Practically every pinball review I've written has mentioned the potential for damage that can be caused by a flying metal ball in an enclosed area. The kinetic energy of a moving ball is both what defines and curses pinball machines. Without it, you don't have pinball, but because of it you've got to do everything you can to "bulletproof" a pinball machine from damage, especially one that is no longer being made.

Enter Cliffy's Pinball Protectors. A fellow pinball and video enthusiast, Cliffy has designed some great metal protectors, designed to shield different high-risk areas of a game, such as ramps or the edges of drop holes in the playfield. The protectors also hide any existing damage.

Seems the urge to improve the "stock" appearance of many pinball games is a common one: PinBotz, a small company based in Brunswick, Georgia, offers several sets of "enhancement" decals for pinball machines, both backboard decals for games that never had backboard artwork (or had it removed as a cost-cutting move), as well as some specific decals to enhance the appearance of games such as the Addams Family pinball. In addition, they offer several sets of pinball instruction/information cards, designed to replace the rather generic cards normally seen on pinball machines.

Keeping a pinball machine in pristine condition is an ongoing battle. Between parts breaking and normal wear and tear (trust me, there's a lot of both!), maintenance is as much a part of the hobby as playing the games. One area that can take a lot of your time is cleaning and polishing the playfields. There is always an ongoing debate in rec.games.pinball about what is the best cleaner or technique for obtaining a nice, glossy shine on a playfield.

Attack from Mars, produced by Bally/Williams in 1996, is a particularly flashy pinball machine, and I mean that literally — featuring a strobe light and a large number of #906 flashers, Attack from Mars is a bright, blinking spectacle of light. Everything on the playfield is awash in animated lights.

One of the things that can really ruin your pinball machine's day is a leaky battery.

Most pinball machines use batteries to save the machine's settings and high scores. The batteries used in many pinball machines are ordinary AA alkalines, but that doesn't mean they are any less vulnerable to leaking. And if you've ever had a battery in a flashlight or electronic game leak, you know the mess they can cause.

In the case of pinball machines, however, a leaky battery is much worse. There is no battery compartment to shield the circuit board from the leaking acid, and you can imagine the damage a leak can cause on delicate traces and components.

When I discovered that the Dot Matrix Display (DMD) on my recently acquired Doctor Who pinball machine was starting to "bleed" or blur after an hour or so of operation, I began to panic. New DMD's generally cost around $150, and if the problem was elsewhere in the machine I didn't feel qualified to track it down. My only recourse? A quick crash course in pinball troubleshooting via the Internet.

I've discovered that you can easily get carried away when you buy your first pinball machine. Not that there's anything wrong with that, mind you, but it happens.

In my case, I won my first machine, a Doctor Who pinball, on eBay (yes my first pinball came from eBay, and it was in great condition. Call me naive but very, very lucky). Anyway, after winning the auction I immediately started searching eBay for any pinball accessories I might need, such as a new set of pinball rubbers for the game. I also started wondering if the game would actually be shipped with any pinballs (naive, remember?), so I bid on a set of 5 "Mirror-Glazed Premium Pinballs" from Ken Iman.