After his family moved to California in the 1980s, he went to work for the now-defunct Game Station arcade in Pleasanton, which featured a line of Bally pinball machines.Īndy Kuntz said he grew up with his older brothers dragging him to the arcade. Kuntz said he would ride his bike miles to play any pinball he could get his hands on. “And a lot of America thought so, too, because it was extremely popular from the mid to late ”70s.” “I guess as a kid, you look at it and it”s colorful … there are all these flashing lights, you get to hit the ball around, it just seemed like the most fun you could have at the time,” Kuntz said. Kuntz said he played his first game of pinball, Buccaneer, at a shopping center in Ames, Iowa.
They won”t light up because somebody stored it on a patio or something.” “And I”m working on some of the nitty-gritty stuff … bad lamp sockets … I”m changing those. “I”ve replaced a lot of components back here,” said the 46-year-old Bay Point resident, showing off the dismantled machine”s inner workings. Kuntz has been busy replacing its shorted-out electronic components, which required a trip to a Novato surplus store to find obsolete computer chips. He”s restoring it from years of neglect so it can be donated to a charity auction. The machine in Kuntz” shop was in bad shape when it arrived. Open Pinball tournament in Hartford, Conn. Manufactured by long-defunct Game Plan, Inc., the model features a spinning space lab target and was used in qualifying rounds at the 1980 U.S. One such is Super Nova, a four-player game from 1980. Other games in his shop belong to customers. There”s a lot of collectors that will pay extra for it because it”s rare.” “This game was made when pinball was almost dead,” he said. He said he bought his secondhand for about $3,000 at an auction in December. Like Defender, a rare Williams model from December 1982, of which only 369 units were produced. “I guess I have about 50 that are mine,” Kuntz said of his collection. One such game is Police Force, from 1989, of which about 4,700 were manufactured by one-time industry heavyweight, Williams Electronic Games, Inc. “Some of these are my personal machines which I don”t really intend to sell,” said Kuntz, the proud owner of Pinball Pirate in Benicia, a one-man business that specializes in pinball repairs and sales.
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His repair shop is full of the coin-operated games that were once a popular source of amusement in America”s malt shops and bars. BENICIA - As one of the Bay Area”s last remaining pinball technicians, Chris Kuntz is helping preserve the colorful arcade games he loves - one flipper, plunger and bumper at a time.
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