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(Broken) Machines On Site

ChrisH

ChrisH

Registered
1 10 Years
Joined
Dec 5, 2014
Messages
722
Location
Stroud
Bit of a rant here I'm afraid!

What's the point of having machines out on site that don't work....
This is really a moan a Las Vegas in London, I went down there with a couple of hours to kill last Thursday and the Metallica Pro has a magnet fault meaning sparky is pretty much useless and the right flipper is so weak it can't reach the ramp let alone go up it....
LOTR (downstairs in the dark) has no GI, the DMD is frozen so you can't see anything apart from the last P4 score
Spider-Man to be fair works mostly apart from the ramps not registering shots reliably...
But they all take coins....
And the thing is the LOTR was broken like that last time I was in there 6 months ago, and Metallica has clearly been left to get worse.....

So that's 3 machines, 2 with faults making them a waste of time (and I've updated Pinformer @cooldan!)

It's a shame, and surely counterproductive for the site? Put in a quid, have a crap experience and then decide pinball isn't for you.... There was a chap playing metallica with the credits I'd left on it having decided it was a waste of time, and he's now going to possibly decide that pinball is hard/frustrating (which is is ;) ) based on a poorly maintained game...

Obviously some OPs are very good - I know where Matt's (@mv8ball) London games are and any issues I'll give him a heads up and they get sorted...

Next time I'll go down to Brewdog/4 Quarters - didn't have time to travel out
But it was just frustrating to see how badly the games were maintained, but still powered up and taking money...

/end rant!
 
It's been a while, probably 18 months since I last visited Las Vegas in Wardour Street, but it sounds like things haven't got any better there. :mad: Agreed, as in most seaside arcades, it gives the casual/first time player a bad first impression of playing pinball.

The games in Chief Coffee shop near Turnham Green tube are well maintained by Sam the cafe owner. Most of the other games in pubs/arcades in London tend to have various faults on them, although Matt's games tend to be well maintained.

Well done for keeping Pinformer up to date. :thumbs:
 
as Keith says, well done for updating Pinformer - did you also update it 6 months ago when you were in there? i bet it's been visited by loads of folk on this forum since then, so i'm gonna moan again and ask that everyone please updates the site every time they visit, even if it's only a week since last time. it's easy to do, and the site could be brilliant if everyone bothered to use it properly, or completely crap if nobody did.

www.pinformer.co.uk

it's the best (the only) site we have to track pins that are out in the wild for public use, and it gets underused still, even though the hobby is growing. i'm in touch with Ben Wilcox who runs the site (no profit, only cost and hassle) and he was saying the other day that it seldom gets attention or updates, just people moaning that the info isn't up to date. someone even randomly took it on themselves to delete 200 sightings in one night last week - ok some of them were old, but not all, and all over the country so not someone genuinely making site improvements, but maybe someone drunk and on a mission, a crappy one. even the now-defunct listings can offer useful contact info for potential new machines, or for potential new operators looking for sites.

please use pinformer, guys. but remember, it doesn't update itself automatically and is totally dependent on all us pinheads.
 
I update Pinformer. Been there for years and thanks to Ben for keeping in going.

My Pinballs on site are maintaned so punters are happy. So am I.

More going out this week as the public are demanding more games to play.
 
I keep the Brighton one updated as I pass thru the sites. Flintstones in Dead Wax has been ****ed for ages. Yet still switched on. I keep telling the bar children. I would offer to sort it myself but can't be bothered getting involved these days tbh.

Sent from my D5503 using Tapatalk
 
ChrisH said:
he's now going to possibly decide that pinball is hard/frustrating (which is is ;) ) based on a poorly maintained game...
Click to expand...
Possibly a mild tangent from the original post's point, but I remember a very bad experience on a Demolition Man pinball when I was younger (weak flippers and far too much incline) really put me off pinball for a long time.

Nowadays the frustration of not getting anywhere on a table comes in two flavours - difficulty because of the table design or my own failures, which is addictive and great stuff - and difficulty because the table is broken. The latter is what kills arcades - people know when they are playing something fair but very difficult, and when they are being cheated.
 
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