Yes!  The Simpsons Pinball Party machine finally arrived and it is awesome!

I took a day from work to “accept deliveries.”  (Actually it was to accept deliveries since we were also getting some washer/dryer pedestals from  Sears).  The delivery guys arrived around 11:30 - which is good because it meant the twins were in school at the time and wouldn’t get in the way.  I was wondering what kinds of things these guys deliver and it seemed there was a rather large BowFlex machine in the truck, so I guess they deliver “large stuff to residential customers”. 

The two guys carried the 300lb machine up the stairs without breaking any balusters or scratching any walls, for which I was very happy.  They put on the legs and removed the box and that was about it - the rest was left to me.  I had a page of instructions and a big machine to figure out what to do with.  Never owning a pinball machine before, I just had to follow along.

The first part of the instructions had me open the coin door to trigger the latch that would allow me to remove the playfield glass.  “Very carefully lay the glass down somewhere it won’t get broken.”  Oh yeah.  Doesn’t help that the angle of the machine means that the coin door you just opened gets in the way of the large piece of glass you’re sliding out, but hey.  So after removing the additional materials from the playfield and inserting 5 steel pinballs, I put back on the glass and was ready to go.

I followed the instructions to a “T”.  The first instruction was “Plug in the machine.”  Easy enough, there’s a recess on the back on the machine with a retractable cord, so I plugged it in.  Next in the instructions was to push the black button on the inside of the coin door to run diagnostics.  OK, push button.  Nothing happens.  Plug in, plug out, nothing happens.  I did say this was the first time we’ve ever owned a pinball machine, didn’t I?  So I search the front, back, and sides (and insides!) of the machine for any type of switch and I don’t find one - nothing, no switch.  I do find a rather large service manual tucked away inside the machine and look there.  The manual contained all sorts of information such as how to operate the menu system in the diagnostics and the values and part numbers of every resistor, solenoid, rubber bumper, light bulb and everything else in the machine, BUT NOTHING THAT SAYS HOW TO TURN IT ON!

So, feeling like a dunce, I have to call tech support to locate the ON/OFF switch.  The representative for STERN Pinball was very nice while he was laughing and was actually surprised that the manual neglected the small but important detail that the power switch was in a recessed hole near the front of the bottom of the machine.  OK - I don’t feel so stupid, well I didn’t until some friend of my son came over and found the switch in about three minutes.  Anyway - I fired it up and it said “The SIMPSOOONS…..dooh-dooh-da-dooh-dooh, duh, duh-duh,da,duh!”

Yay! Pinball Heaven!

We’re still waiting for the pinball machine - the last of the many hands that the machine travels through called but our answering machine was full so we inadvertently added our own delays.  So it will be here on Tuesday from 9 to 11 - guess who’s not going to work?

Anyway we figured we had better get the painted at least started before the equipment arrived so we went to Loew’s on Father’s Day to buy $250 worth of paint and supplies.  Actually, we went to Nordstrom’s first to get April a bracelet for her graduation on Saturday and a random pair of jeans, but that’s irrelevant.

By the time we got home, the boys were in meltdown mode and we lost the dog yet again, so no painting is happening tonight!  So I sit here putting them to bed and discovered the “styles” feature of Sketchup, so here’s a watercolor rendering of our future game room.

I decided that it wasn’t going to be such a good idea to put the night sky on the ceiling - maybe with luminescent paint so it looks like that at night, but not a black hole ceiling.  So we’ll have a sky blue ceiling with some wispy clouds.

OUR SIMPSON’S PINBALL MACHINE IS ALMOST HERE!

I’m currently on the phone with ALG Worldwide, which is the shipping company that’s supposed to be delivering our Simpson’s pinball machine today.  I say “supposed to” because they were “supposed to” call me two days in advance to arrange delivery, and, as you may have guessed, that hasn’t happened yet.  Their tracking system leaves a lot to be desired - all it states is when the item was picked up and when it was delivered, with no steps in between.

Sherry at ALG Worldwide just informed me that UPS delivered the package today locally to a company called “North American Home Express” who should be calling me to arrange delivery.  I have to wonder how much it increases the shipping charges since so many people are handling the package along the way.  I have their number, but I just may wait until I get a call.

Anyway, the company I purchased the machine from is BMI Gaming.  They seem to have a great selection of all kinds of professional arcade machines (maybe you want a 3 lane skeeball machine?  They have it!) and they are all expensive, but looking around I could have paid an extra $1000 for this machine somewhere else.  Also their shipping includes bring the thing all the way upstairs to my bonus room, so I’m not complaining too much about the price for that either.

I’m kind of worried about the machine itself.  I got an email from “Jay” at BMI Gaming stating that my “Sopranos” machine was on it’s way. ???.  I called and they assured me that it really way the Simpsons machine, which would be good, particularly since the Simpsons machine offers “the deepest ruleset of any pinball machine”, whereas the unique feature of the Sopranos machine is that it offers “selectable profanity levels” from “Extreme”, “Mild” and “None.”  Our family game room doesn’t require selectable profanity levels - that comes automatically with teenagers….

As I said, we haven’t really been able to find anything online or in print to help us with building our game room.  We looked at sites like these that helped quite a bit

Game Room Magazine
Retro Blast (defunct, but lots of good parts reviews)
Vintage Pachinko
MAMERoom
Chicago Gaming
BMI Gaming

and also more "traditional sites" like

Costco
Sears

But, we didn’t have any luck with the overall room design.  Mostly they’re sales sites or too focused on game room equipment.  There are more sites I’ll post along the way, as well as links to some other great blogs that have helped.