a Mr.&Mrs.Pacman pin I picked up with my 1998 Corolla. Nedless to say it was a tight fit.

No MPU, dead solenoid driver, and wiring hacks. Paid 150$ for it. Spent a lot of time and money learning how to fix pinballs. It was my guinea pig.

cftbl, and i still have it and it isnt going antwhere soon

Quoted from Hyann

I wanted to build a mame... found Maaca, started buying pinball... mame is still a empty cabinet in the corner of the garage

Thats funny!

Buck Rogers pinball was my first

IS NOSTALGIA A FORM OF REGRET ? NOT IN MY CASE. THE FOLLOWING IS WEIRD STUFF TO WRITE ABOUT ON THIS FULL MOON, - ESPECIALLY AFTER THE HABS BEAT WASHINGTON IN GAME 7. OH WELL, HERE GOES.....

I started building my own pinball machine in 1978. Bill C-74 had just passed, and these cool coin gobbling machines were beginning to come out of back rooms all over Montréal. Not knowing the exact dimensions of a real pinball machine, I would sneak into LaRonde and head straight to the arcades and measure the cabinet of a model whose shape I wanted to copy. The arcade attendants found me suspicious & kicked me out regularly - those damn stinkin' teenagers, if they didn't look so big back then! I also distinctively remember thinking that wedgeheads looked weird, and chose to base my design dimensions on a 70's 4 player Williams.

I actually ended up building a full size model out of 1/2 inch presswood since that was all I could afford, and built my own components from surplus materials I found at Etco and Pascal near McGill and St.Antoine streets. For the electrical stuff my brother would order relays and coils through a mail order service from the States, and then, I discovered Addison. It would take 1-1/2 hours to get there by bus from the south shore, but I didn't give a crap, they had almost everything I needed to ignite the invention process. So with quite a bit of help from my older electronic whizz of a brother, the machine actually worked for a while. It included a pair of hand made wooden flippers with 120V solenoids reeking havoc on the various targets, and finally destroyed the sole hand carved wooden thumper. It also looked a bit like the Partridge family bus.

So, I guess that thing was my first gameroom unit. Then one of my parents' friends gave me a 1961 Gottlieb Corral. It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen, didn't even have an on-off switch. I never really bothered to play it very much, I was unable to see any real appeal in it at that stage. So, I parted it out to make my presswood pinball even better by using those so well engineered Gottlieb bumpers and flippers.

The first pinball I bought and fixed up for myself (at the age of 17) came from the depths of the arcade near the old Forum on Ste.Catherine street adjacent to where the HABS had won so many Stanley Cups over the decades. That particular arcade always managed to smell like an armpit for some reason. The machine I got out of their dank basement for 125 bucks kept me fascinated for many a sleepless night. Everytime I looked inside, I imagined the thinking behind those wires and mechanisms, it sparked my brain in a serious way. These are still very clear & powerful memories, even after 30 years. What a terrible, and at the same time precious curse this fascination has turned out to be.

I STILL CAN'T BELIEVE THE HABS WON TONIGHT !!!

Mine was a Popeye video game. I rented a house and it was sitting outside in the carport...not a garage, outside air exposed carport. So I took it inside and the damn thing worked!
A few years later I finally bought my first pinball machine, and a few years later...like just over one year ago, I got into vids. That Popeve worked great, bright monitor etc, I wish I kept it but when I moved, it stayed in the basement of that house. I hope someone took care it it.

Stan

bally Star trek 1978 . Found it found it on a street curb , heading for the dump , in working condition ...  

Summer of 2008 my wife and I decided to have the basement finished. The contractor turned out to be a nightmare but the job did get somewhat completed. Our motivation was that we needed a nanny suite for when my wife finished her mat. leave in the fall.

So, we had all this open space and I had no idea what to do with it. Growing up, we had a pingpong table, but I fondly remember that my cousins had a 1956? Williams Shoo Shoo and it was fun flipping around without having to dig coins out of my pocket. The last pinball I had remembered playing was High Speed a few years earlier, and before that High Speed at a pool hall around '87. My fondest pinball memories were at bowling alleys and at Funland with my older brother and sister in the mid to late 70's. In high school there was Harlem Globetrotters, Kiss, and a few other early SS Ballys at a local spot we visited at lunch. Space Invaders and other videos seemed to draw more quarters at that point in the early 80's.

So, I got the bright idea to get a pinball and in early Dec '98 started checking Kijiji and Craigslist. There was a guy in Hamilton who had High Hand, Dragon and a few others for sale. The High Hand ad said final blowout get this for Christmas rock bottom price come and get it and so on. So, as I am in Hamilton regularly I made the trip and ended up buying HH and Dragon. Paid the guy and his buddy to deliver as well. Turns out the seller "Jim", was a big time hobbiest and had a ton of machines. He named off all kinds of titles but my extensive knowledge of titles seemed to end at around the early 80's and mostly I remembered a bunch of mid 70's EM's.

I want to thank Stephen Anderson/Mark Uttley for F#@*#@# me over and selling me crap since it forced me to learn about how machines work especially since he conveniently forgot to bring the GTB manual he showed me when we made the transaction. I think I have bought around 17 machines in the last 2 1/2 years.

Hey at least he delivered the game

Bad Cats.  

Mine was my pool table that I got helping a friend move. It wouldnt fit in his basement so he gave it to me and bought himself a smaller one.

First game i bought was Robotron 10 years ago. Still have it, it is a gem, nicest i ever see, i was lucky for my first transaction. Bought it from USA at a high US$$-CAD rate at this time  
One joystick rubber grommet was broken, i found this to be a terrible problem, had absolutely no experience at this time