<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" Pinball modding has a long and rich history. During World War II, when the country&amp;#039;s manufacturing infrastructure moved over to the war effort, pinball companies devised a clever way of putting out new games without relying on their war-occupied factories. Basically, they would sell &amp;quot;conversion kits&amp;quot; that allowed pinball operators to swap in new playing fields and art, transforming an existing cabinet into a new machine. These days, pinball modding is a much more personal affair, with DIYers taking on tasks that range from adding a few bells and whistles to a beloved machine, to hand-building an entire pinball machine from scratch.  Bill Paxton Pinball      Some celebrities inspire maniacal fandom. But for every Justin Bieber and Michael Jackson, there are hundreds of omnipresent, barely recognizable actors and entertainers who just sort of fade into our collective consciousness. So it takes a certain kind of twisted genius to create a one-off homemade pinball machine themed after Bill Paxton (not to be confused with Bill Pullman)\u2014an actor who, despite starring in several hit movies (Twister, Aliens) and TV shows (HBO&amp;#039;s Big Love) is still unrecognizable to many people. For perhaps his greatest project ever, legendary DIYer Ben Heck built such a game from scratch, fortifying it with artwork and sound effects cribbed from the Paxton filmography. Taken as a whole, the product comes off as an obsessive feat of maniacal genius\u2014especially when one considers that Heck views his Paxton theme as completely arbitrary. But, perhaps that&amp;#039;s the entire point.  Futurama Space 3000 Pinball  Picture by Evan K. Over the course of six months, a lone hacker converted an old Superman pinball machine into a one-of-a-kind Futurama machine. Although it wasn&amp;#039;t built from scratch (like the Bill Paxton machine), we&amp;#039;re particularly impressed with the level of detail that went into this creation, which was decorated using an assortment of off-the-shelf Futurama merchandise, such as posters and toys. The best feature: a built-in LCD screen that plays clips from the show. The LEGO Pinball Machine  Picture from pinballnews.com This contraption proves that you can create a working coin-operated pinball machine out of 20,000 Lego blocks. Gerrit Bronsveld and Martijn Boogaarts of the Netherlands fabricated virtually every part of the machine, short of the balls, from Legos\u2014even the computers that control it are repurposed from Lego&amp;#039;s programmable Mindstorms sets. Transparant Pinball Machine  There&amp;#039;s a certain thrill associated with peeking under the hood of a pinball machine where thousands of moving parts come together. This is especially true of older electro mechanical machines\u2014because they were built without the luxury of computer chips, they had to rely on a complex Rube Goldberg-mechanism, consisting of interlocking parts for all functions. But rarely can anybody see a machine&amp;#039;s innards while it&amp;#039;s in play. This see-through pinball machine was created by Michael Schiess, the owner of the Lucky Juju Pinball Arcade in Alameda, CA, out of a 1976 Gottlieb-built Surf Champ machine. The best part: It&amp;#039;s completely playable.  The Pinball Coffee Table  Picture from www.instructables.com What do you get when you create a light-up coffee table out of a repurposed pinball machine? One of our all-time favorite Instructables projects. Step-by-step instructions are posted online, so anybody (well, anybody who happens to be particularly handy) can make one themselves.  Twilight Zone Pinball Machine Mods      After the runaway success of The Addams Family pinball in 1991, game designer Pat Lawlor was given free reign to create his dream pinball machine. The result: The Twilight Zone\u2014one of the most complex, difficult and feature-filled pinballs ever made, as well as one of the most modded.  Common tweaks to the game include filling the playing field&amp;#039;s gumball machine with multicolored marbles, adding LEDs to the dark areas of the playing field, and even carving open the playing field in order to install an extra ball-manipulating magnet. In some ways, The Twilight Zone&amp;#039;s magnetism to modders is logical. Not only is it a beloved game that attracts passionate devotees, but it&amp;#039;s also an incomplete one. In fact, many of the mods are designed to bring the game closer to Lawlor&amp;#039;s original design. For example, the extra magnet was originally supposed to be included in the game, but was removed at the eleventh hour in order to cut down on costs. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.popularmechanics.com/culture/gaming/how-to/a6144/pinball-machine-mods/>