So as promised in my MAME machine build log submitted the day before this post, I have a pretty big announcement. Today I picked up my first pinball machine, a Gottlieb Super Mario Bros.

(I apologize for my room, it’s a bit messy.)

So there she is. It’s in pretty decent working order. It really just needs to be cleaned and some TLC. There’s some corners that will need some bondo work, the sides need some touch up on the paint, the entire playfield needs to be cleaned with all the toys, and the rails on the side have gotten a bit rusty. It shouldn’t be too bad of a project. I’m just glad all of the electronics work.

It’s not totally together yet, but that’s something I’m planning on working on tomorrow. And yes, it isn’t on legs yet. That’s another item for tomorrow!

I love how the pin looks though. It’s bright, colorful, and has a great theme. I plugged it in earlier and played a few balls and I have to say it’s just fun. From reviews out there it doesn’t sound like it’s a great game in terms of gameplay and such, but for a novice like me I think it’s perfect. It also fits my video game collection!

Apart from general cleaning, I’d like to change out a couple of things. I’d like to replace a lot of the stickers on the playfield/toys. They seem to have faded over the years. I’d probably end up scanning the sticker and then playing around with Photoshop or Illustrator to make a hi res or vector print. Secondly, I’d like to replace the lights with LED lights except for maybe a couple. There’s some parts of the pin that I like when they fade in and out like a little incandescent bulb does. If you look around the kickout holes you’ll see the playfield is starting to chip away which sounds pretty standard of pins that have been out in the wild at some point. I’m hoping to find a way to minimize that risk in the future. It probably doesn’t matter when someone has a pin in their house, but I think it’s worthwhile to check out.

Lastly I’d like to make both this machine and my arcade accept tokens and just get a huge bag of them. There’s still nothing like dropping a coin into a slot.

Anyway, that’s probably it for now. I’ll definitely keep making posts since I actually have a project to work on now.

PS: Bit of trivia for you, Super Mario Bros. was the first Gottlieb pin to feature a DMD.