Pinball Links
The following are links that I find either helpful or enjoyable. With each link, there is a brief description of the site. While I have categorized the links as either General, Repair, or Parts, some links fit more than one category. For example, some parts places also provide repair service. If you know of any links that should be added or if you find a dead link, please let me know.
General Pinball Links and Personal Pages
This site contains information and pictures on all pinball machines from 1947 to present. It is a database on game names, manufacturers, designers, artists, toys, production runs, photos, plus a lot more. Great informational site.
This is a site that offers free want to Buy, Sell, Trade ads for pinball. It offers tips on repair and restoration.
Mark's Pinball Page With Williams Repair Info
Mark has a lot of info on his page about his "obsession" with pinball. He also has several repair guides for Williams System 3-7 games.
This is a pic of Tim Arnold's house and machines. He has one of the largest pinball collections in the world. I'm not sure if his collection is the largest or second largest, but it is huge. He has almost every flipper game ever made. He does have every Gottlieb game ever made. Below is the World Pinball Hall of Fame which is run by Tim Arnold and a group of pinheads in Las Vegas as a non-profit.
Professional & Amateur Pinball Association (PAPA)
This is the home of the Professional & Amateur Pinball Association. They aid in the formation of pinball leagues, running pinball tournaments, and teaching how to play pinball. They have documents and videos on how to set up a league, run a tournament, pinball skills, and a lot more. They also run the world's largest pinball tournament, PINBURGH.
This site contains a lot of pinball related information with descriptions on most machines, a Top 100, a Market, a Forum for questions, and a lot of other stuff. Well worth bookmarking.
10,000 square feet of pure pinball. Most, if not all, of the games belong to Tim Arnold (see above). He has every flipper game ever made by Gottlieb and most others by other manufacturers. The Hall of Fame is a non-profit and you can play the games while you are there. A great place to visit if you are in Vegas. Here's a blurb from their website: "The Pinball Hall of Fame is an attempt by the Las Vegas Pinball Collectors Club to house and display the world's largest pinball collection, open to the public. A not-for-profit corporation was established to further this cause. The games belong to one club member (Tim Arnold), and range from 1950s up to 2000s pinball machines. Since it is a non-profit museum, older games from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s are the prevelant, as this was the 'heyday' of pinball."
This is the site for downloading Visual Pinball and all of the tables available. Visual Pinball allows you to recreate any pinball machine or create your own to be played on your computer. For re-creations, it incorporates pinmame which is an emulator for all electronic pinball machines from all manufacturers. There are some really good reproductions and the gameplay is pretty realistic.
A pinball internet news site for all things pinball.
Another internet pinball journal with articles about pinball.
Pinball show and swap meet held in Northern California with proceeds going to local youth charities.
Pinball Repair
This is Clay Harrell's (sp?) invaluable contribution to the pinball hobby. This is the single best location for detailed information on restoring pinball machines. When printed out, there are literally hundreds of pages of helpful material for restoring games and diagnosing problems. There are also guides for repairing Gottlieb System 1 games, EM games, and general electronic repair. There are also other informative documents on the history of pinball machines.
This is the website for Ray Johnson's Action Pinball and Amusement. He has several helpful technical repair articles along with parts to sell. They sell several different parts and are one of the best places to get replacement and updated Eproms for your game. He is also one of the most helpful contributors to the rec.games.pinball (RGP) newsgroup.
John Robertson's Gottlieb Pages
This website has several helpful articles on repairing pinball machines, video games, and jukeboxes. John specializes in Gottlieb System 1 and System 80 repair.
This is a comprehensive wiki page with hundreds of sections on repairing pins of all manufacturers and time periods. Great resource.
Pinball Parts
Steve Young's Pinball Resource
Steve Young has most any pinball part you may need. He also is the authorized owner of Gottlieb materials. His prices are very reasonable. Also, once you have placed and paid for an order, he will ship subsequent orders when the order is placed, before you even pay for the items. Steve doesn't take credit cards. He ships orders super fast. He is one of tne best assets to the pinball community.
Marco has a large selection of pinball parts. He also has a great online catalog and you can order online and use a credit card. He and Steve Young are the two places I buy most of my parts.
In my experience, they have the best prices on circuit boards and many other pinball/arcade parts. They also process orders quickly. I have always had a great experience with them.
Mayfair has a large selection of backglasses, translites, and other pinball parts.
Bob has a ton of electronic and arcade specific game parts. He will often have some great sales on electronic components.
Alltek Systems Replacement Boards
They offer an after market replacement for the Bally -35 MPU for $199. All Bally and Stern games from 1977-84 are programmed onto the one board and then the game is selectable by DIP switches on the board.
He offers various after market boards. He has Bally MPUs, sound boards, driver boards, Williams System 3-7, Gottlieb System 3, plus more. His boards are also reasonable priced.
Used to be Rottendog. They manufacture and sell replacement boards and kits for Bally, Stern, Williams, and Gottlieb games.
He does restorations as well as sells professional stencil kits for many vintage games. He also has some other unique pinball items. I used his stencils on my Space Invaders restoration.
This is the official site of the main manufacturer of new pinball machines.
A new manufacturer of pinball machines. Their first game is The Wizard of Oz.
They are doing remakes of some of the most desirable Williams/Bally games. So far, they have done Monster Bash, Medieval Madness, and Attack From Mars. The remakes are upgrades in that the DMDs are now color with 4x the resoultion compared to the originals. Lights are LED and the sound has been upgraded.
They are a new, unique manufacturer of pinball machines. They have a "modular" base machine that has a haptic lower playfield (giant video screen that can sense where the ball is on the playfield). This lower playfield can be programmed to fit any theme. This cabinet and lower playfield is used in all their games. You then purchase interchangeable upper playfields and software. Thus, you buy one cabinet with lower haptic playfield and then can switch games by switching out the upper third playfield and software.