Video Pinball (1978 Atari)
The Story: This is another game I had never seen or played until I brought it
home. Back in the late 1970's and early 1980's, Atari was not only one of the
prime innovators of gaming, but they were trying their hand at pinball as well.
They released a few, including a couple of really unique specimens. "Hercules"
comes to mind, and it's another game that I hadn't seen or played until last
year when I actually got to service one. How often do you get to play on a table
that's about 2 or 3 times the size of a standard pin? The friggin' ball is a
pool ball. But as usual I digress. Another unique game Atari released was called
"Video Pinball". No, I'm not talking about the Atari 2600 game or the home pong
console. I'm referring to the arcade game of course.
Video Pinball is a unique blend of, well, just that, video and pinball. The
game consists of a miniature raised foam playfield mounted to the roof of the
cabinet complete with a few dozen flashing red LED lamps. The bottom half of the
cabinet features a 23" monitor with the tube pointed upward. Sandwiched
in between is a smoked two-way mirror. Behind that, a black light to illuminate
the playfield. The image from the playfield is then reflected into the mirror
while the monitor's image of a moving ball and drop targets shine through,
creating the illusion of playing a live action pinball machine. The control
panel consists of a plunger with an optic board attached, flipper buttons on
each side and a spring loaded pressure switch for a nudge effect. It really does
come about as close to pinball as you can get without actually using parts like
coils, solenoids or even a ball for that matter. Being from 1978, it has the
standard sounds, pop bumpers, drop targets, rollovers, special lanes and so on,
all with a disco style theme. The playfield even features disco dancers.
All in all it's a neat piece of Atari history. And since it's so unique,
emulation just can't even come close to the real thing. This is another one of
those game's that I wasn't necessarily on the hunt for. But when the opportunity
came along to pick one up in a bulk deal, I just couldn't say no.
The Score: This is where this very website comes in handy. No Craigslist,
eBay or Super Auction story here. Just an average day of coming home from work
and checking my e-mail. A local fellow contacted me after finding this site.
How cool is that? He was only a half hour away and had 3 games in his basement
that needed to go to make way for a remodel project. These games consisted of an
old Cal-Omega poker game, a "Return Of The Jedi", and, of course, Video Pinball.
Needless to say I didn't hesitate to pick up the phone and call. He informs me
that they are all project games (meaning they all need some attention to bring
them back to life). To the best of his knowledge, they were all complete with
the exception of Video Pinball, which was missing the front plexiglass and the
two-way mirror. We haggle and he agrees to a $100 cash offer as long as I can
clear them out right away. Well you don't have to tell me twice. I immediately
hop into my pickup truck and off I go to score more gems.
The Service: I come home about 90 minutes later with 3 new projects moved
from the seller's basement to mine. I start to survey my latest score. First
game I looked at was probably the least interesting piece, that of course being
the poker machine. Turns out it's actually working with the exception of a button
or two. It just needed a good scrubbing and a couple of new microswitches. Next
up, Jedi. This one, though the seller thought was complete, turned out to have
no chassis for the disco monitor tube. I don't have any disco chassis' laying
around, but I do have spare working monitors. I hooked one up in hope's I would
see a working game, but all I could get from it was a blue screen. No other
signs of life. From there I notice that the game has an ARII board, which was an
exact match to one used in my Centipede game. So I pulled my known working ARII
and tried that. Nope, same blue screen. I also tried the ARII from the ROTJ in
my Centipede. The sound was out, but it was otherwise working. So unfortunately
it appears that the ROTJ boardset is bad. Between that and the missing monitor
chassis, I just didn't have any interest in saving it at this point. ROTJ isn't
really my kind of game anyway, although I would always welcome a $100 Star Wars
arcade game any day.
My main game of interest for myself out of the three was the Video Pinball. I
just kept thinking about how cool it would be to resurrect it even though it was
missing a couple of key pieces that I wasn't sure I'd ever find. I put the other
two games up for sale in the forums and it wasn't long before Phil (aka Lanky
Kong) was making a trip to claim them. Not only that, but I was more than
doubling my money on this one and still had the Video Pinball left for myself. I
figured by the time I pay for parts and repair's I'm now practically getting the
game for free. Can't beat that.
Anyway, now that the other two games had found a new home, I could now focus
my efforts to Video Pinball. As mentioned, there is no front plexiglass panel
and no two-way mirror. On top of that, the PCB has a couple of charred edge pads
and is showing random garbage on the screen. The series of test tones also
indicated a ram problem. Video Pinball PCB's aren't easy to come by apparently,
in fact a month of constant searching and placing wanted posts in the forums
yielded a big fat goose egg. I was going to have to find someone who could
repair my board. A few people suggested Electron Forge. I had yet to experience
their service, but this was as good a time as any, so I sent my board and hoped
for the best.
