Arcade Collecting > Miscellaneous Arcade Talk
Build your own Pinball Machine
mp2526:
There actually is quite a bit of physics involved in designing playfields I think this would be the hardest part to get right without creating dead spots.
They make replacement MPUs for older Bally pins, at one time I had thought about designing my own pin but based on the rules of one of these Bally pins (Xenon to be specific) This would probably be the easiest aproach.
I've actually put a lot of thought into this whole build your own pin idea, so if you have specific questions, I might be able to help you out.
GreenKnight37:
Hmmm....Theres actually a company that makes custom pinball machines, though I cant remember the link to it. They built one for Monster.com though, so if you do some Google searching you might find it (I just checked though, you're gonna have to wade through lots of junk).
Your best place to look up information would be the Rec.Games.Pinball newgroup. I frequent that place, and its a very very active board. They could surely point you to some good links.
But if you try this, its gonna take a long time! A MAME cab is childs play compared to building a pin. You've gotta get all the angels and stuff correct, it has to be programmed to react to certain events...it would be really difficult, but I wish you the best of luck if you try!
Apollo:
My advice although I hate to rain on your parade. Give up --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type-- you start. I admire your idea and ambition but this is never going to fly. For what it will cost you, you could probably pick up 5 working or 10 non working pinball tables. IMHO it's just going to be technically to hard and to expensive :-\
mp2526:
Well, depends on how you go about doing it and how custom you intend on getting it.
With the prices of pins lately, you would be hard pressed to find a working pin for under $500-600 and that wouldn't still need some work. A pin in good working order will cost you more like $1000 plus depending on the type. I can guarantee you I can build a pinball for less than $5000.
Technically, yes it will be harder than throwing together a MAME cabinet and will probably take some time to get it to the state that it can be played, but people have already done it, so it's not like I'm breaking new ground.
Plus, I realize I will probably spend more on it than if I bought a new Ripley's, but the point is the experience and the feeling of accomplishment.
Meh, we'll see.
fredster:
--- Quote ---My advice although I hate to rain on your parade. Give up --BINGO! Either that, or I was attempting to say "before" but it was too many letters to type-- you start.
--- End quote ---
Now that's not the old BYOAC spirit!
I agree, it depends on how you build it. I was talking about something pretty modest. I don't care about "pinball physics" either. I think it'd be fun to get it to do some things. I mean 3 pop bumpers and a launcher assembly.
I go to arcade auctions all the time. I've seen real junk go for $30-100 bucks. You can get one working in the $200 range.
A lot of people don't like video games, but Everybody loves pinball.
It doesn't have to be a haunted house or Kiss to be playable.
I don't even know why you have to have a controler. It seems like you could build one like in the 1930's (without flippers) that use some kind of basic circuit logic.
I am going to take some measurements of the cabinet of the '86 Genesis I have and see if somebody will post it.
I mean, it has a lot of little parts, but if the people here can make a star wars yoke from pop cans and hack a trackball to a mouse PCB, this should be a piece of cake.
The parts would be hard, but if it were reduced in scale and didn't have a real fancy double ball play, it might be fun to do it.
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