Pinball museum visit

Had a busy pinball weekend - saturday we went on a trip to a pinball museum in Neuwied, Germany.
It was open from 2pm till 6pm.. we had left early enough to be there at opening time but because of a huge traffic jam we only had less than 2 hours there. :-(
Couldn't play as many games as I wanted, so we plan to return again in a few months :-)
Nikky loved Rapid Fire - Peter set a highscore on AFM and was happy to play another Robocop, Michel found the moaning sounds on Hardbody obscene, and I took a lot of pictures :-)

This weekend was also the Rosmalen Rock around the Jukebox show. Usually we go early on saturday morning, but with the pinball museum visit on that day, I visited it only sunday afternoon.
It was interesting, in my opinion there were a little bit more pinball machines and parts for sale.
Met a lot of people. Henk de Jager presented an electro-mechanical bingo machine he totally created himself. He also had his latest book for sale, unfortunately only in dutch at the moment, about how to read schematics from electro-mechanical pinball machines.

Anyway, enough things to write a few new articles so keep your eyes on the site in the next weeks..

Update:
Article about our visit to the pinball musem.
Article about the Rosmalen jukebox show.

Visitors from Finland, it's been busy weekend

We had visitors from Finland over this weekend.
I was contacted a few weeks ago by Teemu, as he was looking to buy pinball machines for sale in Belgium and the Netherlands and wanted some help finding them. Later Ari contacted me too, as he was going to go together with Teemu on this road trip.

This was great news. I had already contact by mail and on irc (#pinball) with Ari about 10 years ago. So I was looking forward to meeting him after all these years.
He's well known in Finland, he's a good player, and has a large website about pinball: apz.fi. (unfortunately almost completely in finnish)

Friday they arrived, we met and we already played some pinball.

Saturday we visited a pinball dealer here in Belgium where we filled their van completely :) Seeing five Medieval Madness pinball machines next to each other was impressive for all of us.
Later Peter from gamebunker.be joined us. The evening was spent in the historic city of Antwerp (you need to do some sightseeing and taste belgian beer), and we even played.. guess what, pinball.
Then we went to some bars in search of a bingo machine.. unfortunately in the first 2 bars we found that had them, all machines were occupied. So we played some Stern Iron Man pinball instead.

Finally we did find a bar with a bingo machine. Ari really wanted to play this type of machine on location..
After having watched people lose over 100 euro whilst we were playing a few games of pinball, we all were curious how well Ari would do.

Well he had been training at home, and said playing pinball had learnt him how to nudge a game skillfully. He put a bit over 2 euro in.. and in the end won 22 euro !
My task was to convince the bar owner to pay us out. After needing to buy another drink he did give us a 20 euro bill. Not bad! Getting 1000% return on your investment isn't bad for 15 minutes of work..
Although it probably won't work every time;. but still, he did much better than some guys we saw losing over 100 euro in those bingo machines..

Maybe this is what pinball needs to become successful again: all the people that are addicted to bingo machines, in the hope to win some money. You're doing it wrong !
Bingo is a gambling game, but your skill can influence it a bit.
First learn to play pinball very well, and use the skills you learnt to earn money on bingo machines.

Sunday we all went to the yearly open air jukebox show in Rosmalen. We visit this show every year.
There were not a lot of pinball machines, even less jukeboxes than previous years. More rock&roll, rockabilly, .. I didn't buy a lot, just a manual for Funhouse and Orbitor One. I'm especially happy with the O1 manual (even it's german) as the game is rare and finding a manual for it is also not easy.. (I only had a bad photocopy of the german manual). Also met some people there that we see every year at the show..

In the afternoon we had to say goodbye as our visitors had to start their long trip back home..

Over the years we've already had some other pinball visitors from abroad at our house (Germany, Poland, Netherlands, United Kingdom), but Ari and Teemu from Finland came from the most far away..

changed site layout

100th post to this blog :-)

I've put a new layout of the site online the previous weekend.. Nothing major, the biggest difference is that the menu links changed from the right (inside an article) to the top of the page..

Main page also changed a bit in layout, the new articles part got bigger. I'm sure most of you guys have already noticed the pink ladies :-)
They're for the article of the Rosmalen jukebox show. I've posted a lot of pictures of pinball machines and jukeboxes.

Have to review and update most pages but that'll take some time.

new articles

Posted a lot of new articles the past weeks.


How to fix a sag in a playfield. This was posted on rgp so I asked the person if I could write an article about it.. sometimes playfields are warped and it's really no fun playing a pinball game like this.. so you can make a whole fixture to make the wood flat again.


Dutch Pinball Open competition 2009. It's been a few years since we visited the competition (or another event organised by the dutch pinball organisation) but it was really nice seeing a lot of people again and meeting new people.



The yearly Rock around the Jukebox show in Rosmalen. Every year this show is held in Rosmalen, the Netherlands. It's their biggest jukebox show. A lot of pictures are online..



Merlins Magic: a custom, handmade pinball machine by Henk De Jager.
If you're interested in electro-mechanical pinball machines, in custom made pinball machines, game design, .. you really have to see this.
It's a unique game, with some special features, it was fun to play.

I found Rudy from Funhouse pinball

A picture I made yesterday at the Open Air Jukebox show in Rosmalen..
I'm sure this is Rudy from the Funhouse pinball machine..

Sure he looks a bit older and clearly had a bad hair day.. but it's really him !
:-)

Jukebox AMi K

This weekend be bought a jukebox !
It's an Ami K of 1960. Not in perfect condition, some of the cosmetics were badly restored - the 3 metal parts in front of the speaker grille ie have been spray painted with chrome paint, instead of having it actually rechromed.
Looks ok from a distance but you notice it when you look closely.

Most important is that it works right, the mechanics are ok, everything still looks good, no rust. All selections play without any problem. That's the most important for me, as a lot of the cosmetic parts can still be bought new..
we'll have a big shopping list when we go to the jukebox show in Rosmalen in a few months !

Rosmalen jukebox open air show

Not a lot to post.. been very busy with a lot of non-pinball things the last days.

Visited the Rosmalen Open Air jukeboxshow last sunday. It was great ! Very good weather, really lovely to walk around. Not a lot of pinball machines to see but there were some nice collectibles.
Pictures will be online on my site later this week.

I also worked a few hours on my new dvd about the Belgian Pinball Championship that was held in January. I'm half way now, the show tour is ready, interview with Henk de Jager, and the quarter final of the championship.
I hadn't worked on the dvd for almost 2 months. My goal is to finish it by the end of next week.
I will only make a 'european' version, not converted into NTSC format, not subtitled in english.. my other 2 dvds just don't sell enough for that. And now I have a long interview with Henk de Jager who explains the details about his custom pinball machines and an interview with someone who restores old Bally bingo machines.. it's just too much work to subtitle it all.