Not the worst but hilarious all the same.

Onsite machine as well so that was the end of that game.

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The ramp for the stage in pinball magic broke when having some friends over. I had to beg Mantis to make a new one. (Hopefully he sold some of them.) it’s exactly 2 years ago. I had a struggle time wise to get it back together. Only one small issue to fix and it is done. The game will get a new owner in 7 days. Can’t wait to get the paperweight our of my house.
Sick and tired of looking at it.
It also turned out that the game was operator hacked. I sunk so much money into it, not even funny.

I recently picked up a #SS that was missing one of the frogs. Fortunately it came with a few "decorative" frogs, one of them I drilled a hole in the bottom and superglued a knitting needle in that I cut in half. Works like a charm, for most of the times. Already two times it broke free, which means a frog somewhere on the playfield needs rescuing.

A coilstop broke on a flipper. The anvil turned sideways in the sleeve and smoked the coil. The EOS could not open.

Probably one of the stand up targets next to the ringmaster on CV that snapped clean off and fell forward onto the playfield.

I had a cabinet button fall out during a tourney.

Not exactly a machine breakdown. After getting my black Hole working it was my go to game. It was a couple of weeks before I got it in to multi ball when it suddenly shut off. Turned out to be my three year old playing under the game turned it off.

Flipper button opto interrupter snapped during play; coil stop snapped during play; bridge rectifier died during play; trough eject coil internally shorted in the middle of a game.

Too funny.

Two player game on our Congo. I'm player 1 and my buddy is player 2.

My buddy has 3 billion at the end of his second ball.
I start my ball 3 and perform a slap save which snaps the plastic arm that activates the opto for the flipper button instantly making the right flipper dead.

I still get shit for this by the way. Something about me not wanting my friends to grand champ my games so I break them instead.

Not necessarily a broken part but more of a story with a game design flaw...

Not too long ago, I was having a marathon game on WoZ. Must have been 45 minutes with a ~4 million point score. Would have been a GC score. I had a ball hang up in the back of the game. As I leaned forward to look for the ball, I leaned on the "Start" button accidentally and restarted the game with the "Slow Start" feature. So incredibly pissed.

For those of you not familiar, JJP has their start buttons sticking out of the game and they are very easy to bump or press unintentionally. I really hate them.

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Turn off the slow start feature. I turn it off on all my games.

Flipper button fly off midgame, I also bought an aftermarket sword for my GOT sword lock and the blade snapped off and flew across the playfield mid game.

I brought a shadow to my pinball show this past summer, and one of the metal phurba ramps broke apart. All the weld points gave out. Luckily, mantis amusements make the metal ramps. Couldn't fix that one on site, but luckily it happened at the end of the day.

A couple years ago, I brought an allied leisure dynomite to a show, and one of the playfield inserts popped out, and the ball got stuck in the hole for that insert. I ended up having to find a walmart and buy some epoxy to glue the insert back in. Now I always carry epoxy in my toolkit for shows, but I haven't needed to use it again yet.

A few years back, I was playing an A13 at a show, and I activated 13-ball multiball. However, about 6 balls got stuck in the shooter lane, the game kept trying to kick them out over and over, but was unsuccessful. There was no contact info on the game, so I just ended up turning it off and alerting the show staff. I saw about an hour later that somone had attended to it.

Playing F14 at Pinburgh this year, and having a great game, on ball two, carrying a big points lead, on my second multiball when nobody else in the group had even got one up to that point. Upper right flipper gets stuck. We call for the attendant who tried to fix it quickly, but the coil was smoked. Ended up having to play one of the subsitute games, where I ended up taking a zero on Banzai Run. The points lost were the difference between qualifying for B division instead of C division.

Wow. You need to post that here:

http://tiltforums.com/t/the-worst-that-s-pinball-moments-of-all-time/3441/3

I had a droptarget crack during a game of Jungle Lord and lodge itself inside the "LORD" hole (the one that activates the little ball) which locked the game in mini-game mode over, over and over LOL

Luckily i had extra droptargets that i got with the game so it was no big deal in that way.

I was at Pinball Wizard in New Hampshire, perhaps the greatest location in pinball history. It was a few days before they closed for good. I talked with Sarah the owner an told her I was sad to see them close. She said "I'm not, it's lot of work". They had a couple hundred immaculate machines. My next game was LOTR where I proceeded to rip the spinner right off! Like, it was laying in the middle of the playfield. I went back to her and told her what happened. She gave me an exasperated look that said "see what I'm talking about?"

RIP PW!

This happened many years ago on my CV when I had people over.

What p*ssed me of most is that the person kept playing, instead turning off the machine and of notifying me something serious had broken.

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People have told me (long afterwards) that they were afraid I'd somehow hold them responsible for the breakage.

Then there was the kid who popped the Piano bulb loose from my TZ, and told me later that he was playing good with the balls but had the hardest time getting that little yellow thing up the ramps.

It's not even the worst broken part, but F'ing spotlight covers SUCK!!!

So many good, robust designs in pinball... that game where the heavy steel ball gets fired into a bunch of stuff. Yet when we get to spotlights, someone thought it would be dandy to use the thinnest, crappiest, plastic known to man! I have two games that recently started to have broken covers (one at the prongs, one on the shroud itself) and of course they fall off and descend down into your ball trough, killing any momentum you had in a game.

And if you're lucky enough to have spotlights in areas that air balls won't hit just wait, because after a few years they'll discolor and lose their luster.