Elvira & the Party Monsters (1989 Bally Mfg.)
The Story: Ah yes, Elvira. Need I say more? Everyone knows the "Mistress of the dark". She's a movie star, TV star, she's dark, sexy & funny. With her success, it's only inevitable that she would be featured in at least one good game. Well, acually she is featured in two great pinball games. "Elvira & the Party Monsters" was released in 1989, and another gamed called "Scared Stiff" featured Elvira 7 years later in 1996.
Yet again, this was another good game that I missed out on, seeing as I was in the video game scene for many years and have just started getting into pinball. To this day, I have yet to see or play "Scared Stiff". I am however familiar with "Elvira & the Party Monsters". This game is awesome. Great artwork, great gameplay, awesome theme and you gotta love that late 80's charm. After playing it a few times recently, it was another must own. Seems just like Xenon, the Elvira pin's are highly sought after and usually fetch quite the pretty penny. How was I going to swing this one?
The Score: Another trade with Slacker's was made. They had this pin in their Columbia store for quite awhile, which is where I became familiar with the game and started feeding quarters into it. It sat there teasing me with a high retail price tag on it. I had offered trades in the past but it was still out of my reach. Anyway, after some time had passed, I began to notice some lamp's stopped working and the score display's were dying. The game still played great otherwise.
With these issues, it was time to bargain. I had just bought a cheap Ms. Pac-Man on CL and spent next to nothing reviving it. Since I already owned one, I didn't need another. I decided to put 2 games on the table this time, the Ms. Pac-Man I had just aquired and my Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man Pinball. It's a win-win for everyone, Slacker's gets 2 fully working games and I finally get to add Elvira to my collection. They finally agreed and the trade was made.
The Service: The first thing was to clean up this baby. It appears to have been shopped recently & the rubbers are good. However the playfield was pretty dirty & someone did a half assed wax job on it, leaving remnants of wax in some of the posts and other tight spots. My wife took it upon herself to do most of the cleaning, and after about an hour it already looks great. While she was busy with that, I was busy fine tuning some switches that needed attention and replacing a few blown lamps on the playfield.
Illumination issues were next on the list. Turns out that many of the lamps were still OK but weren't lighting up. More specifically, the lamps behind the backglass, coin door lamps and most of the lighting on the LH side of the playfield wasn't working. Apparently these system 11 pin's are notorious for this kind of thing, and the usual suspect is some header pins on the interconnect board. These pins are known to develop bad solder joints over time, which causes the pins to get hot, charring away at the pins, traces & connectors. Sure enough, I had a cooked connector and several charred pins. After replacing those and touching up a few more solder joints for good measure, I have all the lamp's in working order. From there all I needed to do was replace several of the "flasher" lamps that were bad. Now were in business.
I installed a new battery holder in a remote location away from the MPU. More recently, I have replaced the old burned out displays with new Rottendog LED displays.
Yet again, this was another good game that I missed out on, seeing as I was in the video game scene for many years and have just started getting into pinball. To this day, I have yet to see or play "Scared Stiff". I am however familiar with "Elvira & the Party Monsters". This game is awesome. Great artwork, great gameplay, awesome theme and you gotta love that late 80's charm. After playing it a few times recently, it was another must own. Seems just like Xenon, the Elvira pin's are highly sought after and usually fetch quite the pretty penny. How was I going to swing this one?
The Score: Another trade with Slacker's was made. They had this pin in their Columbia store for quite awhile, which is where I became familiar with the game and started feeding quarters into it. It sat there teasing me with a high retail price tag on it. I had offered trades in the past but it was still out of my reach. Anyway, after some time had passed, I began to notice some lamp's stopped working and the score display's were dying. The game still played great otherwise.
With these issues, it was time to bargain. I had just bought a cheap Ms. Pac-Man on CL and spent next to nothing reviving it. Since I already owned one, I didn't need another. I decided to put 2 games on the table this time, the Ms. Pac-Man I had just aquired and my Mr. & Mrs. Pac-Man Pinball. It's a win-win for everyone, Slacker's gets 2 fully working games and I finally get to add Elvira to my collection. They finally agreed and the trade was made.
The Service: The first thing was to clean up this baby. It appears to have been shopped recently & the rubbers are good. However the playfield was pretty dirty & someone did a half assed wax job on it, leaving remnants of wax in some of the posts and other tight spots. My wife took it upon herself to do most of the cleaning, and after about an hour it already looks great. While she was busy with that, I was busy fine tuning some switches that needed attention and replacing a few blown lamps on the playfield.
Illumination issues were next on the list. Turns out that many of the lamps were still OK but weren't lighting up. More specifically, the lamps behind the backglass, coin door lamps and most of the lighting on the LH side of the playfield wasn't working. Apparently these system 11 pin's are notorious for this kind of thing, and the usual suspect is some header pins on the interconnect board. These pins are known to develop bad solder joints over time, which causes the pins to get hot, charring away at the pins, traces & connectors. Sure enough, I had a cooked connector and several charred pins. After replacing those and touching up a few more solder joints for good measure, I have all the lamp's in working order. From there all I needed to do was replace several of the "flasher" lamps that were bad. Now were in business.
I installed a new battery holder in a remote location away from the MPU. More recently, I have replaced the old burned out displays with new Rottendog LED displays.