped to average earnings. Every location is different.

It has for me. A Luci Vault.

I had a premium in here 4 years ago for a month and a half and it did very well. So much so that it was #1 on my get list. And a couple months ago finally got it.

And very happy it's here.

LTG : )
Disclaimer : All part of being an operator. Knowing what works for you and what doesn't.

Wondering if more details can be provided on the location type (without giving away too much) like: is it at a bar/pub, hotel, shopping centre/mall, petrol/gas station diner etc? It would be interesting to see the correlation of the type of games played by clientele that frequent these types of locations.

PS: Absolutely love this thread - it’s the first thing I click on every day when logging in on Pinside

In my case it is an AC/DC Pro Vault in bar/pub with 10 other games (CV, WWater, SS, Beatles, GB, Metallica, Star Wars, Hobbit, WoZ, GoG). There are several leagues there, one twice a month and another weekly. The only thing I heard that was negative was it was too complicated. But that was from one guy, so take that for what it's worth. It did ok at first but that only lasted a month. After that it made less than my other games consistently. When Deadpool came in, AC/DC left.

AC/DC (Pro) did surprisingly poorly for me. I think it's top 5 or 10 all time in terms of rules, but hardly anyone understands it. After a few months, there were only a handful of league players who even knew how to start multiball. It "just happened" for almost everyone.

I was surprised because I see them on location everywhere, so I assumed it was earning well for others.

Tron has been an interesting one.

Screen Shot 2019-01-25 at 10.06.55 AM (resized).png

The blue line is Tron's average daily earnings. Red is the average daily earnings of all other games at the same venue. The black boxes represent the two separate times that it has lived at my main venue (which is a barcade).

First time it did pretty poorly. When it returned two years later, it was suddenly great. It was the exact same game, though this time it had the Eli ramp lighting mod, and was connected to an external subwoofer. In the second box, you'll see it was way above average. The moment it evened out was the moment that Deadpool arrived and I switched the subwoofer to Deadpool. (It then dipped below average, and then came back up above average).

I hadn't really analyzed this much until just now, but it certainly seems like conclusions can be drawn about lighting and sound. I'll hook it back up to the sub at the next collection and see what happens.

I don't think it's too far fetched to say pinball's growing popularity has an impact on it too?

And...do you do this for all your route games? Man...that is attention to detail!

This data is great... very interesting to see the average response of some of these titles. Granted there are non-constants with respect to location and demographics but still, the data is a nice cross section of "general likability and appeal". Cool stuff.

So this is fascinating to me. Blizzard Mountain seems to be a place fairly dedicated to pinball. A true arcade if you will. So do you think the “business” of pinball enjoyment can be successful on its own? I get the rise of the bardcade. You make the money on the alcohol really. I get the distributor business and the value proposition there. I have always wondered about those that operate routes if those routes on their own can be profitable and make up for the cost of the machines. Any thoughts? Do you have to offer something more than the love of pinball to be successful? I guess like others are saying in this thread, it could just be highly location dependent if owning an arcade and no other component can be successful these days.

Another question to ask for those that own a barcade...with the addition of the drinks, etc...do the machines then pay for themselves or is it just the attraction for the real money maker?

Much appreciated, just happy everything stayed running for the most part . Congrats again man, Jim showed me a score you put up on TWD... holy crap. Good luck in Vegas.

As much as I hate to admit it, I slightly misjudged that title. Figured it'd do good, but it seems like it's a lot of peoples top game.
My top is Guardians, Deadpool, BM66, AFMR, TWD usually takes slot 3 on occasion.
Medieval remake paid itself off pretty fast and AFMR is well on it's way, so I'd highly recommend those titles.

I was doing collections on paper/spreadsheets at first. Not too long in, I built myself a webapp for doing collections. So yes, I have that for all my games. I've been talking to other operators about using it. Everyone seems interested, but doesn't really want to pay anything for it...so for now it's just for me.

The initial reaction on the reveal wasn't good, and I didn't like the game when I played it, so I didn't buy one. A friend had been helping me out a lot at that location, so I let him buy a game to put in there. It was Star Wars, and was the number one earner for like a year and a half straight. Doh!!!

All the non-pinheads that walk in go straight for it, complain that it's a dollar, and play it anyway. Here is the last 9 collections

Screen Shot 2019-01-25 at 10.57.08 AM (resized).png

That huge spike is over New Years, where the bar is a packed dance floor with hundreds of people who didn't come for the games. Notice that the other games saw no change...just Star Wars.

