Thank you for watching. Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Wedgehead Pinball Podcast. My name is Alan, I am one half of Wedgehead, a pinball bar in Portland, Oregon. I'm joined here today by my co-host, The Waterboy, Alex in his basement studio. What are we talking about this week, Alex? Today we are talking about kind of a follow-up to one of our other episodes, the natural progression of pinball players trying to get a game at home. why you probably shouldn't do it advice if you're gonna do it and just kind of our thoughts on it thoughts on different games where to spend your money what to expect it's just kind of uh it's the equivalent you know it's another beginner guide to someone that's looking maybe considering their first game at home and just kind of our general advice on that topic yeah so it's called so you want to buy a pinball machine another episode oh titled by you it'd be a banger title you can tell i came up with these ones but yeah i think it's like this is probably the most common thing that we see on pin side facebook groups yeah the pinball reddit any any of those are like the first thing is like oh i want to buy my first game what should i buy or i'm thinking i like this game but what about like yeah just the general advice everyone kind of has the same basic questions a lot of the time yes and there's a lot of those questions that don't even make it to like the pinball style ready you kind of like got boomers asking you like where do i buy these things who how much do they cost and so i think we kind of just want to talk about some of the real basic stuff along with some more you know things we've learned over our years in the hobby yeah so i would say the first question you'd ask is do you really want a game at home do you are you sure about that sure about that so the first thing to know about pinball machines is they break you can buy one that's working perfect and that fucker can break before you get at home it can be playing well when you go to test it and you just moving that game will make it so where now something doesn't work or you could go test play a game and it plays awesome and it plays awesome in your house and then there's a random reset every like five days and you have in your basement for a year and it drives you goddamn insane which happens a lot on the 90s bally williams game me and it's it's one of those things so you have to really consider do you want a pinball machine at home do you enjoy playing pinball if you're listening to this podcast i bet you do do you enjoy hunting down old artifacts across the country maintaining ancient electronics and haggling with old men on the internet if you said yes to all of those you're ready for it maybe maybe but that's the big thing yeah it's a it's a different hobby i think a lot of people are like yeah it's like video games like i like playing this game i can play this game at home And we'll kind of get into that in a sec, but that's not the case for most pinball ownership experience. It's a different thing. I will say that if you love playing pinball and you're new to pinball, maybe you have a little bit of disposable income, or you think you're like, hey, I can save up and get one, I will say that just continue to play on location. First and foremost, if you have good spots near you, there's lots of good new arcades popping up in different spots around the country that are run by people that actually love pinball. 100 so there was a while there where the games that were being routed were pretty rough yep pretty much all across the country and now what you're seeing is a lot of a resurgence of great locations opening up everywhere so there's a good chance the obvious operators do a damn good job the people that aren't i mean there's a lot of people doing this they're not in it for money they're doing it because they love pinball and that's going to be your best bet i'm telling you like it's great when you run into those places pinball players make the best operators they're going to want to make sure that those games play well and uh you're going to get to play variety anytime something breaks you don't have to worry about it because the thing about it is owning a pinball machine is like owning an old car yeah like the older you get the more problems you're going to have just due to age yeah that's it and there's some inherently bad ones it's like you could go buy yourself you know a fucking sob and it's going to be problematic from the first day you get it and that's the case with pinball we'll get into some of the brand names in a bit But pretty much all of them, except for a brand new Stern, are going to be a problem. Yes. And I think that you got to be for real with yourself and think about like, especially when you're talking about like, you're like, I'm not super handy. If you're not a person that likes to work on things, that likes to tinker with things, that likes to learn these things, all this information is out there. There's Pinball Wiki. There's forums. There are things and people have been down this road before. But you do have to teach yourself. Yeah, it's not like this maintenance. You can't post because that's something you see a lot is people buy a game. People a lot of the time buy a not working game and then they immediately go post on pin side because they found the pin side. That's a big pinball form. They find the form. They post my game doesn't work. What do I do? And they expect people to walk them through from, you know, turning on the game. Yes, that's just not going to happen. If you are picking up a broken game and your first question is, what am I going to do? You shouldn't have bought the game. You should only buy a broken game if you know how to fix it. Don't buy projects for your first game. Yeah, and that's kind of the first lesson. Don't buy a project for your first game. Even if you're confident in all of your abilities, even if you've repaired electronics, you should probably have a working pinball machine in the house before you touch it. Don't worry. If you like tinkering, they will break, and you'll have a chance. Yeah, oh, you'll have a chance. I promise you, you will not miss out on that. You're still going to solder everything you wanted. But if the thing is that you love playing pinball, and you're always going out, and how cool would it be if I could just be in my underwear and I could just go play. I could play whenever I want. Make sure you get a game that works. So you actually get more of that experience and less of like, well, there's something weird wrong with it. And I don't know exactly what it is. So I got to diagnose it. There are outlier cases. There are guys that just genuinely love fixing shit. And I've, you know, you've seen success stories online of guys that bought some decrepit old game. They never had played pinball before and got it working. That's a different breed. They're not listening to this podcast right now. They're not sitting there asking, should I do this? because they already know they have the ability to do it. And I don't want to discourage guys like that because I know they're out there. Oh, for sure. But if you're just a pinball player, you have to think, is that what I really want to get into? Owning machines means fixing machines. Yep. Period. So it's like, now you can buy a new game and we are going to say... We're going to keep coming back to that. We're going to keep saying this. It's like, but if you want to, if you're dead set, you're like, I absolutely want a new game or I want to see the end of Godzilla and I'm not any good and I want to buy a Godzilla. because here's the other thing you see on a forum. What game should I buy? I want to buy a new – like, what game should I buy? Everyone's going to tell you it's Godzilla. You need to buy Godzilla. You need to buy a Godzilla Premium. That's the game you should buy. I'm going to save you all the time of posting on a known forum. That's what people are going to say. Yeah, or they'll be like, Deadpool. Deadpool is a good beginner game. Everyone – it's just – Or they'll say those things. And both of those things are true. I will say that I would buy the game that you like. so if you played one if you love godzilla buy godzilla you love deadpool don't let somebody else i guess don't let anyone tell you that if somebody says i love ninja turtles i grew up on as a kid i played a couple times on location i liked it other people like i don't like that game that game sucks just buy that one don't don't let somebody talk you into a godzilla if you love ninja turtles and just buy ninja turtles exactly if you're listening to this podcast and you're like well you just told me not to buy a game at all and you really want to go buy something fuck this podcast always do what you want to do number one but if you're on the fence listen to us absolutely absolutely we've been there before exactly we've done we've done lots of dumb shit and so we're just trying to like steer you in the right direction don't buy a virtual pinball do not buy a full-size virtual pinball lots of people that are new to this go i only have space i live in an apartment i only have space for one game i could go buy a virtual pinball it costs as much you know you can buy a real nice looking one for seven thousand dollars online that's the same prices of stern and it has 500 games in it guess what 500 garbage games is worse than one decent one yes like it's not it's not the same and it's a huge they depreciate like a lead balloon it's a horrible move to buy a full-size virtual pinball in my in in my opinion if you want to set up your pc if you want to load v-pin on your pc and set up a little lockdown bar with buttons on it you know something that you can like store away that you're putting 200 bucks into that's completely different go for it knock yourself out i think that's fun like i i have you know i have virtual pins installed on my pc or whatever but do not dedicate the space and expense of a real pinball machine to a v-pen horrible idea agreed it's not pinball the physics aren't the same it'll never bring you the same satisfaction of what you're looking for yeah it costs a lot of money to give you a good one that has like maybe it rumbles a little bit right like they kind of they all of the hardware they can because there's a lot of hardware now it's like oh you can get a plunger that tells how hard you plunged you can get all these you know accelerometers so you can nudge with varying levels you can get knockers so when the ball bounces off the pops it actually makes noise all this shit it's just trying to replicate the real thing in it at greater and greater expense and it's never going to be the real thing it's never going to be the real thing so get the real thing right if you have that much money get the real thing don't get the fake thing get the real thing if you're looking to buy a pen i guess the place is because that's a common question is where do you buy these things so if you're looking to buy a new pen you can go find a distributor i think you can find them on stern's website or whatever they'll tell you what they have in stock if you buying a brand new pinball going through the distributor rather than the company if it your first one definitely worth it because they sell them at the same price as the company direct And they come to your house They explain how to take the glass off They kind of show you around. Distributors are good guys. For the most part, I don't know all of them, but... Not every distributor's good, just like not every operator's good. But by and large, they're very helpful. Yep. And if you're going to buy a new pen, it's like there's no reason to skip that, to skip them unless, you know, you've got some odd reason, no distributor in your area or whatever. past that though your best bet always like everything in life is going through friends like if you can buy a pinball machine from someone you trust that's 10 000 times better than buying way better random on like guy on the internet it's better if you're in a local pinball scene and you've made friends or maybe you play in a league or whatever and you've met people and they have pins or they have friends that have pins and somebody's looking to sell one of their pins and then they can sell it to you and not only will you probably get a fair and decent deal but you will also know that that game will run properly nobody's trying to lie no one's trying to fuck you nobody's trying to fuck you and then usually if people have owned pins or own a bunch of pins or have owned pins for a while they probably have some semblance of how to work on the games which if this is your first time you don't huge so they could probably come over and go you you might move the game and you might set up you're like hey man now let's start a game you know or like or whatever and they could be like oh you know like check this connector or do this you're like what does that mean and they'll be like all right let me show you how to like or they could come over and you could buy them beer and they can they can help get your game back to where it was yep and don't expect friends because that's another thing you see with guys that are new to the hobby is they just they're like i'll buy you pizza if you come fix my old game i bought off craigslist like you're don't abuse your friends totally yeah but if you have genuine buddies they should be happy to help you out with stuff i know i am when i've seen other friends get into the hobby i'm ecstatic to go pick up a bin with a buddy for the first time because it's fun yeah like seeing other people like you know make bad decisions with you it's great yes exactly it feels validating when you're like oh yeah same dumb thing you've already done exactly so it's it's one of those things that friends that's that's the number one option i mean i would say that better than a distributor i will say that my business partner rodsey he buys and sells games he's got you know 150 plus games at any time he's bought and sold i don't even know hundreds and hundreds of games he majority like we buy all the new games that come out we buy through a distributor but then when he gets new games he he just combs facebook he combs craigslist he comes all those places for deals and if he gets a chance he's cash in hand running out the door to get it but i will say that at this point he knows everyone in the area also buys and sells pins he knows the other operators so a lot of times stuff gets bought sold traded without ever hitting the open market yep yeah that's that's the best way to do it the best because you know who you're dealing with friends and even if your friend doesn't have a game they're going to sell you everybody knows everybody the scene is small that's something you'll learn once you get into even in a city like portland with a lot of pinball even no matter where you are in the world yeah the scene is because it's a small hobby it especially once you get into owning pens like the pinball collecting scene significantly smaller tighter group than the pinball player scene yes because they're expensive yeah to buy yeah and they're and they take up a lot of space yep so if you live in a small apartment you don't have the room so you got to be probably a homeowner or or something yeah we didn't even we kind of glossed over that because hopefully you've considered that if you if you're considering buying a pinball machine to buy a house before you buy pins you don't have to you don't have to but it's smart i would say this is just general financial advice it's if only for max your yeah max your 401k prior to purchasing a pinball only for the reason that you will then have room to put the pins that you buy later oh yeah if only for that reason that's kind of a big thing though but just like you can put these games cost a lot of money buy the house it's a better investment if you've got money for new stern you probably should be in a house realistically yes and that kind of gets us into i guess the next question is like okay so you've decided you're like yeah i like either working on things or i've got a decent amount of money whatever you're at this point where well what what game should i buy how much do they cost what are what things should i consider it costs way too much yeah it's the first thing your eyes are going to roll back in your head if you're listening to this podcast you probably already thought about it i think it's the first thing anyone thinks about because we all the internet you can find out how much games cost yep they're very expensive yeah so stern pros which if you don't have any kind of you know desire to fix things you want to go buy a new stern pro or i shouldn't even say pro necessarily but pros are the cheaper models of sterns and they start at seven grand now yep and the premiums which it's like if you want the moving building on Godzilla if you don't want everybody online to make fun of you for buying the cheap one you got to go spend whatever 9,700 bucks or some shit now yeah premiums went crazy over yeah it's a lot and then Ellie's you should be ashamed of yourself if you're considering buying an Ellie's are for rich dudes okay like all of these things are non-essential toys at the end of the day you don't need them especially because they're made to be put on location and that's funny thing about the pinball hobby is it's a very very very affordable hobby in its truest sense which i think is going out and playing on location yeah because whether it's 50 cents 75 cents a dollar play that's infinitely cheaper than a seven thousand dollar machine that you have to play seven to ten thousand times just like which is nuts dude if you're putting if you're putting seven thousand plays on a game that's insane that's insane you know home use but it's you You don't have to own a pin to enjoy pinball. But this episode is you do want to own a pin. And for a lot of people like Alex here, he's a home collector. How many pins do you have right now? Six. Okay. So he has six pins, which is a lot. That's a substantial amount of money. Nothing compared to like your average middle-aged pinball guy in the Midwest. But it's a lot. It's a lot. It's a lot of money. It takes up a lot of space. and as Alex will tell you he has games break and he has to get off of work and be like I have man I gotta I have the stretches of time where like I've got six games and I've had periods where maybe two of them are playing and four of them like it's that's one thing about having the broken games it's embarrassing when you have a toy that costs you thousands of dollars and you have like your family like I've got family that doesn't live locally and so they might stop by my house you know once a year or whatever they're in town and they come by in half of my pinball machines I'm like oh you can't play that one you can't play that one that's embarrassing yeah that's what motivates me to fix games more than anything all of my games are playing all of my games are playing for the most part right now and that's because alan's been coming here to record the podcast so yeah there's like someone to help me through things and more than anything there's motivation to actually fix shit well it's because we'll also be playing a couple games or whatever after record podcast and be like like what's wrong with this and you're like now it was just like well let's open it up let's look at the difference between us like let's look at it man like let's get this thing running i mean obviously like i own an arcade but it's like we're all pinball guys we want the games to play well when i come over here it's like i want to play some of your games because they're cool yeah like it's like let's play this it's cool things to consider it's like there are different categories i think that if you are going to buy your first game the best thing to do is to buy a brand new stern game as your first game i would say unless you have something else i would agree unless you're someone that likes messing with old electronics in the first place you're someone that likes bargain hunting and that whole side of it because i think there's definitely better bang for your bucks than a modern stern by far oh for sure but just if you actually like playing pinball and you don't want to fuck with that stuff like we keep saying a new stern is like that's the way to go and that's why you see so many guys that are getting into it go out and buy a new stern first of all here's the thing is they're new people like stern machines they're modern they've got the modern deep rule sets which everyone thinks they want they got themes and licenses that you've heard of you can you can just you can go online find a distributor and they could buy it and they'll ship it to your house and they'll set it up like you can't do that with a game from 30 or 40 or 50 years ago you gotta like cruise craigslist it's 100 like it's a different thing buying a brand new new in box game than buying a used game from somebody it's very much it's kind of a trope to compare pinball machines to cars but in so many ways they are and it's like going and buying a new car like if you need the car to drive you to work every day you don't go buy you know like a 69 mustang like you're going to go buy something that just gets you to work every day it costs it might cost more than an older car that you actually like more but you know it's going to work when you want it to i will say that a very cool car that you like a lot doesn't mean shit if that car doesn't run yep and you can't drive it and that's the thing about a lot of these cool old classic games as much as we talk about classic games we are the classic pinball game podcast i think it's like i feel like we talk about that's kind of becoming yeah subjects but it's like what we always come back to is like we talk about playing old games because that's what we both like and those games are really fucking cool and there is something that once you've been a home collector for a long time and i think you've seen this with your collection is you've gotten older and older as you've collected yeah i've kind of worked my way back you've worked your way back and that's cool because you get to keep games that you don't get to see on location yep in your home collection which is i think the best yep but when you first start and you're like i have a chunk of change i have a space i my wife agreed to let me do this stupid foolish decision of buying a brand new pinball machine it's better probably to just buy the new game that's going to work because then when your friends come over or people come over like alex is saying man it is embarrassing if you spend a bunch of money and people like oh really that how much they cost you spent machine Well that the thing All of your family will tell you when you have a pinball machine every single person that you know is going to ask you how much that thing costs for better or worse. Some people just so they can roll their eyes at it. Some people because they're jealous and they want one. But, like, everyone's going to ask you how much it costs, so you kind of have to be braced for that. Yes, and it should work. Yeah, and that's the thing. So the new in-box route is easier to buy, easier to set up. They're going to be super reliable, so it's probably going to be up most of the time. But the problem is that entry level, we're talking maybe six to seven grand. Seven grand for a brand new Stern Pro in the box. But you can buy one that maybe came out of a box six months ago or a year ago or whatever. You might pay about a thousand less or so. I have under a thousand bucks off for a slightly used one. And that should be basically just as good. You shouldn't really have any issues. Realistically, that's what I would probably tell a friend to do. Because a lot of the time the factory support, they don't even care who bought the game originally. Sure. So that's kind of a good way to go. Save yourself. And that way, if you don't play it much, you can sell it down the road and you won't take a huge wash on it. Sure. Yeah. I think that's good for the start. Yep. Now we're getting into older games where, like, that you can find some... So, yeah, when you're not picky, that's when the door opens up. It's like everything in life. If you're set on one thing, you're either going to pay out the nose for it or you're going to be waiting around forever for the perfect one to pop up. Like, if you're like, I only want, you know, 2005 Stern Dale Jr. version of NASCAR, it might be years before you see a Dale Jr. pop up. Yeah, you've been waiting years. You've been waiting how many years? I've been waiting, oh, I've been waiting, yeah, since I was born for a Dale Jr. to pop up.