In the meantime, a fellow forum member known as Yoda came forward with a
spare front plexiglass panel. Best of all, he merely wanted the cost of shipping
and nothing more. Really? This wasn't the first time a fellow member was so
generous to me either, so there really are some caring individuals in this
hobby. I extended my sincere gratitude along with a few extra bucks, but I still
to this day feel like I stole this much needed piece. Thanks again Yoda. From
there I just needed to find a two-way mirror. I went to a local glass shop here
in town and explained what I needed. I gave them the measurements and they
seemed to know exactly what I was after. $40 and one week later, I have a brand
new two-way mirror installed, about the same time that the front plexi also
arrived. The only other piece that was missing was the top mounting bracket for
the front plexi. It's essentially just an L-bracket just like those used to
mount a marquee, which I have a few spare pieces from other games over the
years. Just had to cut one down, paint it and mount it.
A couple other small issues I addressed while anxiously awaiting the PCB
repair were new starters for the marquee and blacklight lamps. There was also a
small part of the playfield that was lifting (or peeling), some glue took care
of that. The cabinet is in pretty good shape and pretty clean, but still had
some dust and grime. Nothing a little elbow grease didn't fix. The mounting
bracket for the plunger had some chrome peeling. So I sanded it down and treated
it with some black hammered paint. Now the game just needs the board and we
should be all set.
After waiting for the standard 3 week turnaround, the board arrived with a
new ram IC installed, four new roms and edge pad repairs were also performed. I
installed the board, plugged it in and was greeted to a working game. Nice. This
was my first time ever playing this game (with the exception of emulators which,
as I stated, doesn't even come close). However my joy was short lived when I
noticed a small problem. The ball was bouncing off the flippers. It's hard to
explain, but what I mean by that is that the ball would literally ricochet off
the flippers as soon as the ball made contact. I found myself unable to time my
shots or even control the ball by any means. Needless to say, I'm a bit
disappointed because the game is no fun to play this way. I contacted Alex at
Electron Forge and explained the issue. I sent the board back for further
diagnostic testing. From there, we had some communication issues that lasted
about a month, but after that I must say that Alex turned it around and we were
back in business. He finally got around to spending some time on this board.
Just when it looked like he had exhausted every last resource trying to find the
problem, I was very relieved to hear that he finally figured it out. Turned out
to be a flaky CPU. He replaced it, sent me the board back and it's been smooth
sailing ever since. The game play's prefect now and looks great thanks to Yoda
and Alex. Now I have another neat conversation piece and I didn't have to break
the bank to save it.
home. Back in the late 1970's and early 1980's, Atari was not only one of the
prime innovators of gaming, but they were trying their hand at pinball as well.
They released a few, including a couple of really unique specimens. "Hercules"
comes to mind, and it's another game that I hadn't seen or played until last
year when I actually got to service one. How often do you get to play on a table
that's about 2 or 3 times the size of a standard pin? The friggin' ball is a
pool ball. But as usual I digress. Another unique game Atari released was called
"Video Pinball". No, I'm not talking about the Atari 2600 game or the home pong
console. I'm referring to the arcade game of course.
Video Pinball is a unique blend of, well, just that, video and pinball. The
game consists of a miniature raised foam playfield mounted to the roof of the
cabinet complete with a few dozen flashing red LED lamps. The bottom half of the
cabinet features a 23" monitor with the tube pointed upward. Sandwiched
in between is a smoked two-way mirror. Behind that, a black light to illuminate
the playfield. The image from the playfield is then reflected into the mirror
while the monitor's image of a moving ball and drop targets shine through,
creating the illusion of playing a live action pinball machine. The control
panel consists of a plunger with an optic board attached, flipper buttons on
each side and a spring loaded pressure switch for a nudge effect. It really does
come about as close to pinball as you can get without actually using parts like
coils, solenoids or even a ball for that matter. Being from 1978, it has the
standard sounds, pop bumpers, drop targets, rollovers, special lanes and so on,
all with a disco style theme. The playfield even features disco dancers.
All in all it's a neat piece of Atari history. And since it's so unique,
emulation just can't even come close to the real thing. This is another one of
those game's that I wasn't necessarily on the hunt for. But when the opportunity
came along to pick one up in a bulk deal, I just couldn't say no.
The Score: This is where this very website comes in handy. No Craigslist,
eBay or Super Auction story here. Just an average day of coming home from work
and checking my e-mail. A local fellow contacted me after finding this site.
How cool is that? He was only a half hour away and had 3 games in his basement
that needed to go to make way for a remodel project. These games consisted of an
old Cal-Omega poker game, a "Return Of The Jedi", and, of course, Video Pinball.
Needless to say I didn't hesitate to pick up the phone and call. He informs me
that they are all project games (meaning they all need some attention to bring
them back to life). To the best of his knowledge, they were all complete with
the exception of Video Pinball, which was missing the front plexiglass and the
two-way mirror. We haggle and he agrees to a $100 cash offer as long as I can
clear them out right away. Well you don't have to tell me twice. I immediately
hop into my pickup truck and off I go to score more gems.
