Creature Gets Clean
We bought our Creature From the Black Lagoon about two months ago. It was filthy, and in desperate need of a shop job. Two of the ramps had been crushed, but were (amazingly) still pretty functional. With a little tape and a bent credit card we were able to repair it enough to be playable without the ball careening off the edge of a ramp and crashing into some lamps. Here’s the ramp in question (sans hackjob repair):
Note the soot-like coating on it, the broken off chunks of plastic, the dingy underwater scene plastic, the trail of blackness in the upper right (over “Extra”), etc. It was dirty and broken. You get the idea.
Fortunately, a company in Germany has made reproduction ramps for Creature, and so we bought a set (3) and they sat in the box for weeks and weeks. As dirty as the game was, it was still fun to play, and when it’s up and running you don’t really feel like breaking it all down. Finally, though, I was having enough trouble making shots, and the worn-out rubber around the pop bumper area wasn’t bouncing the ball around like it should be, so I decided the time had come to clean it up and install the new ramps on Saturday. Some 16 hours of work later, we have this:
This is after:
- Removing all of the old ramps
- Removing all of the plastic
- Removing various switches, metal ball guides, fittings
- Replacing all of the rubber rings
- Cleaning all of the above (except the old ramps), and the playfield
- Cleaning the subway “ramp” (moves the ball beneath the playfield)
- Freezing decals off of the old ramps
- Re-applying the decals to the new ramps (thanks to Ray for the tape, and Jessica for her delicate work)
- Cleaning the pinballs
- Reassembling all of the above
- Waxing the playfield (twice)
- Various bits of tweaking to get the game playing smoothly
We finished late last night and played several games to, you know, see if everything was put back together properly. My recollection is that it went well, but I was pretty tired by the end of it, so I may have to conduct further testing this evening. I seem to recall it being a much bouncier, faster game, and the ball shooting up the center path (”Move Your Car!”) with satisfying speed. Hooray! Now if I could just get good at playing it…
August 31st, 2006 at 7:22 pm
Like I Said before I don’t read your site often, but it seems you have a thing for pinball machines. I love them! Ever thought that the bright colors and lights were purposely “designed to sell”?
Intresting how your pinball photos resemble a Kinkade painting.
August 31st, 2006 at 8:48 pm
I personally don’t see any similarities in Adam’s photos and a Kinkade painting, other than both having a lot of color. You are right, however, that pinball machines use lights and colors (along with sounds and other attraction modes and tactics) to draw people to them in order to get played, and in turn, earning the arcades or owners of the machines a few quarters here and there. Still, I find it much more reasonable to pay 50 cents to play a game of pinball that has used its colors and lights to attract me to it, as opposed to paying hundreds of dollars for a print of a painting that I can’t play at all. I appreciate art quite a bit, and I do think Kinkade is very talented at what he does, but I prefer to spend my money on things that occupy my time, and try to keep my costs on decorating to a minimum.
I’m glad to hear you get enjoyment out of pinball, too, though, because they’re a dying source of entertainment, and if more people don’t keep playing them, they may stop producing new machines all together. That would be tragic!
September 1st, 2006 at 12:26 am
That is TOTAL Kinkade, dude. I am feeling it…. FEELING IT! Are you selling these photos!?
September 1st, 2006 at 1:54 pm
Dang it, now I want a creech.
How’s the gameplay ? The one I played was at a truck stop and mucho broken with bad flippers.
September 1st, 2006 at 2:52 pm
Chris — It’s very, very fast now. Creature has a lot of posts that seem improbably good at bouncing the ball away from anything resembling a target, which can be frustrating. I’m also young at playing so I’m not sure how much of my occasional frustration is due to lack of skill, a game in need of tweaking, or just an off night. As you’ve probably experienced, cleaning the game completely changes how it plays, so that could be figuring into it as well.
My favorite is still Whirlwind. (It was Creature, but then we got Whirlwind running…) Even though it’s in much worse shape, it just has great flow, and the SDTM’s don’t hurt quite as badly with it set to 5 balls/hard (versus 3 balls/medium on Creature).