The pinball I loved as a kid.

Ever since I was a kid I have had a special love for electronic games, and for pinball machines in particular. Who doesn't remember the familiar sign "No entry under 17 years of age", which was there purely for decoration, since every kid under 17 was inside and ready for anything in case the police came round for an inspection.

The machine I loved back then was the Firepower by Williams, built in 1980. It was the first with multiball: depending on how the game went, the player could play with up to 3 balls at once. It was also the first with the so-called "lane change", which means that with the right flipper button you could shift the 4 lit bonus multiplier lanes, so you could reach 2x, 3x, 4x and 5x faster.

As luck would have it, when I did my military service and left the training centre, my first posting took me to Kavala, to a camp almost next to the town's football ground. The amazing thing was that under some sheds in the camp I found around 50 pinball machines, abandoned and filthy. I never did find out how they got there. What I do know is that they brought me much closer to the hardware of pinball machines, because, having a background in electronics, I took on the repair of two or three of them for the unit's canteen. One of them was a Firepower.

The years went by, but the thought of one day owning my own pinball machine, and a Firepower in particular, never went away. The first problem I had was space, because a pinball machine is not exactly small. When that was solved, a bigger one appeared. All electronic games, pinball included, were banned in Greece. Apart from the financial ruin of the people who worked with them professionally, the machines vanished from everywhere, probably because most of them were shipped abroad. The ban remained in effect only on paper until 2011. The article "The Ban on Electronic Games in Greece" provides an account of the history.

After a lot of searching, and a lot of luck, in March 2008 I finally found a Firepower. It worked, but it had a great many problems. The cabinet was in a terrible state, but fortunately the playfield was in fairly good shape. All of its electronics were in place, though I discovered some unbelievable things from repairs done in the past. There are before and after photos here. Unfortunately, when I got it, in my excitement I took only one photo of how it looked before the restoration.

Every day I get e-mails from all over Greece asking for help with repairs or with solving various problems. I try to help everyone, but sometimes I may be slow to reply because of work (the regular kind), so please be patient. After all, this is my hobby.

Keep sending me e-mails for help, and don't leave non-working pinball machines sitting there, because 99% of them can be repaired.

You can e-mail me at infraredgr AT gmail DOT com
or through the "Contact" option in the site's main menu.

Here you can download the logic diagram and the assembly drawing I made for the Williams Hyperball, which I am restoring at the moment.

Michalis