Gottlieb Genie Pinball Project Update 2023

It's been a while, so let's take a look at how my Genie pinball machine is doing!
I'm on Pinside here: pinside.com/pi...

[@zigzagzoggo]

Outstanding achievement in game restoration. Thanks for sharing.

[@ThePinballNoob]

Thanks for the nice comment!

[@DuckReconMajor]

Gottlieb really nailed it out of the park with this one. Can’t wait to see what they come out with next!

[@ThePinballNoob]

Uh oh I have some terrible news

[@box-botkids3267]

Loxly knows how to hit her cues.

[@JeffreyNero-sk6jv]

Hi! Cool game and video; awesome cat! Do you REALLY need to strip it all the way down to clean? I’m new to pinball and have a black hole game-no way am I going that far when I eventually clean it after it works 100%. A complete tear down is daunting to me! All the best!

[@ThePinballNoob]

Haha thanks for the compliments about the game and cat! It's not necessary to strip the game down and clean it as much as I did. In fact most of the cleaning I did won't ever be visible to somebody playing the game. I partly did it that way because I like to learn by taking things apart, and partly because the tutorial videos I was watching at the time were really in-depth restorations that did similar disassembles. Unless you are trying to restore a game to 100% perfect, brand-new condition, which would probably include sanding, filling imperfections, and re-painting, I wouldn't recommend doing it this way. For an example of a restoration I did without fully assembling everything, check out my Lethal Weapon 3 series. I still probably disassembled the playfield more than I needed to for that one, but I left the head and cabinet mostly intact. Good luck with the Black Hole, that's a really cool game!

[@JeffreyNero-sk6jv]

Fascinating! Pinball games are very much like classic cars-all sorts of different kinds of resto. I’ll def have to check your other vids out. Great stuff! Thanks.

[@ThePinballNoob]

@@JeffreyNero-sk6jv That's an interesting point! It really is similar to cars in a lot of ways. You have people who collect the classic vintage ones, and people who prefer the newer, faster ones. You also have people who like to find old beaters and fix them up to make them beautiful collector's items, and other people who just want to have fun with the machines and ride them until the wheels fall off.

[@grantbeals6008]

Awesome! I know it was in a sorry state, but what an amazing find. I wish I could find something like that for 200 bucks. Do you have an estimate on how much you've spent total?

[@ThePinballNoob]

Thank you! Let’s see… the new all-in-one board was nearly $500 itself. 5 new displays probably around $250 total, $100 for new plastics, $100-ish for new rubbers and LEDs, $100 for legs. Probably a final $100 for all the miscellaneous parts like connectors, pins, wires, coils, etc. All in I would estimate around $1200 total with almost half of that just being the all-in-one board, but that was definitely worth it and made the game pretty much bulletproof, no fiddling around with unreliable 40 year old boards.

[@grantbeals6008]

By Pinside average price it's still a steal! Nicely done.

[@MRNBricks]

So…what’s your next pinball project gonna be? Pins somehow multiply. 😂 Cat/pinball story. I was waxing my Doctor Who playfield. My cat jumped on the playfield and I shooed him away. He left a nice 3” set of claw marks across the Masters face when he jumped out. Kind of upsetting.

[@ThePinballNoob]

Funny you mention them multiplying... I'm planning to make a video about it but I picked up a Lethal Weapon 3 somewhat recently! I couldn't resist an affordable price for a decent DMD game. It doesn't need a full restoration but it definitely could use some work: an LED conversion, the DMD has a dead line, and it needs to be cleaned. That cat story is horrifying! I'll definitely make sure they are secured before taking the glass off now haha