Results from the latest roller hockey tournament:

Super Chexx
Ghostbuster/Metallica (tied)
Dolly Parton
Iron Maiden
High Speed
Old Chicago
Funhouse
Future Spa ($3 wah wah)

Taxi broke a kickout bracket a few days before and was off. Stars had an issue with the coin door pop up and wasn’t taking coins, so counting that as effectively being off. Fixed Stars yesterday and Taxi parts arrive any day.

Its an LE. Significantly better >30% than the other new pins. Of course, who knows how long that will last.

Yeah, it might settle down a little when it’s just regulars playing the pins. One of the bartenders told me recently that she plays a few games a week on it and I know some of the ladies that play soccer play only that pin a time or two every week recently. So it has draw for a decently wide audience.

It’s a good game too, and my tournament players absolutely enjoy and respect the gameplay.

Dolly is awesome, but I couldn't get barely any play on single level classics. I wanted people to love stars and meteor so bad but I couldn't justify keeping them in rotation.

Personally, I think Dolly Parton is an average player at best, but that doesn't always matter for a location game. Routing classic games like Centaur, Fathom, Viking, Frontier hardly registered a hearbeat in the coin box. These were all beautiful restored games, didn't matter. Had much more luck with Bally Playboy, KISS, Joker Poker, Quicksilver, and Eight Ball Deluxe. Some weeks Joker Poker would be in the top quartile for earnings.

What do you attribute that to?

I wish I knew what drives a casual location player to embrace one game and just ignore another one. With tournament and league players, I can usually guess pretty well what they will like and play. With EBD, I had historical reports in Playmeter that showed how dominant it was on location. So that one was an easy pick. But Bally Playboy? I figured it would be up and out after three months. Nope, it kept earning well enough to stay on location for two years. I had to pull Bally Viking after six weeks because it earned as well as an empty box of lights. Restored Fathom on location? Meh, who cares. Every location is different, YMMV.

I can think of two reasons why people like it.

I thought about getting one of those big box shooter games, but figured I could fit a couple smaller ones instead. Like aliens Armageddon and/or buck hunter.
Replay magazine said that the jurassic park one was the best earning game out of all the shooters. Based on a poll given to various operators on different genres.
I went to a few family fun centers and tried out that tomb raider game.... I'm not sure what the appeal is besides redemption, because the game play is terrible.

Stranger Things- still my top earner at my brewery location

Reach out to ZMeny , He’ll be selling raw thrills and ICE arcade games

The new big buck hunter has terminator on it too. My friend that has an arcade and some of the most played games are the sit in walking dead and Jurassic Park, they get a lot of play, especially since they are 2 player. Definitely recommend those to be good earner. He has the tomb raider and I never see anyone playing it.

Well as far as modern light gun games go, the graphics were kind of meh. I played the super duper huge deluxe version @ pinballz in austin. I get the four player aspect though.

As far as those virtual reality games go, they are expensive. kong island is the newest one from raw thrills. I saw the next mario kart is supposed to be in VR, it looked freakin awesome. The price tag was nuts though. Anything over 15-20k for one game is out of my league. U would have to have an FEC in order to make roi.

what does that mean? Like you can swap the software and use the same machine?

It's like a select screen. Buck hunter has a few other modes besides shooting deer.
Zombies, duck dynasty, terminator and another side game called monster island.
The sides games aren't easy with a pump action.

Just sent you a text regarding some local card systems in Colorado.

I have a card system coming in from these guys.
https://unitetechno.com/dt_catalog/rfpay
you either need a kiosk or an employee to add credits on the cards. Fees after installation are if you want tech support. I thought the cool thing was you can use coins in conjunction with the card system. you don't need to drill holes and it mounts in the DBA slot.

I used another basic card system a while back from AXIS networks, a Canadian based company. The form factor is a little different though.

I shopped around and the bigger players like intercard, think I was quoted like over 36k for 50 machines. Then you have the X amount a month you spend after per card reader up to a certain amount per location. That'd be cool for places like D&B but for smaller venues, it seemed like a lot.
Depending on the number of machines you have, your probably better off using Nayax VPOS touch on them.

There is another guy on pinside who has an arcade, he made his own card system with a rasberry pi and card readers. Thought that was pretty cool.

That would be me here at Blizzard Mountain Pinball in Conifer, CO. It was expensive to implement (even do it yourself) ... I used the DBV slot to install a USB based card reader attached to a Raspberry Pi which is networked to a server. The main expenses are the card readers, a Raspberry Pi (including power cord, network cable, SD card, etc.) for each game, the swipe-cards themselves, and one thing that's easy to overlook - a coin door containing a DBV slot for the older games that don't have one. I did all the programming myself and my family and I spent days building wiring harnesses to plug into the coin door interfaces...without us doing a lot of it ourselves it would've been quite a bit more expensive I'm sure. It adds up but the flexibility it gives us is very worthwhile.

