They Weren't Meant to Last and Digital Took Over; For Most, 'Game Over'
You think it's a pain getting a repairman to come fix a knob on your washing machine? Try finding someone who will replace the flipper assembly on your pinball machine. "I'm the third guy they called," Mike Hooker was saying in his car one Saturday. "You can't get anybody to show up." Mr. Hooker, 51 years old, makes pinball house calls in his down time. His main job is repairing locomotives for the Long Island Railroad. The technology, as he explains it, is about the same. (More after the break)
Driving to a pinball-distressed home in this village on Long Island, he recounted a recent triumph: A delicate rebuild of a rare "Spring Break" machine with an unusual clutch on the score motor. "I knew I could never buy that part," Mr. Hooker said. "If one little thing broke, it would've been Game Over." He parked and walked to the garage where Ed Licalzi, 49, and his daughter Jessica, 25, stood beside their triple-tiered 1982 Gottlieb's "Haunted House," the most complex machine of its era. Mr. Hooker's face fell. "Looks terrible, right?" said Ms. Licalzi. Mr. Hooker said, "Let's see what's going on inside." He put on his glasses, opened his tool bag and went to work. Allen Cihak is a self described pinball addict. When he came across the opportunity to start buying and repairing pinball machines around the city, he says he found his calling. Alice Truong reports. Pinball games once populated poolrooms and penny arcades. Now they're in finished basements. Thousands go up for sale—used—on the Internet and at pinball shows from Niagara Falls to Kalamazoo. Buyers, mostly middle-age men, cart them home in hope of reliving moments of youthful wizardry playing the silver ball. There is a drawback. "Nobody sells a working pinball machine," says Clay Harrell, who edits old repair manuals and writes a daily webzine called Pinball Repair Tips & Tricks. "If it was working," he says, "they wouldn't sell it. If you buy one, it's always broken." Video games killed pinball for two reasons: one, because computerized levels of difficulty allow novices to play while aces never grow bored. Two, because pinball machines get banged up. A plunger shoots a ball onto a steep wooden playfield where it gets bounced hard from bumper to bumper. Bells ring and lights flash until the ball dives into a drain. Whether a machine runs on motors (pre-1975) or microchips, "nudging" is the way to win. That is, jerking the table around just short of tripping the "tilt" switch. No wonder games conked out—and no wonder every pinball maker except one—Stern Pinball Inc. (still alive in Chicago)—was out of business by 1999. Of course, any mechanical device treated lovingly can continue to work for a long time, but route operators who own and maintain soda machines and video games often allowed their pinball machines to waste away.
"I got so sick and tired of games in such lousy condition," Al Cihak said one hot afternoon at Mugs Ale House in Brooklyn. "I went out to play and, always, something didn't work." Mr. Cihak, who is 51 and used to be a bond trader, came to an uncommon solution: He bought a route. New York once had 10,000 public pinball games. It has about 70 now; Mr. Cihak operates 14. He was at Mugs to tune up his brand-new $4,500 Stern's Iron Man. Pinball-machine maintenance requires unfailing replacement of the rubber bands that protect flippers, bumpers and vital "plastics" such as clown heads and spaceships. "If a ball gets nicked, it's like sandpaper," Mr. Cihak said, "It wrecks everything." He added: "If one of my pinballs gets busted, I'm out there right away." Mr. Cihak is a busy man. Too busy for house calls. For private pinballers, a personal repairman might represent salvation. Kevin Martin, a Pittsburgh Internet entrepreneur, has two, Dave Baach and Steve Eckert. Mr. Martin keeps his machines—he has more than 400—in a warehouse. Once a year, in August, he invites the public in for a tournament. To his pinball-repair pit crew, it's the equivalent of the Indy 500. At this year's event, tech lights flashed for stuck balls or burned-out bulbs. Then, in the middle of the four-man quarter final, a flipper went fluttery on a 1992 "Creature From the Black Lagoon." Mr. Baach was about to shut the game down—and lose the score record. As he recalls: "Steve said, 'No! Don't ruin it!' We opened it up for surgery with the game in progress. Steve jumped in with a soldering iron. You don't do that! You can short it out. But Steve had a move to make and he made it." He saved the game. In a year's 51 nontournament weeks, Mr. Eckert comes in every day to "clean and tighten." Couldn't he fit in a few house calls? "Never," he says, adding, "I always hear people say, 'I bought a machine and I can't get a repair guy to come out.'" One directory lists 750 of them in 50 states. They can charge (cash preferred) $150 an hour. But pinball games were built to last just five years. A used one might have been in storage for 10 more. Even if a repair guy does come out, that doesn't mean he'll fix it. Repairman Mr. Hooker crouched down, opened the cash box, and peered into Mr. Licalzi's "Haunted House." As a kid, Mr. Hooker played pinball in a "rat hole" of a Long Island arcade. He "got the bug" for repair, he says, 20 years ago when somebody gave him a mangled 1972 Williams "Honey.""I got it working," he said, unscrewing the back box. "I fix things. That's what I do." He poked the innards with his screwdriver and said, "You got water on the driver board." "Would it function?" Mr. Licalzi asked. "See, you got mold growing here," said Mr. Hooker. "By the time I got done with this, you could buy another one cheaper." Mr. Licalzi stood glumly. "So you'd be interested?" he said. "If we can restore the Mona Lisa…" "I'm telling you," Mr. Hooker said, packing his tools. As he left, Mr. Licalzi called out, "I'm not sure I want to give up. We're going to be friends for a long time." Mr. Hooker got in his car. "There's a place for sentiment in pinball," he said, driving away. "But that game is over."
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