Anaheim, CA
So I did a search of the web, and could not find any companies that offer you a 'build it yourself' pinball table. Then I searched this forum and could not find a thread where anyone brought it up. If I missed something, and this does exist, please show me the way to it, because I'm interested... but I wanted to throw the question out there and get some opinions of the Pinsiders on whether this is a good idea/bad idea, and what something like this would cost.
Personally I think the physical stuff like building the cabinet and installing flippers/bumpers is the fun part. The most Daunting element of building a machine 'from scratch' would be the computer elements. But, I was thinking, that given how popular tablet devices and smart phones have gotten, what if you could plug your iPad or smart phone into a port in your back box and it acted as your dot matrix display, while an app in the device controlled the lights and mechanics in the table, and kept score?
Those devices are way more powerful than the boards in the backboxes of pinball machines, and most people already own them, or have easy access to them. You could even program your own sounds into each element on the field through the app on the device, so you could make the theme of your pinball machine literally anything you want, if you were willing to take the time to build it and make the artwork for it...
personally I'd be willing to pay 2k for a machine I had to build myself if it meant I would own the only "The big Lebowski" pinball machine in the world.
What do you think?
Sana'a