Sweet tracking! Anyone who wants to be a successful op should have something like this to be honest. Most who don't want to pay for it aren't serious ops or will be easily overtaken. There are several big ops here who use online tracking they made for themselves and have all slowly pushed out a lot of "old timers". It's neat because they have incorporated easier ways to report stuck balls, problems etc. People aren't calling some # as often as you'd hope on the glass so this is awesome. Ryan is a smart dude and clearly knows what he is doing. Can't wait to see you dominate the pin op scene in all of colorado!

I'd be interested, Ryan. Shoot me a PM if you would please.

I'm an arcade. No alcohol.

LTG : )

If you had to bet your house today in an "average" location and ran your location as a business with no personal bias on what -"you" like and don't like to play - GOTG, SW, DP Pro's

from the graph it looks like Ryan's barcade earnings are pretty consistent between 2016 and 2018 (red line in black box is basically in the same place.)

Your dedication to detail to really understand your business is going to reward your bottom line (as I'm sure it already has). Excellent work as a business owner.

What I'm really interested in is the missing y-axis from your chart.

Screen Shot 2019-01-25 at 1.34.05 PM (resized).png

Each dot on the graph is a collection. It shows the daily average per game over the course of the collection period.

In the beginning it was 9 games. In late May of 2016 it went to 11. Went back to 10 at some point. Then I bumped it from 10 games to 12 games on May 24th, 2017. There are probably other instances here and there where it was a game or two short if something was being fixed.

I've been running leagues that entire time. They are 8-10 weeks, with a 2 or 3 week break in between. I think the current one is "season" 14. I've also been running monthly tournaments the entire time.

Big spikes in 2016 are because of selfie leagues. I should do those again sometime. (Even though only 10 people played in each, earnings went up 20-30%. Selfie league rules changed and I also didn't want to just be milking those same 10 players all the time). Collections are every two weeks on a Wednesday, but the really low ones are anomalies where maybe the collection date was shifted so it didn't include the normal even distribution of days of the week.

So, squeezing a few more games in has probably made a little more money overall, but the daily average per game hasn't changed much at all over time. My leagues have been getting a little smaller. There are a lot of other great venues that keep popping up, so while the demand is going up, so is the supply.

I usually crop it out when I show a graph, but I included it above. These games earn 3-4x what my games at my other two public locations earn. So the main reason I usually leave it off is that this is my best location, by far...and I don't want to set unrealistic expectations. Also, this shows the money in the coinbox, and doesn't reflect my take home after the split with the venue. (Or money spent on parts. Or time spent doing repairs, running leagues, etc. Yes, there is money, but you have to love pinball to do this. And, my bank account is continuously empty because I've been (mostly) very slowly expanding, and need to keep buying new games).

This location is the only barcade in town, has 25 video games (not mine) and 12 pins (mine). It's a crazy dance floor on weekend nights, pulling in almost 1000 people over the course of a busy Saturday. Most of those people are not there for the games. Anyone who finds their way through the dance floor to the pinball room in the back will only play a game or two. On a Wednesday night, when league starts, there can be 15 people playing pinball and like 5 other people in the entire bar. So, it's all over the place. The bar is on the main drag downtown. Lots of foot traffic. But it's in a basement and many people don't know it's there.

There isn't much other competition in the city of Boulder (three places have around 5 games, but are weird venues)...but, all of the surrounding cities have great places. There are roughly 15 spots with 10+ games within an hour of Denver.

Thanks to those who provided location information as well. I'll post my full list of games from 2018, the % of total that they earned, location, and any random info to help clear things up. My bottom game isn't at the bottom because it's bad, so that has to be accounted for.

Blizzard Mountain is a place dedicated to pinball. It's all I do. I do have two video games (a Galaga/Ms Pac-Man combo unit and the 4-player Gauntlet). I don't sell food or alcohol. I work at this well over 40 hours a week (most weeks I'm here all 7 days, even though I'm only open Thursday-Monday). I have no employees and pretty much do everything myself (my wife does help out on days when my son and I go to a tournament, she also does a lot of the social media and other marketing). The kids occasionally help out with cleaning games.

Being "successful" depends on how you define success. Blizzard Mountain pays it's own bills (well, most weeks anyway) and sometimes there's a little left over, which generally goes to parts and facility maintenance. Rent in my area is quite expensive, electricity is the second highest expense but is only about 10-12% of the monthly rent bill. I consider any month a success that I don't have to write a check from my personal account to keep Blizzard going!

Every 8-9 months or so we accumulate enough to buy a new game. We would need to about triple the number of people who come through our doors in order to make enough to have a reasonable living. Blizzard Mountain is located in the foothills southwest of Denver in a small bedroom community. There isn't a lot of population density immediately around and the community is very car dependent. In a lot of ways it's amazing we even break even!

