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The worst pinball machine you can think of?

lukewells

lukewells

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With all the wierd requests for undesirable machines at the moment :rofl:

What do you think is the worst pin you have played and why?

No silly ones please. Example: You personally don't like Adams Family, but there is no way it could realistically be considered a "worst" pin when it is one of the most popular pins of all time with a production run of 20,000+
 
So after giving it some serious thought, and trying to remember every game I've ever played that I didn't like, I've come up with 2 not-surprising or original suggestions :-

1) Popeye - There is no flow to it and half of the shots are completely obscured by the silly plastic boat. What's the whole saving the animals thing? I remember watching popeye when I was a kid, but don't remember him rescuing animals ?

2) Bugs Bunny - Becasue of the gimicky backwards playfield on the left, there is very little usable playfield space, and there are really few interesting shots to go for. Worst of all is the ridiculous birthday cake candles feature, which completely skews the scores by 50 million and makes everything else you do completely pointless as you'll only get about 7 million from normal gameplay. Worse still is the 50 million award is fixed by percentage in the game software, so you ain't going to get it unless you happen to be lucky player number 50 to walk up to the machine, or whatever the game adjustment percent is set at.

So one second though, I would say Bugs Bunny is the worst out of the 2
 
So Popeye became an Eco Warrior in the 90's. It's no big deal. :confused:
When I get my Popeye I may re-theme it to a Dave Angel LE.
 
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Got to be stern IJ. Talk about dull. No flow, hit a ball into a scoop, then sit back and eat popcorn for half an hour whilst you watch half the film on the dmd, then there's quarter of the pf taken up by that captive ball which cuts around doing it's own thing bouncing around for 5 mins. Then it culminates in the arc ****ing 8 balls sdtm.
Apart from that it's ****ing brilliant.
I do however like the cab art:-)
 
John Whitfield said he quite fancies an XFiles after playing it for 2h straight at the Slam. I couldn't get him off the thing!
 
I guess it all depends on era and whether the table was at a show, 'out in the field' or I had enough time to get over the hatred of it.

These views are based on actually paying for the games in an arcade. I beleive this is the only true way of defining how good a table is. IE how it performs in it's natural habitat.

1) Williams Indiana Jones - It could be a great table but I could never get over the musak style lift versions of the movie's classic music. Sorry, but Indian Jones by K-tel isn't something I could ever love.

2) Twilight zone - one of the greatest tables of all time but I never actually got to play a fully working one in the 90's. They seamed to come 'pre ****ed' out of the box.

3) Bugs Bunny's Birthday Bollox - When a local arcade ditched Bally Radical and put this in it's place, I almost cried. It could have been on freeplay and i still wouldn't have played it. Poor rules and not even a multiball to redeem itself. Gash.

But none of these can even hold a candle to the crapness of.....

Gilligan's Island - No redeeming features other than being used for parts.
 
Paul said:
TZ.... TOM..... :D
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These are just machines you don't like or understand the attraction but both have been successful and are liked so can't be considered the worst machine.

For worst item, the object has to fail or undermine the very qualities that make said object what it is. The object has to be bad enough that you question how could anyone who has seen said object before, sign off this new object during the dev stage. How could someone bring themselves to tool up a production line to make it and how did everyone involved, down to the last person who worked on it, not feel embarrassed that they made this shocking piece of crap.
I use to collect fridge magnets along these lines, my favourite was one that was meant to be for the film Babe, but looked like a severed lamp head on a magnet that couldn't hold it. Surely then entire production line were in on the bet or joke?
 
Calimori.....

Surely that is the definition of TZ? Pinball machines are there to make money for an operator, TZ fails at that level.
 
abaxas said:
Calimori.....

Surely that is the definition of TZ? Pinball machines are there to make money for an operator, TZ fails at that level.
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Take it a level up, a pinball machine is meant to attract sales for the manufacturer and it sold over 15000 units.
But at the OP level, was it the worst performing pin or where other machines far more of a failure?
 
It would be interesting to see which pinball machines were ultra unreliable. Or maybe better to say, which die more gracefully or have the least single points of failure. If you look at other complex machines, cars etc. Amount of warranty claims are always in relation to complexity. So it would be safe to assume the same for pinball.

I was just commenting on never actually seeing a fully working TZ out on the field, despite seeing many TZs.
 
Reliability is important, I wouldn't not know how to get information about how many breakdowns were had for each machine as I am sure little was reported.
Any OP's want to comment on how profitable and reliable their machines were?
 
Come on guys, you can't possibly nominate a game as "the worst pinball" if it is in both the IPDB and Pinside top 10 :)


Example, I've learnt to hate certain games (CFTBL, TAF, RS, Indy500) because every Northern league meet has one or more of them, and I always do rubbish at them, but that doesn't make them the worst pinballs, I just don't get on with them
 
Gaz Shiells said:
Got to be stern IJ. Talk about dull. No flow, hit a ball into a scoop, then sit back and eat popcorn for half an hour whilst you watch half the film on the dmd, then there's quarter of the pf taken up by that captive ball which cuts around doing it's own thing bouncing around for 5 mins. Then it culminates in the arc ****ing 8 balls sdtm.
Apart from that it's ****ing brilliant.
I do however like the cab art:)
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Ah Stern IJ, forgot about that one.

