Stern Pinball - Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean - 2006

Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me. Stern Pinball in 2006 released Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean based on the first 2 movies at the time The Curse of the Black Pearl, & Dead Man's Chest. With majority of the focus on the 2nd film featuring Davey Jones. Since that time Disney had two other Pirate movies "At Worlds End", and "On Stranger Tides". Another pirates flick is currently in production the 5th installment titled "Dead Men Tell No Tales", which would be released roughly sometime in the summer of 2016. Did Stern Pinball predict the future almost 10 years in advance ? One of the call outs in the game from 2006 the parrot says "Dead Men Tell No Tales". I thought it was neat that the POTC game I bought was from someone who actually worked on the first two movies as part of the filming crew.

This was my first "Stern" Pinball machine, In this post your not going to really see many restoration photos because I bought the game already in excellent playable condition. The pinball artwork on the playfield is done very nicely with the bottom half which looks like an old treasure map. Being that this game is a Disney game it has a few hidden Mickeys throughout the playfield. Do you see the hidden Mickey's below?

For those that don't know what a hidden Mickey is it's essentially  is a representation of Mickey Mouse that has been inserted subtly into the design. The translite image on the chest the lock is a mickey head, along with the chest lock on the playfield. The other hidden mickey is in the coins by the flippers. Also to note if your a Disney fan likely you already knew this but the original Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disneyland, which opened in 1967, was the last attraction whose construction was overseen by Walt Disney himself; he died three months before it opened. The ride, which originally told the story of a band of pirates including their troubles and their exploits, was replicated at the Magic Kingdom (my favorite theme park!) in 1973, at Tokyo Disneyland in 1983, and at Disneyland Paris in 1992. Each version of the ride has a different facade, but has a similar ride experience.

The top half of the playfield is basically filled with various toys one of which is the flying dutchman.  Davey Jones ship aka the Flying Dutchman.

Flying Dutchman

 Your objective is to hit the ship, the sails will actually fall down via a solenoid, and the coolest part once you sink the ship it literally goes down into the playfield revealing the kraken behind it. The kraken to be honest was rather a big disappointment just a few layers of plastic, they definitely cut corners to save money and it shows.

Once you sink the ship and are starting to battle the kraken you will have another ball launched. If you lose one of your two balls while battling the kraken the ship will raise back up and you will need to continue to sink other ships to face Davey Jones. If your successful enough to destroy the kraken and retain both balls in play you will hear the Disney's 1967 Pirates theme song play "Yo ho, yo ho, a pirate's life for me...We pillage plunder, we rifle and loot..etc". If you are good enough to sink all of the ships (The Interceptor, The Dauntless, The Edinburg Trader, The Terpsichore) you get to battle Davey Jones

Playfield Objectives : "Sink Ship" When Flashing

The game will start a 4 ball multi ball to help you defeat him however you need to hit Davey Jones aka the Flying Dutchman while the ship is level. The ship will be bobbing up and down which makes the timing much more challenging. Also to note that if you take your sweet time Davey Jones will regenerate his strength so you need to hit his ship multiple times within a few seconds to defeat him.

Treasure Target

A few tips in the game I can give is that try to earn extra balls by hitting the treasure targets on the side, also going up the Port Royal / Tortuga ramp will start to lock up and create a maximum 4 multi ball, that will also help you greatly while defeating Davey Jones.

Port Royal / Tortuga Ramp & Compass

Four Winds Multi-Ball Compass

  The games main objection is to complete the compass on the playfield and get to "Four Winds Multi-Ball". This can be a very challenging task In order to do so you need hit all pirate targets, activate max jackpot value, port royal, sink a ship, collect crew, sword fight, light special, destroy a kraken, light the extra ball, defeat Davey Jones, capture Jack the monkey, heart super jackpot. I would say that defeating Davey Jones is generally the toughest thing to complete on the compass followed by Jack the Monkey, and Heart Super Jackpot.

Jolly Roger Coin Slot Inserts

I added Jolly Roger logos to the coin slots on the coin door. My game also came with a few additions and mods that were tastefully done. Some of which included Large Dutchman Cannon, Mini Pearl Cannons, Sand and Barrels, all from Back Alley Creations. Coin Taker LED's installed. The game also has upgraded speakers from Flipper Fidelity which sound great! I did however install a flipper rebuild kit as the flippers were starting to stick and now work perfectly.

Back Alley Creations Dutchman Cannon Mod

Flipper Fidelity Speakers

 Instead of having tons of lights on the backbox, the Stern games feature one florescent tube. The game is running the latest code, but if needed the S.A.M. System (Gary Stern's Dad) is rather easy to update. The game play is not a run and gun fast action game it starts off rather slow and some people want action all the time but i like the fact that it has a different type of game play than other machines. POTC has an excellent fun factor, great theme even if your not a fan of the movies and funny call outs, cool toys, fairly challenging to get to four winds despite the various stop and go.

