Welcome, Fallout pinball

It took 13 months before I decided that I needed another pinball machine. After scoring last year's Star Wars: Fall Of The Empire, I realized pretty quickly that I really loved pinball, and hated that I sold the Jurassic Park machine back in the day. I can't explain exactly what it is, but a lot of it has to do with the physical and mechanical manifestation of a game that's totally unlike video games. The maintenance is oddly satisfying too, and after racking up almost 4,000 games on the first machine, it has definitely needed some love. There has been plenty of cleaning, and replacement of the rubber parts, and I just recently partially rebuilt the flippers, which were getting sloppy.

There were rumors some time ago that Stern was working on a Fallout machine, though I wasn't sure if that was relative to the TV show or the game series that is decades-old. Turns out it was both. Since I bought Star Wars, they shipped The Walking Dead (Remastered), Pokemon and Transformers. That last one was tempting, but they made some weird choices on the Optimus Prime mech and included that shitty music from the 80's movie. Finally, they announced Fallout, and went so nuts with toys and theming that it was a no-brainer, despite the higher cost. The LE version in particular was just beautiful, leaning into the graphic art style of the games, but they only committed to like 700 of them, and I missed out. I thought the art was so good that I was willing to spend the extra $3k for a collector's item. Maybe it's good that it sold out, because that was totally illogical.

Fallout is a very different game than Star Wars. The latter is really made for fast pacing and shooting, and relatively simple in its approach. If it's blinking, shoot there. It's a fan-out layout, where everything can be hit from the flippers. It has some fun ramps and rails to mix it up. Fallout, on the other hand, borrows roll-playing mechanics from the games tied to various target objectives, and there's a whole lot there. The ramps impossibly cross each other and divert balls in (at first) unexpected ways. There's a lower playfield that uses a magnet to hurl a ball around. They also have a launching mechanism to chuck balls across the field, a monster bash toy, and the most satisfying thing, a vault door that opens and rolls open like those in the games and TV show. It's really fantastic. I don't fully understand it all yet, and that's fine.

I did order a shaker motor, which normally ships with the LE editions, because I loved it on my JP, and upgraded the Star Wars machine too. I also ordered the cabinet "expression" lights, because I realized after seven months that it added so much to Star Wars. Unfortunately, Stern shipped controller boards for those that apparently were totally unflashed (programmed), so they don't work. Still waiting to hear how they're going to resolve that.

Overall though, it's a great addition to my office, and the family has been in here playing every single night, on both machines. I've already ordered a set of replacement silicone rubber parts (they last longer and create less "dirt"), and I look forward to seeing it all lit up when Stern addresses the bad control boards. I did have one initial problem, where the vault door was getting stuck. Turns out there were some loose screws on the solenoid that opened the door, causing it to get caught on a housing inside. Once I figured that out, it worked great.

This has to be it for the foreseeable future, because I don't have room for another. I told Simon that any replacement meant having to sell one, which he thought was a terrible idea. He doesn't really appreciate how little time he has left cohabitating with us! For now though, it's nice to get that family time together.