Cost cutting the Bill Of Materials by $20 to $50 . Example removing a magnet, flipper assembly or other small , but cool object.

Coilstops
Yes looking at you Garry

Bally ordering way too many Rapid Fire cabinets and then having to use the glut of extras for Centaur II and Mrs Pac-Man.

CTII (resized).jpg

By making it in the first place to compete with Hyperball.

LTG : )

And EBD

Considering the manufacturers goal probably was to make games that would last max. 5 years in route in order to get operators to buy new games instead of trying to get some more years from their old stuff, the batteries should have been overcharged with even more current. Inferior IC sockets and board edge connectors sure helped

Thunderbirds

Pac-Man, Qbert, Joust, Defender...

depends on from whose perspective...

for the technically inclined hobby player it would be smd and dedicated hardware.

for those of us who like original themes it would be introduction of licenced themes.

for the manufacturer it would perhaps be lcd screens which require so much additional content creation and of course playfields fueling pinside‘s obsession with dimpling and pooling.

Pinball 2000

How was this a bad manufacturing decision?

In 1982 it was a genius decision. They sold all of those games in a difficult market.

If pinside ran a pinball company it would go out of business in a month.

Stern making cheaper coil stops to save money on a $6k - $9k+ product.
Stern making cheaper playfields to save money on a $6k - $9k+ product.
Stern making cheaper cabinets to save money on a $6k - $9k+ product.

Gottlieb hanging on too long to EM technology and not embracing solid state.

Gottlieb not making pins like williams. Their SS stuff was always far inferior.

Hiring Jpop. Pinbar. Octo Manufacturing. Oh wait, Deer Poot hasn’t manufactured anything.

Service "pegs"

CAPCOM for releasing flipper football b4 BBB and for releasing flipper football period

Bally not putting higher specs in the -35 (ram, cpu speed, etc)

GI connectors rated for lower current than what is pushed through them.

LTG : )

Look at how packed that machine is thanks to not having to piss it all away on license.

Yep B/W GI connectors are always burnt - were the connectors an issue in the first 3-5 years of a machine life, or is it only as they've aged and end up having higher resistance because the contact is not as good?

Is it anymore packed than the JJPs licensed themes that came after that & cost less?

Using weak sauce wire gauge.

Woz

Two recent ones...

The gobstopper kickout on Wonka and the Telekineses lock in Stranger Things

These seem to not work right on any machine I have seen without hours of dicking around.

Oh and a special mention to Star Wars premium and LE for being crazy hard to dial in to play well.

Yup... love the game cant stand the theme.

I get it... was sort of a Bally Williams throwback but still.

Gottlieb system one cpu boards.

Could happen anytime though usually took a few years or more. Why they didn't bother fixing it.

Wasn't resistance or the contact. The connectors weren't rated for as high as the amperage going through them. Eventually the metal on metal connection burns.

Like a heating element on an electric stove. Turn it on and it glows red. Except your stove was made to take it.

LTG : )

Ah yes, spider chips....

Williams eliminating speech from solid state games up until Space Shuttle. How much cooler would Solar Fire, Time Fantasy, Barracora, Laser Cue, Cosmic Gunfight, Star Light, Defender have been with speech.

Well, maybe not Defender. The videogame used the same sound fx and was cool without speech.

Stern replacing the playfield support slide brackets in the Pro models with those playfield pegs.

I think this decision had the biggest consequence ... but for how long could they have continued ...

I've said from the start, it wasn't the theme it was the person behind it and who he surrounded himself with, which turned it from a potential to a boat anchor right from the start back in June 2013. A manufacturer with both integrity and the experience in manufacturing could have easily taken those same assets and made it into something at least playable.

Here's a recap of some of the lowlights -

Moving manufacturing operations to a country that had never seen a pinball machine before.

Using the servile morons of AussieArcade for design input and feedback rather than the main pinball scene of Australia resulting in "the worst pinball machine of all time" as per the TWIPY's, pinside bottom 300, the entire Northern Hemisphere and 98% of Australian pinball collectors.

Not being upfront about your backstory with previous manufacturing attempts of other products and the whereabouts of the monies collected and constantly deflecting when questioned directly resulting in zero domestic demand when it came time to preorder.

Using operating systems of other manufacturers without consent.

Using exact pop bumper designs of other defunct manufacturers.

Threatening to sue those who referred to the title as anything other than Thunderbirds and using local AussieArcade toadies to threaten to sue pinside Admin from anyone who posted critical reviews of the machine or anything referring to said backstory.

Pissing off the world's largest pinball market on the world's largest pinball forum by insulting them repeatedly.

When all else had failed and five years later when the original 17 preorders still hadn't been built, using rotordave's pinside clout as an underhanded marketing tool to mislead the world's biggest pinball forum knowing full well who would be providing reviews (AussieArcade sycophants) since the machine by that stage was widely known in Australia as a unplayable/unsellable pile of shit.

Didn't matter. They were losing $1K a game going out the door. Sell more BBB's than FF ? ( if possible with small distribution and all manufacturer pinball sales were tanking ) they would have lost more money quicker.

LTG : (

poor art on Williams games in the 70's

Replacing physical knockers with that god awful screech...

Always wondered what would have happened if instead of resting on their laurels they embraced the SS technology early on.

Gotlieb using Texas Instruments for their first Ss games

Stern cheaping out on PSUs so the power switch is now in the backbox. Only manufacturer to be soo fucking cheap. I still reach down and find bald wood after a game. Who here likes bald wood??? NOBODY!

GI being on in arcade environment. Constantly on high setting=increased heat=increased resistance, which=increased heat, well, there it is. And yes, pins were ‘adequate’.

Bally 6803 particle board cabs.

Aussie ARCADE was in no means as a site responsible for any of the crap that went on with thunder turds i believe homepin was threatening legal action against the site for negative comments from contributors to certain threads AA as a site cannot control dickheads as Pinside cannot either

I'd rather have the switch on the backbox instead of under the cabinet.

Unless you like having to squeeze between machines to turn a game on or off why would you want it in on the backbox?
No disrespect, but you are the only one I know who doesn't loathe the new location.

Eliminating a couple miles wire in favor of node boards.

It's not a strong preference, I'm really ok with either. I've never had to squeeze between machines much, and the machines that I am used to are spaced apart enough the you can fit fairly easily between them.
You like what you like, I guess

I think it was Rockwell. Spider chips. and yes it was pretty crappy when compared to Bally's or WMS hardware

TI rocks. They are about the only ones left make a lot of old dip chips.