The Service: I come home about 90 minutes later with 3 new projects moved
from the seller's basement to mine. I start to survey my latest score. First
game I looked at was probably the least interesting piece, that of course being
the poker machine. Turns out it's actually working with the exception of a button
or two. It just needed a good scrubbing and a couple of new microswitches. Next
up, Jedi. This one, though the seller thought was complete, turned out to have
no chassis for the disco monitor tube. I don't have any disco chassis' laying
around, but I do have spare working monitors. I hooked one up in hope's I would
see a working game, but all I could get from it was a blue screen. No other
signs of life. From there I notice that the game has an ARII board, which was an
exact match to one used in my Centipede game. So I pulled my known working ARII
and tried that. Nope, same blue screen. I also tried the ARII from the ROTJ in
my Centipede. The sound was out, but it was otherwise working. So unfortunately
it appears that the ROTJ boardset is bad. Between that and the missing monitor
chassis, I just didn't have any interest in saving it at this point. ROTJ isn't
really my kind of game anyway, although I would always welcome a $100 Star Wars
arcade game any day.
My main game of interest for myself out of the three was the Video Pinball. I
just kept thinking about how cool it would be to resurrect it even though it was
missing a couple of key pieces that I wasn't sure I'd ever find. I put the other
two games up for sale in the forums and it wasn't long before Phil (aka Lanky
Kong) was making a trip to claim them. Not only that, but I was more than
doubling my money on this one and still had the Video Pinball left for myself. I
figured by the time I pay for parts and repair's I'm now practically getting the
game for free. Can't beat that.
Anyway, now that the other two games had found a new home, I could now focus
my efforts to Video Pinball. As mentioned, there is no front plexiglass panel
and no two-way mirror. On top of that, the PCB has a couple of charred edge pads
and is showing random garbage on the screen. The series of test tones also
indicated a ram problem. Video Pinball PCB's aren't easy to come by apparently,
in fact a month of constant searching and placing wanted posts in the forums
yielded a big fat goose egg. I was going to have to find someone who could
repair my board. A few people suggested Electron Forge. I had yet to experience
their service, but this was as good a time as any, so I sent my board and hoped
for the best.
In the meantime, a fellow forum member known as Yoda came forward with a
spare front plexiglass panel. Best of all, he merely wanted the cost of shipping
and nothing more. Really? This wasn't the first time a fellow member was so
generous to me either, so there really are some caring individuals in this
hobby. I extended my sincere gratitude along with a few extra bucks, but I still
to this day feel like I stole this much needed piece. Thanks again Yoda. From
there I just needed to find a two-way mirror. I went to a local glass shop here
in town and explained what I needed. I gave them the measurements and they
seemed to know exactly what I was after. $40 and one week later, I have a brand
new two-way mirror installed, about the same time that the front plexi also
arrived. The only other piece that was missing was the top mounting bracket for
the front plexi. It's essentially just an L-bracket just like those used to
mount a marquee, which I have a few spare pieces from other games over the
years. Just had to cut one down, paint it and mount it.
A couple other small issues I addressed while anxiously awaiting the PCB
repair were new starters for the marquee and blacklight lamps. There was also a
small part of the playfield that was lifting (or peeling), some glue took care
of that. The cabinet is in pretty good shape and pretty clean, but still had
some dust and grime. Nothing a little elbow grease didn't fix. The mounting
bracket for the plunger had some chrome peeling. So I sanded it down and treated
it with some black hammered paint. Now the game just needs the board and we
should be all set.
After waiting for the standard 3 week turnaround, the board arrived with a
new ram IC installed, four new roms and edge pad repairs were also performed. I
installed the board, plugged it in and was greeted to a working game. Nice. This
was my first time ever playing this game (with the exception of emulators which,
as I stated, doesn't even come close). However my joy was short lived when I
noticed a small problem. The ball was bouncing off the flippers. It's hard to
explain, but what I mean by that is that the ball would literally ricochet off
the flippers as soon as the ball made contact. I found myself unable to time my
shots or even control the ball by any means. Needless to say, I'm a bit
disappointed because the game is no fun to play this way. I contacted Alex at
Electron Forge and explained the issue. I sent the board back for further
diagnostic testing. From there, we had some communication issues that lasted
about a month, but after that I must say that Alex turned it around and we were
back in business. He finally got around to spending some time on this board.
Just when it looked like he had exhausted every last resource trying to find the
problem, I was very relieved to hear that he finally figured it out. Turned out
to be a flaky CPU. He replaced it, sent me the board back and it's been smooth
sailing ever since. The game play's prefect now and looks great thanks to Yoda
and Alex. Now I have another neat conversation piece and I didn't have to break
the bank to save it.