It really is quite poor considering it's a top theme title. For me the unskipable video segments really ruin it.

It's not so much of a problem if yo just played one game on it out in the wild, but owning one would be a nightmare because you would be forced to endure the same videoclips over and over and over again. It adds nothing to the game and just slows down progress.
 
Any top 10 table can be a bottom 10 table if it doesn't work correctly.

Even a bugs bunny is a better than a AFM with a dodgy left flipper.
 
Calimori said:
Reliability is important, I wouldn't not know how to get information about how many breakdowns were had for each machine as I am sure little was reported.
Any OP's want to comment on how profitable and reliable their machines were?
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There was a T3 on site in Southport for years - about 50% of the time the RPG in the backglass was not working. This was a right pain because you could never get to the wizard mode without completing the RPG mode.
At The Slam there was a T3 and surprise, surprise the RPG was not working! However, the owner had the good sense to omit this mode in the settings meaning that the wizard mode could be achieved. Of course, the Operator in Southport never discovered this.
Having said all that I find it really dull due to the linear-progression.
 
I own a T3 and the girlfriend plays it all the time and I personally love the RPG and the most reliable.

Games I dislike that I can currently think of right now are
TaF and I500
 
The software isn't completely blameless, a startup diagnostic where the machine could fire the the ball several times to see if a target is made should disable it automatically.
 
I don't have the years of exposure to pinball that some have on here (video games would be different) but from all that I've played here are the two I particularly disliked:

Bally "Silverball Mania"
https://flic.kr/p/fsk2zm
I was so excited when I spotted this as UKPP2013. Such a beautiful machine but such a disappointment to play. Only seems to have half a playfield as once the ball is in upper-half after passing through either of the spinners it just bounces around gently between the pop bumpers. Yawn...

Stern "The Rolling Stones"
The cynical will say that Stern created this machine after a series of marketing discussions. Something like this:

"We gotta sell more pins!"
"Yeah! We need a theme that's gonna be popular with middle-aged folks 'cos they got all the disposable income..."
"Something that'd sell well into every bar across the States..."

But however it was created it's the worst pin I've ever played. It must have the lowest feature count on any modern machine with the biggest expanse of unused playfield. Only two ramps but you still can't see the roll-overs above the pop bumpers, plastic parts, garish colours, naff backglass, etc. It's like those pinball video games designed by developers who don't play real pinball. And as for the cut out of Mick Jagger pratting back and forth... diabolical. No flow, no purpose, no point.

Each to their own of course ;) I'm sure those that do own a RS think old Bally's like Paragon and Vector are a pile of crusty excrement :eek:

South Coast Slam 2014 085.JPG
 
Paul R Owen said:
There was a T3 on site in Southport for years - about 50% of the time the RPG in the backglass was not working. This was a right pain because you could never get to the wizard mode without completing the RPG mode.
At The Slam there was a T3 and surprise, surprise the RPG was not working! However, the owner had the good sense to omit this mode in the settings meaning that the wizard mode could be achieved. Of course, the Operator in Southport never discovered this.
Having said all that I find it really dull due to the linear-progression.
Click to expand...

I know that T3! It was next to a Simpsons Party :)
 
Nedreud said:
Stern "The Rolling Stones"
The cynical will say that Stern created this machine after a series of marketing discussions. Something like this:

"We gotta sell more pins!"
"Yeah! We need a theme that's gonna be popular with middle-aged folks 'cos they got all the disposable income..."
"Something that'd sell well into every bar across the States..."

But however it was created it's the worst pin I've ever played. It must have the lowest feature count on any modern machine with the biggest expanse of unused playfield. Only two ramps but you still can't see the roll-overs above the pop bumpers, plastic parts, garish colours, naff backglass, etc. It's like those pinball video games designed by developers who don't play real pinball. And as for the cut out of Mick Jagger pratting back and forth... diabolical. No flow, no purpose, no point.
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Rolling Stones is certainly not a theme for me, but I remember coining one up for the first time and actually laughing out loud at the Mick Jagger target prancing backwards and forwards! :rofl:
 
The arm in the photo belongs to my Dad (aged 65 and probably just about in the ideal demographic for sales of this pin - he plays bass guitar in a rock'n'roll band and certainly has the disposable income!) and, yes, it was taken on Sunday at this year's South Coast Slam.

We played three games of doubles just to be sure and both concluded it really was our least favourite pin of the day.
 
Thats Wills RS and I have put some time in on the game ....and you know what, it can be a lot of fun. It looks sparse, but its fast and furious. People seem to get hung up on Mick On A Stick ..... I like it, a constantly moving target ....don't see that in many games. I like it. :cool:

Another of those games that you cant judge in a noisy Show based on a few games. The music is great, and once you figure out whats going on there's enough to keep interest.

They missed a trick though with the 'Tongue and Lips' ....that surely should have been a lift/moving ramp .
 
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GrizZ said:
I like it
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maybe not the best in the show, but i'd play it for hours on end, and happily empty my pockets into it if i ever saw one out in a pub. as i would with Popeye, Gilligan's Island, and probably even XFiles. for me, any game from before about 1980 would be a hard sell, but even those would prise at least a few coins out of me on location. we are pinheads, it's in our blood.
 
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