I don't know about route operators. All of my games are here. . I would guess that route operators do make more than I do, and we have a number of very good route operators in the Denver area. However, I like having everything here in one place, I like being able to do maintenance during off times when I'm closed, and I like being able to control the atmosphere and the volume. . Blizzard Mountain is family friendly and I like that kids and their parents feel comfortable here. I also like it that if I mess something up and have to have a machine down for a period of time, it only impacts me and not the business I have my games in.

Thanks,
Kevin

Will get to see how these compare.

458C795D-11D4-4032-96C2-52718819B989 (resized).jpeg

B9B84C1E-C9E9-4B1A-95EA-E16965688F80 (resized).jpeg

Yup, it's on my list to get sooner then later. Was at another local place to check out maiden when it came out, and saw at least 3 groups of people play maiden once and go directly to star wars to play several games.

Against my better judgement I got maiden, not the smartest decision . win some, loose some.

No, I totally get why you would crop the y-axis (money) out. I appreciate you sharing the graph above.

Entrepreneurship has always fascinated me. I'd love to own a business myself, but too chicken to use all of my capital (or raise venture capital) to start one. I applaud anyone running a small business. It takes guts and one hell of a commitment.

I'll be in Boulder this summer. I'll make sure to make a visit and pump some quarters into your pins.

Even though I have 25 pins on location, I'm still not sure that it's a business. Still feels like more of a side-gig. I was lucky enough that I basically was just adding one pin at a time, every few months. The most I ever needed to come up with at once was 6 (I think...to start a new location), but that was after I had already built up a lot of games, and rotated many of them out of my other locations.

I also eventually started buying EMs and early solid states because you can get 3-5 of them for the price of one modern game. It's definitely the kind of thing that makes sense to build up slowly over time. Going out and buying 10-20 games at once to operate them sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Awesome. Message me if you want company and I'll join you if I can!

same, pretty much 100% of what I get goes right back into buying parts or new/old machines. Think I'm set for now though, Aside from the occasional stern cornerstone.

Golden tees are only around 4k a piece new, but the fees are insane. my GT's do really well regardless, but it's always nice when the pinball's overtake them once every so often. Would of never imagined that, that would be the case when I got the first route pin. Without a local community I doubt that ever would of happened.

If it matters or not, I found out that F14 is my lowest earning pin I’ve ever had out. Even genesis did better. So there’s that

I had similar results. Very big bummer since I like the game.

If I remember right, F-14 earned when TopGun was the craze and then pretty much hit the wall. Seems like dad had 4 or 5 of them? I wasn’t but 6 but I thought it was the coolest pinball ever.

I bought 3 new Sterns for the route last year. Aerosmith, Iron Maiden and Deadpool. Deadpool has by far been the slowest. Maiden is consistent and above average. Aerosmith has been in 2 locations and has been excellent in both. I enjoy everything about the game other than the stupid clown animations. I takes a 9.5/10 rated game to a 5. I think more people around here prefer the music of Aerosmith to Maiden.

I’m still disgusted that there hasn’t been a RawTalk code update for Deadpool. There was so much potential and we got a G-rated game. That would’ve driven the revenues!

MUN and Beatles both doing fine so far.

Just the minor expected issues out of the box and both getting played a similar amount.
Will be interesting to see if they hold steady and which drops first.

Granted Beatles really would need to earn at about 1.4x of Munsters in order to make sense in the long run

Luckily we do this for fun and the love of pinball as much as anything

How's Maiden doing so far? I'm curious as I haven't done my first collection yet.

This is the best thread on pinside. I currently share 5 locations with Doublestack, 3 of which are Breweries and 2 of which are bars. One of the breweries is in the middle of nowhere and the three games we have there don't do shit, the other two breweries are our best locations with great visibility of the machines. One bar is too new to say and the other took years to catch on but now has a cult following in it's own little back room dedicated to pinball. Our pricing structure is as follows:

$1 per play or 7 plays for $5 on LCD Sterns. These all have DBVs that take $5s
$1 per play or 3 plays for $2 on non-LCD modern Sterns. All have DBVs
$.75 per play or 3 plays for $2 on WPCs or Whitestars. All but one have DBVs
$.50 for Alpha-Numeric
$.25 for early solid state

The .25 games usually get the most plays but still don't add up to nearly as much as modern games. WPCs require a bit more maintenance but are very popular with regulars who aren't into the deeper rulesets, some top earners have been AFM, Congo, WCS94 & CftBL. We have one LCD game at each location and they have always been the top earner, usually by a lot, until the last collection where Iron Maiden fell off pretty steeply. Deadpool and Star Wars have both been record breakers and trouble free after getting them initially dialed in. The 7 for $5 price structure has been added to the new games code updates over the last couple months and has been incredibly successful for us. It's really easy for people to slip a $5 in and then they have enough credits to either get the flow of the game and get a bit deeper into it, or do multiplayer which takes them long enough that it seemed like a really good value. $5 bills have been making up more than half of the coin drop in Deadpool since I switched it over.

