Well, Pinball Enthusiasts, the time had finally come. Thoughts of my early pinball days in the amusement business came back to me. That's when I decided to pull my Williams Thunderball out of its 22 year sleep in storage. Would the last game I hadn't sold many years earlier still be able to yell "Play Thunderball"? I had purchased it new in 1982, before Williams decided to not put it into production.

It took awhile to bring the beast up from my basement, where it had sat silently all those years. An examination of the backglass revealed that the bottom right quarter of the translite had dried and peeled back. This was a minor disappointment, as the real question was whether or not the game had sustained any damage due to humidity.

With the legs bolted on, I gingerly lowered and attached the machines head and connected the wire harnesses. Examining the circuit boards, I noted that the AA batteries on the main memory board had to be replaced. Now the time had come to plug the great machine in.

Viola! The first sound to greet my ears was "Play Thunderball!!". As it turned out, the long sleep had not affected the game at all. An examination of the playfield bottom showed it to be in pristine shape. All lights on the game were still working and blinking their little filaments out! When inspecting the inside of the head, the circuit boards were still in perfectly clean and operating shape. The playfield was impeccably clean, having been frequently polised with playfield wax before being put in storage.

The first thing to do, was to figure out how to replace the backglass. Being that it is confirmed that only (10) of this machine were ever produced, and that it never went into production, the task appeared daunting. Then, the idea came to me. With my background as a graphic artist, I would digitally recreate the damaged areas of the backglass and have a new translite produced. This entailed scanning, at 100% and 300 dpi (dots per inch), the entire backglass. This step took about 2 hours and was comprised of 12 different scanned areas of the backglass.
The separate scans were then imported in Corel Draw 7 software and repieced together to produce a new digital image, 28" x 24".

Well, I am almost finished with the new digital artwork for this rare game. I am told that only (4) of the (10) Thunderballs made have been located. A closer examination of the inside cabinet revealed an originally modified Williams cabinet tag noting "Cabinet #1".

If any persons are interested in viewing other pictures of this reborn classic, visit its own webpage at: http://home.att.net/~chrishub/thunderball.html
I know how lucky I am to have this gem! Happy pinning to all!