"NOW I SEE YOU"

How many times have I heard Pin*Bot say those classic words? Too many tmes to count, but I can't get enough of this timeless classic.
So without further adieu, here's my experience with the 1986 Williams classic

The first exposure I had to this game was through my good ol' Nintendo Entertainment System in the late 80s. I played that game for hours, racking up scores in the range of 40 and 50 million. The highest score that I have written in the manual was 59,398,360 , but I'm sure I have had higher at some point of laziness. Then in 1991 I found a Pin*Bot machine at a bowling alley in Minocqua Wi, thinking "I'm going to beat it silly, no problem".. $2.00 and 5 minutes later, I hadn't even gotten a replay! As my pinball addiction was growing, this was now a personal goal to conquer Pin*Bot. At the end of the summer, I was only able to visit the bowling alley a few times, and never got to enter my initials. It wasn't until I started working for RJB in 1997 when I saw another Pin*Bot. Now having a few years of pinball repair experience,and with my improved playing skills, I was up for the challenge again, and ready for battle...

As a wierd twist of fate, my girlfriend of the time was also a pinball fan. Her favorite game? Pin*Bot. Se told me a tale of her family spending their vacation time frequenting this machine at their hotel, getting into fights when somebody took the accumulated Solar Value award. Around 1997, she decided to buy a Pin*Bot machine to put in her basement. After she had it for close to a year, I gave her a NOS Pin*Bot playfield for christmas, since the lenses on the old playfield were protruding outward and interfearing with game play. Part of the gift was also doing ALL the labor intensive tasks of changing over, rebuilding, cleaning, and replacing parts. Me, being the pinball lover I am, was happy to have the opportunity to imply my tech skills and detail-attentive work as a gift to her - something nobody else can do (at a cost of $0 to her). At this point, I had never done a playfield transfer before, but I knew it would take time and I was interested in the challenge.
    Another interesting turn of fate, through friends of hers, I met the game designer Barry Oursler. Early on in our relationship, she told  me one of her fiend's father was an emplyee of Williams Electronics, but she didn't remember her friend's maiden name, nor what he did for Williams. Who would have thought that it would be the creator of Pin*Bot, not to mention over 30 other pinball machines ranging from Phoenix (1978) to Junkyard (1996), and included such classics as Gorgar (1979), Space Shuttle (1984), Comet (1985), Fire! (1987), Cyclone (1988), Hurricane (1991),  Dr. Who (1992), and Whodunnit? (1995). So the next time We saw her friend, I dropped the playfield off, and had Barry sign the playfield (see picture below) before I performed the changeover.
 
Here's some pictures I took when I completed the project. Click on the image to see the full size picture.

 
How long did it take to do this? approx. 4 months, a few hours at a time. The end result? beautiful. I was sad to bring it back, but I knew her family would enjoy it.
It played really well too, especially since I put brand new flipper assemblies in, without the crappy compression springs. Would I do it again? Most likely.


and of course, my "first" Pin*Bot...

Questions? Comments? Feedback? Let me here from you. email me at orbaddict@mindspring.com

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