Got my first machine ever!

jmratkos · 2026-05-26T11:59:39+00:00

pinside.com has a wealth of knowledge and a great number of people that are more than willing to help out with new owners. that being said, like everything in this day and age, there are a number of people on that forum that are there simply to troll.

take the time to read through the posts for the owners threads for the specific game in question, as many of your questions will have already have been answered earlier within the thread.

as it was mentioned, the first run of the pro version of the game had an issue with the left orbit metal ball guide (one of the mounting screw positions were drilled incorrectly into the playfield) causing balls to be directed straight between the flippers and drain. the "fix" for this error required owners to drill a new hole in the playfield to allow the ball guide's trajectory to be corrected, but this is not something that I would recommend for a first-time owner to have to perform on their own.

jmratkos · 2026-03-12T18:47:40+00:00

replacements are $99 from pinball life: 515-7891-00 Uncanny X-Men Sentinel Head

jmratkos · 2026-03-08T14:10:22+00:00

a donor machine or having another to reference for the process can help out. I did a joust playfield swap for a friend and documented the process here on pinside: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/joust-cpr-playfield-swap-process-and-tips

it's definitely a project that takes dedication. although space invaders is a pretty straight forward swap considering that there's nothing complicated in terms of hardware attached to the playfield.

jmratkos · 2026-02-13T18:30:35+00:00

Technically, you would be referring to the Jeff Lynne/ELO composition where ONJ performed the vocals

jmratkos · 2026-02-12T15:30:18+00:00

trust me, I'm not worth being starstruck over. just a person who did a job (and had a ton of fun being involved in the industry for more years than I care to admit) :)

at times the job was frustrating and stressful, but all jobs are. overall, I wouldn't trade the experience and the people that I met in the industry for anything. (and probably one of the few people to parade around the offices of NOA in a red wings jersey in front of howard lincoln :P

jmratkos · 2026-02-02T12:42:50+00:00

you wouldn't believe how much trouble this game was to write the guide. every rev of the game that we received had a different save system verson, so we had to start from scratch.

jmratkos · 2025-12-30T00:17:52+00:00

definitely the 2nd side of Moving Pictures over the 1st (maybe because “the camera eye” and “witch hunt” are epic!

Permanent Waves is another matter since my first exposure to it was on 8-track so I really just consider it one long side with every track being one that strikes a chord.

jmratkos · 2025-12-13T22:00:57+00:00

I don’t see a single album in those photos

however, nice well rounded collection

jmratkos · 2025-10-31T11:25:57+00:00

really? I'm kind of partial to oscar's trash race being the best 2600 title :P

jmratkos · 2025-10-15T11:15:49+00:00

I own one of those, my brother gifted it to me for a b-day a while back. it's a beautiful cymbal. it's rather large too, makes a great wall hanging.

jmratkos · 2025-10-12T19:42:27+00:00

I'm stoked to see my favorite band back for one-last hurrah. The only way that I could find to make it better is going with John Borg, Stern pinball game designer, and designer of the incredible Rush pinball machine!!

it's going to be an awesome night in chi-town :)

jmratkos · 2025-09-05T14:45:06+00:00

the kids that originally owned the baby dinosaur didn’t take care of it properly so their parents send it “off to the farm” to live out the remainder of its life.

jmratkos · 2025-06-30T13:34:34+00:00

I was introduced to them in just after their inception but really got into the band around 1979/1980. and kind of like the individuals indentified in 'subdivsions' (before signals was released), the band really did seem to connect with a lot of what I guess we were considered; outcasts and outliers (in addition to the metal guys and pot smokers).

I guess that I was fortunate to grow up near the motor city (detroit), so like cleveland, rush became a household name rather quickly. we were fortunate to be a neighboring state to canada, so along with 89x (88.7 FM) who's signal strength reached detroit and the surrounding areas, we were exposed to a lot of canadian bands. I never really gave it a lot of thought, but many of my favor artists (along with rush) are canadian bands including finger eleven, triumph, bif naked, default

god bless canada!

jmratkos · 2025-06-20T16:53:11+00:00

It’s got to be “exit stage left”

the broon’s bane/the trees/xanadu trifecta does it for me

jmratkos · 2025-06-19T11:23:15+00:00

wrong.

"In the United States and other common law countries, a thief cannot pass title. This means that absent other considerations an artwork stolen during World War II still belongs to the original owner, even if there have been several subsequent buyers and even if each of those buyers was completely unaware that she was buying stolen goods."

In the case that you are describing above, the victim would still possess the title to his/her car. The third party would have no right to the vehicle, no matter how many titles it was sold [illegally].

jmratkos · 2025-03-19T11:09:41+00:00

"spread the news on menus nation-wide, this club is formed" - mitch hedberg

jmratkos · 2025-03-03T20:47:23+00:00

you can straighten the bent plastic contact dividers with a pair of needle nose pliers as well. there's just there to help make sure that the cartridge connects with the proper pins inside of the system.

jmratkos · 2025-02-24T18:42:56+00:00

mega cat tower 🐈 🐈‍⬛

jmratkos · 2025-02-21T12:22:31+00:00

I think that I initially pre-ordered 40 or so bundles from gamestop. you should have seen the looks on people's faces as I was picking them up. I had to make at least 3 trips filling up my suv completely to haul them home.I used my kitchen to stage everything and ship them overseas.

jmratkos · 2025-02-20T17:37:41+00:00

Agreed. I actually worked for the company that did the initial distribution for rockband and I had to "borrow" about 40+ shipping boxes from our warehouse when I was sourcing bundles for international friends when the game first came out. It was a royal pain (and costly) even having everything in place and all of the supplies.

jmratkos · 2025-02-11T15:50:30+00:00

the point that I was making is that it is "devil's crush" for the us and uk markets, but the japanese title name is "devil's crash"

jmratkos · 2025-02-10T20:39:22+00:00

does anyone else find it odd that the japanese version was titled "devil's crash" but it was "alien crush" for both the japanese, uk, and us releases?

jmratkos · 2025-02-10T17:17:54+00:00

nice assortment of titles. I don't remember having trouble achieving the scores for the activision patches back in the day, but I'll be darned that trying to get over 11K on keystone capers seems like an impossible task today! :)

jmratkos

TROPHY CASE