Same. I put more work into my F14 than any other game I've ever owned and had to sell it shortly thereafter because no one was playing it. Taught me the hard operator lesson of not getting attached to machines. System 11s in general are the worst earning machines I've had.

It’s consistent. I would say for the amount of dollars it generates compared to the dollars it cost it’s probably my most successful machine. On top of that I had a gate pop off once and no other problems since putting it on route. It’s on it’s way to paying itself off for a second time and I would buy another one if I had a second location I thought it would fit into well.

Your location is one of the primary reasons I became interested in pinball. Keep killing it and long live location pinball.

My SYS11's have been pretty reliable, and Whirlwind and Diner often are pretty close behind Ghostbusters and AFM. I don't have the cash flow to fund new games at a very fast pace but I can certainly see SYS11's getting pushed down (along with everything else) when I get my first LCD game.

Super Mario crushes for us.
other top earners:

Deadpool
Guardians of the Galaxy
AMF Remake
South Park

THEME THEME THEME!!!!(not sure why AFM does so well with the general public...maybe its because its aliens...)

80% of our players are casual coin droppers just visiting the venue(kid friendly brewery)
the "real"(other 20%)players tend to play the deeper coded/more challenging games.

A lot of interesting prespective on what to operate and what earns best. I operate every new game that is released along with a vast collection of 90s games that seem to be desired again. We have even dug way deep to put 70s mechanical and 80s SS Games out there at our bigger pinball sites. Crazy times for pinball. Good luck all!

Australian Pinball Museum posts on facebook their top 10 most played games each year.

https://www.facebook.com/PinballMuseum

2018 end of year post:

1. Guardians of the Galaxy "Pro" (Stern, 2017)
2. Iron Maiden "Pro" (Stern, 2018)
3. Star Wars Limited Edition (Stern, 2017)
4. Twilight Zone (Bally, 1993)
5. Rollercoaster Tycoon (Stern, 2002)
6. Playboy (Stern, 2002)
7. ACDC Back in Back Limited Edition (Stern, 2012)
8. Simpsons (Data East, 1990)
9. Revenge From Mars (Bally, 1999)
10. Kiss Limited Edition (Stern, 2015)

Honourable Mentions:
* Kiss (Bally, 1979) - is ranked 18th.
* Creature From The Black Lagoon (Bally, 1992) dropped from 7th last year to 14th this year.
* Aerosmith "Pro" (Stern, 2017) has gone from 2nd last year to 11th this year.
* The Simpsons (Data East, 1990) and Rollercoaster Tycoon (Stern, 2002) have been consistently in the top 10 every year at the museum, and The Simpsons was always a really popular game back in the 1990's, good to see it is still a popular game thats enjoyed by many almost 30 years later.
* Star Trek "Vengeance Premium" (Stern, 2013) dropped from 4th last year to 13th this year.
* Fish Tales (Williams, 1992) was a fairly popular game back in the 1990's, yet sadly nowadays it doesn't even come close to reaching the top 20 - some of the electromechanicals are more popular and all other 90's games are more popular than Fish Tales.

2017 end of year post:

1. Star Wars Limited Edition (Stern – 2017)
2. Aerosmith "Pro" (Stern - 2017)
3. Rollercoaster Tycoon (Stern – 2002)
4. Star Trek "Vengeance Premium" (Stern - 2013)
5. ACDC Back in Black Limited Edition (Stern – 2012)
6. Simpsons (Data East – 1990)
7. Creature from the Black Lagoon (Bally – 1992)
8. Playboy (Stern - 2002)
9. Twilight Zone (Bally – 1993)
10. KISS Limited Edition (Stern – 2015)

Wow, Rollercoaster Tycoon!!

Here is my 2018 ranking, with comments as needed. In early May of this year I got asked to remove my 4 machines from a location so they can remodel the space. Their off-season is coming up, so they spend the 3 hot summer months renovating where needed. Hoping it's only a few weeks because finding space for 4 pins on short notice is tough. I'm trying to slim down the collection a little in 2019 as well to modernize the lineup a little.

