I suppose there's the easy comparison with both machines containing bells, too, although most mechanical noisemakers except the extra-ball/replay knocker have been replaced by stereo sound. Nobody dares touch that knock, though. It's just an electromagnet that smacks a piece of wood in the cabinet, essentially, but it's one of those funny little holdovers form the past -- like QWERTY? -- that can't be changed, at least not easily. To get rid of that component is to lose some of the pinball-nature of the table.
PPM has a website with hours and photos, in case you ever find yourself in the Bay Area and need an afternoon of amusement. I bet they'd have no problem staging a type-in.
Typed on an Olympia SM3
2 comments:
I really like the old all electro-mechanical pinball machines. They are really neat and except for some switch contacts and relays that occasionally fail (but can be repired/replaced) they will keep on working.
At one time I could have had several, BUT where does one store a collection of pinball machines? I've enough space problem with typewriters.
That is a beautiful SM3.
It's a right of passage in the pursuit of a misspent youth to while away hours (and a lotta coins) tapping away at those buttons, ruining your posture, and trying not to TILT the machine in a vain attempt to beat the high score of 1,000,000 points that some smartass clocked up on the machine before you.
But I would always get a buzz when that familiar 'knock' would emanate from somewhere inside the machine, alerting me to the fact that I'd just scored a free game. I spent a great deal of the Summer of '79 virtually chained to the KISS machine, back when I worked at a pizza parlour and would sneak next door to the Espresso Bar to feed coins into this machine.
I recall sometime in the mid '80s when a monstrous machine, called "Black Knight" was released. It was about the size of a bed and it used a white billiard ball instead of a steel one. Cost $2 bucks per game, which, at the time, was considered highway robbery. AND you only got three balls instead of five. Ripoff!
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