The Worst Pinball Repair Guide You’ll Ever Read
You won’t learn shit except about the human condition
Is this a repair guide for Torpedo Alley? The 1988 Data East classic designed by Joe Kaminkow? Yeah, definitely. But if you’re hoping to learn the top ten fixes or something – check the Kinetecist. We don’t do that shit over here. But if you want to see how two grown men took a piece of basement clutter and used it to form an unlikely friendship – well, you also won’t get that here.
But you’ll get the truth damn it. These are two men, battling a failing machine, desperately clinging to solutions either borne of madness, drugs, or anything in between.
There were plenty of times when I didn’t believe this would ever happen, but spoiler alert: I’m happy to report that this game is like 85% playable. Would that make most people on location happy? No, not at all. The inserts are ghosting like crazy, we need to rebuild all three flippers, it doesn’t have the spinner at all – but to me, as I write this: it’s perfect.
It pays to know pinball people
As a not-rich guy who runs a fairly expensive art-punk pinball mag, I don’t have a ton of disposable cash for pinball. No one wants to here about a lifetime of terrible financial decisions, but imagine the entire film, “The Wolf of Wallstreet” and then triple it and you’ve got me. Long story short: I don’t own no games.
But there’s this weird phenomenon that happens when you start to hang with pinball people. They have extra games lying around. Ben Granger was a semi-local dude I’d met through pinball people, and he vaguely mentioned once that he had a Torpedo Alley lying around in his basement and he’d feel bad renting it to me, but if I paid for a new display that I could keep it at my house.
Is someone dropping that they might loan you a pinball machine in casual conversation as good as the first time you have sex? No, you idiot. It’s better. What started as a casual mention became one of Ben’s worst decisions as I essentially bugged him nonstop for months. Which brings
The delicate dance of pinball negotiation
A lot of the people I’ve met in pinball have seemed sort of like pirates. They own trucks and know how to move heavy shit and sorta move to the beat of their own drum. That can be charming as a personality quirk, but sucks ass when you’re trying to nail them down on a time to do XYZ. This would be an especially fraught negotiation because Ben was essentially just gifting me a pinball machine for my house. How much leverage did I actually have? Not much.
What finally got him over the line? A super limited edition Nudge metal print – one of the double exposure shots that Gina and Gene did. I basically dangled it in front of him and said if you could get the game to me in a week it’s yours. I figured you gotta give up something to get something and you know what? It worked.
Old games are broke as hell
Ben had bought this game years ago and taken the back box completely off so he could store it in his basement. That meant that the game that arrived at my house was dirty, dank, and totally disassembled – you know, Nudge style. Ben even warned me
“I can take it straight to the shop,” he said. Ben’s shop was literally 500 yards from my house.
“Nope,” I said. “I’ll only believe you when it’s here, inside my door.” I felt like getting it to the shop was like fumbling it on the one yardline – and I’m no asshole. Let’s get it inside my legal residence, where I could legally shoot it – and then we’d see what was wrong with it.
Turns out: nearly everything. Well, not exactly everything, but it def needed a ton of cleaning and to be, well, completely stripped down and then reassembled. If you think that sounds shitty and time consuming, it is! But I guess that’s part of the charm. You sorta gotta earn it.
Did I learn a lot about fixing pinball stuff? Less than you’d think!
I think the main thing I learned while “helping” Ben strip the machine down, clean every piece, and then reassemble is that pinball is, yes, about following some diagrams and such – but a lot of it is confidence. These things are old as hell and were never designed to still be running in 2023. It’s a frickin’ miracle that they’re even here. That carries over to pinball resto – a lot of it is prayer. And for me also pacing around and smoking joints. That was something I did quite a bit.
Everything takes longer than it probably should
What was supposed to be a one or two night repair marathon quickly stretched into a multiweek affair. I had pinball parts all over my dining room table for a month. It was sort of a cool conversation starter, but other than that, it sucked ass. Ben helped when he could, but he was super busy as the main tech at our local arcade, Reboot – as well as the manager of Starcade in Minneapolis.
Plus he’s a dad and shit, so it felt bad to guilt him into helping me get it fixed. But you know what? I powered through that initial pang of guilt and really laid it on thick. Culminating in a night where I went to bed around 1 am and when I woke up, I texted Ben. He’d been here working on the game until 3. Wild.
He troubleshot board problems, initially misdiagnosing a capacitor issue, and eventually laughing about how easy some of the solutions were. We realized we were one gate short after reassembling and spent the better part of two hours wandering around Menards looking for the right gauge of coiled steel so he could bend a new one. He did and they look damn near perfect.
I did learn quite a bit. I learned that ghosting lights suck ass – and that I never want to have to help someone reconnect a backbox ever again. I learned that it’s satisfying to replace bulbs and rub down plastics with naphtha. It’s fun to wax a playfield and get meditative and sorta zone out. Also, you should usually do this stuff in a well-ventilated area. Whoops.
It’s not perfect, but damn it, it’s mine (for a while)
Last weekend, we got it nearly finished. Yes, it needs a flipper rebuild, different insert lights, a completely new spinner setup, but hey – it doesn’t matter. When I played it tonight, I got on the board. And that ruled. After I’m done with this, I’m gonna go turn on an episode of News Radio and play it again. And I’m gonna smoke a J and stare at my dog while I do it.
In this old world, if that’s not perfection, then I don’t know wanna know what is.