Kevin

Also to answer the original question - here are the top 10 games at Blizzard since we reopened in January:

Avengers AIQ (Premium)
JJP Pirates (Standard)
Willy Wonka (Standard)
Stranger Things (Premium)
The Hobbit (LE)
Ghostbusters (Premium)
Galaga/MS Pac-Man combo
Indiana Jones (WMS)
Wizard of Oz (Standard)
Medieval Madness (original WMS)

Poor Pinbot is dead last....

Kevin

Just saw this thread. Not an op, but as a customer, one of the biggest turn offs is not being able to hear the pins and that seems to be very common in barcades. Turn the bar music down and let the pins and games ring out. I played in one place and I couldn't hear any of the pinball games except for the scream on GB. It just sapped the fun out of them because if you haven't played them before, newer games are all about the audio and visual cues.

Reading back I saw the talk of AC/DC, interestingly, playing that one on location was what made me buy it. I wasn't expecting to like it and loved it. One of my favorite games.

Rank of my pins in earnings order: Flash Gordon, Wild Fyre, Rick N' Morty

I would agree, but as an OP myself there are limitations at different locations. Most OP's rent space at a location and the volume is dictated by the owner, manager, etc. I would rather have the pins turned up but unfortunately it is not my choice as an OP on how loud I can turn the pins up at a location.

Just collected from a location today. Stranger things was 1, Houdini was 2, and tales from the crypt was 3rd. Note: the only reason tales is on route is because the cooks love it.

Mando is a no brainer. It’ll earn.

52 pin collection of all eras. Game, percentage of total collection in $$, price per game:

Top 10

Led Zeppelin 6.1% $1.00
Rick & Morty 5.1% $1.00
Avengers IQ 4.5% $1.00
Attack from Mars 4.3% $0.75
Jurassic Park (Stern) 3.9% $1.00
Star Trek (Stern) 3.5% $1.00
Munsters 3.1% $1.00
Total Nuclear Annihilation 3.1% $0.75
Twilight Zone 3.1% $0.50
Medieval Madness 3.0% $0.75

Top solid state:
Hercules 2.7% $0.75

Top EM:
Captain Fantastic 1.0% $0.25

shockingly my led zeps are doing good as well. I say that because ive had only mediocre success with old rock based pins on location.
Stranger things and deadpool are always at top along with guardians, ghostbusters, GOT.

Premium. Personally, I doubt there would be much of a difference, and there is no way to tell the difference between how well a Pro would earn vs a Premium/LE. (Except maybe if you had a game in one spot for a long time, to the point where earnings had stabilized, and then replaced it with a different version?)

I currently have only 3 games out- Ghostbusters pro, Stranger Things pro and Mandalorian pro. All 3 earning great. These are also the Top 3 games Ive had in a few years of having games on location

I’d get a Ghostbusters pro and switch out one of your lower earning games - another good option would be Deadpool pro

YOU LOVE TO SEE IT

Is there *any* instance in which an EM can earn well? I'm curious, I was thinking maybe a western/Americana themed EM (Bow and Arrow, Spirit of '76, Klondike etc. etc.) in a rustic themed bar in my smaller town might be decent.

Target Alpha earned well in a lineup full of new/old games. 4 player games w/ lots of drops are key I think for location EMs.

I have had Stars, Meteor, and Viking all on location at 50c vs the new games at 1@2/3 and they do not earn well. I have them there more for me and the other pinheads.

Star Wars premium and Stranger Things are by far my top guys right now in a lineup with BKSoR, Aerosmith, Cyclone, Hook, Iron Man, and Viking.

Hmm maybe a Spirit of 76 would be good then, since it has those 2 sets of 4 drops. Just spitballing ideas, I would like to dip my toes in operating. I also ended up with Jumping Jack and Air Aces, 2 games with large center drop target banks, out of pure coincidence lol. Maybe Ill try seeing if any place would be interested in those.

Old Chicago is currently the only EM I have out. It earns decently well compared to the others.

Does anyone run tournaments at their locations. I do and that 100% has an impact. The tournament players will play everything, even if it’s just a few times on occasion, if they know they have to play it in league and/or tournaments and I do both.

My main location sucks for casual foot traffic and is 90%+ coin drop from tournament players.

I'm pretty sure Austin Powers has the thinnest ruleset of the bunch, if your players care about that sort of thing at all. And I don't think the Austin Powers movies are that well-liked anymore.

AP did well for its price / era at my location.

Ran TSPP about ten years ago for around six months. Had high hopes as others had told me it earned well. It was a disappointment for me from an earnings perspective and heavier maintenance that I had expected. YMMV

From my previous route before it died a Covid death, highest to lowest:

Theatre of Magic
The Shadow
Star Trek Pro
The Walking Dead
Whirlwind
Genie (.25 play)
Bally Atlantis
BSD
Target Alpha (.25 play)
Sorcerer

Some of these were on route less time than the others (Atlantis, BSD, Target Alpha, Sorcerer were all short-lived).
All were .50 a play except the ones noted at .25/per.
ToM is a killer and I just rebought it in search of a new route.

Genie and Target Alpha were constantly played at a quarter. Genie paid itself off in under five months.

I would highly recommend checking pinballmap and looking for desirable games that are not on route near you and targeting those games specifically.

Double post