Classic Pinball Game Gets A Facelift

by Brendan Smith
Weirs Times Editor

You can say a lot has changed in technology over the years. In fact it feels like new frontiers are being discovered every day.
Artificial Intelligence, once considered just a science fiction fantasy, is now becoming a real part of day to day living.
But it was forty-two years ago when the very first female voice came alive from the speaker of a new pinball game in 1980 and it took the arcade world by storm.

Called Xenon, it was, in fact, the very first talking pinball game created by Bally Manufacturing Corp., arguably the most popular pinball game designer of that era.
Though Bally no longer makes pinball machines, the enticing voice of Xenon can still be heard echoing through the American Classic Arcade Museum at Funspot, the largest arcade in the world, in Weirs, New Hampshire.

The Xenon pinball game at Funspot has aged over the years, mostly because its popularity has seen thousands of players over the decades drop in a few game tokens, listen to Xenon speak, and then attempt a high score.
One of Funspot’s game techs, Ryan Fields has been one of those tasked with giving Xenon a much needed facelift and to give the popular game a new life for a new generation to enjoy.
Funspot purchased the Xenon game new in 1980, said Gary Vincent who is the founder of the American Classic Arcade Museum.
“Any sort of game with speech abilities in that time frame was very expensive because of the fact that the technology wasn’t where it is today,” said Vincent.
According to a Wikipedia post: “The voice for the female robot theme was provided by Suzanne Ciani who also composed the music for the game.”
In the attract mode, which is used to lure players to specific games, the voice will entice players by saying “Try Xeeeeenon.” Also various “oohs” and “ahhs” can be heard from the voice during different parts of play.

“The Xenon game was operational, but in terrible shape,” said Fields. “Most of the graphics on the playfield were all worn away over the years since it was such a popular game and used so extensively.”
Ryan is new to the art of restoring games. He joins a professional team of other game technicians like Dana Ashton, Sr. who has been with Funspot for ten years and Randy Lawton, one of Funspot’s owners who has been working on games for decades. Ryan refers to himself as a rookie when it comes to the precise skills needed as he has only been doing it for a little under a year. He has been working on Xenon with master game technician Sarah St. John who owns My Arcade Repair in Pelham and also works part time at Funspot, helping repair and restore games. St. John has an electrical engineering degree and has been working on games for forty plus years.
Ryan has worked at Funspot since he was a teenager and never thought about learning to repair games, but has now found himself learning fast with the Xenon restoration.
With about seventy-five hours of work so far put into the Xenon restoration, most of the work involved the playfield itself where most of the wear and tear was obvious. (The playfield is where all the bumpers, lights, flippers, etc., are located. It’s where the pinball travels on its way to scoring points.)
“We got a new playfield that just came as a plank of wood without any of the electronic components,” said Fields. “We ordered whatever else we needed from various reproduction companies to replace just about all of the original parts on the playfield. So now, pretty much everything you see on the playfield is new except for the wiring underneath.”

The new playfield is also clear coated so that it won’t suffer the same wear and tear like the original.
Most of the labor came from the painstaking and meticulous process of removing the wiring harness from underneath the original playfield and moving it onto the new one and then individually soldering each connection. The hardware is new though the wiring is original.
“They don’t make them like this anymore as far as the electronics go,” said Fields. “That is why it is so important to restore games like this.”
The head of the Xenon pinball, though still original, has been outfitted with some new LED lights to bring back the original strobe lighting effect. Somewhere over the forty plus years that Funspot has had Xenon, the original lights had been replaced.

The Xenon pinball in its new reincarnation is back on the floor in the American Classic Arcade Museum and ready for another 40 years of play.
When asked about future projects, Fields mentioned that pinballs like the original Black Knight (Williams Electronics 1980) and Superman (Atari, Inc. 1979), though not in as bad a condition as Xenon was, are on the list for a playfield restoration. A full list of the pinball machines in Funspot’s collection can be found here: Pinball Map: FUNSPOT.
So, if you missed it as kid in the eighties, or even if you are a kid born in the twenty-first century, you can now have your chance to visit to Funspot and “Try Xeeeeenon.”