Behind Back Box

Konami / Stern's Pooyan - 1982

"One day... In the forest..." Konami made Pooyan and distributed the game to Stern in 1982. In the game your object is to pop wolves balloons with arrows or meat. The game play is for the most part simplistic but as you advance through more levels you begin to realize just how insanely difficult this game gets. When you first start on level one the wolves begin to fall down, and if you miss any of them they will begin to climb a ladder trying to grab you. Every once in a while you will notice other items being tossed down such as strawberries, apples, etc. Hitting the various items that come down will yield you points but could potentially get in the way of you popping a wolfs balloon. The wolves also block some of your arrows, but they can't block the meat you toss at them which randomly appears at the top for you to grab. Also some of the wolves will toss items at you which you can either dodge out of the way, or hit it for points.

I was looking for a Pooyan cabinet for a long time. Throughout the years I gathered up various parts for the cabinet knowing possibly someday I might track one down. The cabinet also is shared by Stern's Bagman, as well as Minefield. While browsing craigslist one day I saw a "commando" inside what would I knew was put into a Stern cabinet. I immediately called to see if the cabinet was still available, to my surprise it was. The cabinet was listed as working, with no photo's of the side of the cabinet I asked what the colors of the side were which would likely tell me if it was a Pooyan (Blue) , Bagman (Yellow) or Minefield (Red). He had said the cabinet was "yellow" which to me indicated 99% it was a "Bagman" cabinet. I still insisted on checking it out. This is the image from the ad on craigslist, showing commando inside the Stern cabinet :As I was inspecting the cabinet I asked to see the inside, to my delight the inside had blue over spray from the Stern factory, indicating to me that this was originally a Pooyan! The seller said ; "you know what I think I see blue underneath the yellow laminate?!" Sure enough someone at some point around 1984-1985 when commando came out put the yellow laminate over the original blue Pooyan paint! I was happy that I finally found my Pooyan after several years of searching, it's a rather difficult original cabinet to find. All this time it was only about 10miles from my house!

I was excited to dive right into this restoration because I wanted the game for so long, in addition to the fact that I was sitting on parts for it for literally years. The first thing I did was to remove the yellow laminate as shown in this picture:Unfortunately while removing the yellow laminate it ripped small pieces of the plywood right away from the cabinet. The other terrible thing it left behind was a massive amount of adhesive glue type substance from the laminate. To remove the glue / adhesive I used a product called "Goof-Off" which worked rather well. It required a ton of elbow grease and patients to get all of that gunk off. Once all of the gunk was finally removed I used "3M's Bondo Body Filler" to fix the plywood. Once the bondo was applied, I than sanded, prepped the surface for priming and painting. Here you can see the various stages of the restoration:
I decided to repaint the over/ under coin door using "Textured Plastic". It was time to work on the control panel. Buried in my closet was a NOS (New Old Stock) Control Panel Overlay. This particular overlay that Stern used for this cabinet is actually printed directly onto the plexi itself as opposed to an adhesive sticker. I removed the used joystick, buttons, old plexi that the commando used with various typical cigarette burns. After removing the protective layer on the original pooyan control panel overlay beneath were vibrant colors that really popped. I decided to sand the existing carriage bolts on the control panel to get them all shinny again. I replaced the buttons with the correct color scheme, along with an original Wico joystick that the game used. Below you can see pictures of the control panel being restored:
Again time to dig out some parts that have been sitting for a few years. Next up was to flatten the side art that was sitting in a tube rolled for a few years. You should flatten out the side art for any arcade machine that's been sitting in a tube for a while, this will help when applying to the cabinet. Another unique feature that this particular cabinet has is a slide out draw on the bottom which holds the PCB, Power Supply, Wiring etc. Also this game along with other Stern games features a "Bent Marquee" design. This allows you to place screws directly into the marquee itself without using a metal bracket which majority of marquees used. It gives it a floating design, and looks neat without having to use the upper bracket to hold it in place.

After the dedicated bent marquee was installed, the control panel, along with the side art the cabinet looks just about back to it's original 1982 glory. As a side note If you didn't know "Pooyan" in Japanese literally means little pigs. Also supposedly this game was according to some made specifically for Chuck E Cheese's back in the early 80's. Clearly this game is some what based off of the "Three Little Pigs". If you are lucky enough to find this cabinet, my hats off to you this one took a long time to track down and add to my collection. I would consider it pretty rare to come by, so If you see one for sale grab it! Below is a picture of the nearly completed restored Pooyan: