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Comment by goldenjm | Hacker News Reader

I've thought about buying a pinball machine for a while, but haven't pulled the trigger. I think I would get bored of one machine after a short while, and then it would just sit there. I like pinball a lot and I think the design and build quality of many of the more recent games is fantastic. But, I'm not interested in collecting machines. Is anyone else in a similar situation?

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Get new machines if you can afford them. Stern or Jersey Jack.

90s machines are great, I love them, but they are 30 years old and are not where I recommend anyone to start... My first pin was a fixer upper Twilight Zone. Learn from my mistake! Haha

The most challenging part is the maintenance, especially the classics. Owning several machines taught me to fix them. My newer machines broke less often...

Every time I threw a decent party I'd end up buying minimum $200 in parts and spending half a day fixing them.

Lord of the Rings is one of my all time favorites. I highly recommend it. It's not ancient, and the game is really deep. It's pretty easy to work on and fix. Make sure you protect the plastics, I couldn't find after market ones. The Wizard mode is extremely satisfying because it is super difficult to achieve... There are a couple fun special modes you can unlock.

On modern solid state pins, you can adjust the difficulty settings to make the game more fun for friends.

Thanks for the great advice. LotR is actually my single favorite pinball game and I've played it a ton, mostly at Pinball Pete's in Ann Arbor. But, I've played it so much that I would probably get bored of it quickly if I purchased it. Twilight Zone is great too! I'm in Seattle now, and so lots of places have the new Foo Fighters pin which I'm enjoying a lot.

Author of the post here. My first game (No Good Gofers) is relatively simple, but I still haven't gotten to all of the advanced modes on it. More than that, just learning different passes and catches is interesting and challenging enough that I think any halfway decent game would give you a lot of enjoyment. If you get a very complicated Keith Elwin game like Godzilla or Avengers Infinity Quest, you'll probably never get sick of it.

Also worth noting is that games tend to hold their values really well, so you see most people trading/buying/selling regularly. The guy who sold me my Avengers only did it because he had a Godzilla Premium on order and had room for one game.

If your NGG is on free play, here's the code to warp to the hole in one challenge (the final mode):

Both flippers, then 3L, 1R, 9L, 1R, 1L, 1R.

Then hold the left flipper button in before starting the game. Have fun!

(Source: I wrote the backdoor)

Woah, giving out Top Secret Pinball Secrets like that... lol

It's been 26 years. I figure that's long enough. =)

Cool! Love the game, by the way. Feels like it's a bit underrated because of the golf theme, but it's one of my favorite multiballs and I like the progression of the scorecard.

Glad you're enjoying it. We had a lot of fun making this one.

I have lots of early photos and stories going up on Mastodon. Go check it out.

Different pinball machines, like video games, all have varying levels of replay value. Almost all games made after 1990 will have some "wizard mode" (like a boss level) that's incredibly hard to get to.

That's the value in owning a machine, in my opinion. Keep it for as long as you can to beat the wizard mode. I actually owned a Metallica (Stern) for ~four years, but I was never able to get to the wizard mode ("End of Line"). It has a notoriously difficult wizard mode.

The other cool thing is that pinball machines really maintain their value. You'll likely be able to sell your machine for the same amount of money—if not more—than you bought it for!

I would echo the sibling comment about wizard mode - it's difficult enough on modern machines that you'll most likely take a long time to get there. If trying to "beat the game" motivates you, I think you'll get value from it. I had significant money on the line to reach wizard mode on a Lord of the Rings that was in my apartment, and failed to do it in the year or so it was there.

Note that maintenance is a real pain if you're not comfortable with dealing with a lot of wiring yourself, so there's also some risk that something breaks (more of a certainty), and the machine just sits there until you can be bothered to get it fixed.

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