1. AFM, 10.62%. Because GB was at a different location all year
2. Whirlwind, 8.62%. Great game, well liked.
3. Ghostbusters, 8.34%. At a non-primary location, earned half of what it did at my main location the previous year. Is now back at main location.
4. Diner, 7.07%. Reliable and consistent earner.
5. 1977 Ball Lost World, 5.90%. If you figure out why, let me know. Arrived in FEB so tournament players practiced it a lot to learn. Not as much play in 2019 already.
6. Taxi, 5.63%. Tough but honest game. Go to game for 2 upper level players in events.
7. Hook, 5.34%. Added new code late in the year, but that didn't really uptick earnings, just lets me use it at main location now.
8. Corvette, 5.29%. Only on site for last 7 months, well liked. In a 12 month race it would have been top 3.
9. F14, 4.13%. Not popular in events, but I drag people there when I need a win.
10. Space Invaders, 3.97%. Missed 3 months of action until I bought the full biz out and then I fixed it. Mixed reviews but growing on people.
11. Bride Of Pinbot, 3.89%. Left the route the last 4 months after I bought the biz. Strong earner for some puzzling reason.
12. Ice Fever, 3.87%. Missed first 2 months until I had a spot for it. One shot game, but the trick is setting up that shot.
13. Cyclone, 3.76%. On loan for first 8 months. Fun game, well liked, but not a whole lot of proof in the cashbox.
14. DE Star Trek 25th, 3.55%. I like this game because it makes you shoot all of the shots. Left after 8 months when I bought out the biz.
15. Police Force, 3.53%. In a non-primary location. Gets played by kids for the most part, but I enjoy it too.
16. Future Spa, 3.20%. Not a lot to say on this one, Sits right next to PF and earns about the same.
17. Black Belt, 2.82%. Next to Future Spa, gets played less for whatever reason.
18. Evel Knievel, 2.69%. CPR playfield and redone cab. On loan to another location for first 3 months and then taken off route the last4 months when I bought the biz. Not bad for 5 months.
19. Silverball Mania, 2.08%. Taken out for the last 4 months due to repairs needed and another game ready to take its place.
20. Laser Ball, 1.87%. Damaged in transport in month 5, not my game at that point. Currently getting worked on at my house.
21. Dolly, 1.62%. Down for 4 months until I bought the biz. Already earned more in 2019 than 2018.
22. Special Force, 1.11%. Only on route for last 4 months.
23. Stars, 0.84%. On route for 3 weeks before the year ended.
24. High Speed, 0.26%. Worked for a few days in month 9, then board went bad. Back up and running after replacing RAM with NVRAM to fix failed RAM chip.

I thought I heard one of the podcast mention an application that tracks the popularity of games on location. Does such an app exist?

There is a list in Play Meter magazine, isn’t there? Not sure who they are asking and how big the sample size is.

PlayMeter and Replay have always had “longevity points” for the equipment polls. It’s based off the frequency in which a title is on the list. IIRC, TAF had more longevity points than any other pinball. Games like Daytona USA and Area 51 usually had the most for video game titles.

I still get those magazines, but I can’t tell you the last time I read one.

Theme is 50% of it. Location is the other.

I wonder that often myself.... we’re about to crack the 20 game mark at our location and have room for 25 total... i am hopeful the more games we have the more people that aren’t there for pinball will look around and say “hmmm maybe i should go play those things”. I think it ultimately comes down to what each location does to grow the user base. Leagues, tourneys, how to play classes, flippy hours, contests/activities(pinquest).

We’ve held firm at 16 machines for a long time so Ill update in a few months as we increase the machine count hopefully the count grows and doesn’t just spread amongst the machines!

Play Meter is BS for pinball. I don’t get it anymore, but as recently as about two years ago, their sample size was tiny. You could reverse engineer the number of machines they had data from, and it was usually in the high single digits.

Deadpool is still really strong for me, often beating Jurassic Park (which has been good but not outstanding). Addams Family still a top earner despite nearly five consecutive years in the same spot.

How is JP doing on location for you guys?

JP is earning great! Wonka has been doing VERY well lately for us. Our top 5 right now
1.Wonka
2.Super Mario
3. JP
4. Star Wars
5. Munster....(this one confuses/surprises me)

Here is an updated lineup**
Wonka
Supermario
Batman 66
Ghostbusters
Starwars
Oktoberfest
Attack from Mars
Monster Bash
Munsters
Guardians
Star Trek
Deadpool
Jurassic Park
Beatles
Creature
South Park

Nice. Thanks for the info. Munsters makes sense to me. When I got back into pinball this summer it was the first machine I played at ReplayFX. It sticks out and is recognizable. My wife played it right away as well. I could see people playing it a lot on location.