Random Thoughts & Pictures
Space Station was near the forefront of my current, adult addiction to pinball. My wife and I sold our old home in April of 2003, but our new home wasn't finished until April of 2004. We spent that year stuck in a crappy one-bedroom apartment in a not-so-nice neighborhood of Manassas, Virginia. Mostly out of boredom I went for a lot of long walks around the neighborhood. And I began noticing pinball machines on location. Pinball? I had casually played pinball here and there through out my life, but never took it too seriously or thought too much about it. But now armed with more quarters than I could ever afford as a kid, I began scouting the area for more pins. Before long I was hooked. Just a few blocks away from our crappy little apartment was a crappy little strip mall with a crappy sandwich shop and a crappy biker bar. The sandwich shop had an Earthshaker. Predictably, the biker bar had a Stern Harley-Davidson. I liked both but spent more time with Earthshaker. The Earthshaker was still 25 cents and was a bit more generous with the replays. Then one day the Earthshaker went away and was replaced by a Space Station.
My first impression of Space Station was not a good one. I am generally not a fan of pinball machines with unconventional lower playfield layouts. But I quickly discovered that the game was fun after all. The lack of inlanes opens up the lower playfield for a lot of target shots. And the ball is not terribly hard to control. The sounds and music are great. The art and theme are great. I like the interlaced habitrails and the Space Station diverter toy. And the game has a great 3-ball multiball (the main objective of the game). There's even a secondary GI circuit of green bulbs that comes on during multiball. In fact, Space Station became my favorite System-11 game! I quickly took over all the high scores and picking off playfield specials was as easy as earning replays on points. One quarter is all it took for me to play as long as I liked. By the way, this game gives you a fantastic sound and light show for a high score.
I also began earning unfriendly looks from the establishment's owner. I tried to always order some food when I went to play, but the food just wasn't very good. I guess the token sandwich order wasn't enough to make up for my hours of game hogging (not that there was a line of customers waiting at the door). Eventually I got kicked out. And by then the Harley-Davidson had been replaced with a less-than-exciting Sharkey's Shootout. Fortunately the construction on our new home was wrapping up. It was time to move on. But I believe Space Station's theme music will always remind me of that period of my life.
I acquired my Space Station from a local craigslist ad on April 5th, 2008. The previous owner purchased the game around 1995 from Rockville Home Amusements. It would appear that this company is no longer in business. It would also appear that this game was routed for no more than seven years.
craigslist ad
The game had a Rockville Home Amusement card in place of the missing price card.
This was a solid, playable game, but in need of a good tear down and shop job. Initially I had to clean the flipper coil sleeves, re-solder a lane change switch and adjust the lock down bar. That was enough to get the game playable and everything appeared to be fully functional. The playfield is in pretty nice shape. Games of this era are often well protected with full factory Mylar. But, many of the inserts are hazed and there are some small wear spots by the outlane switches. There's a horrible down-to-the-wood wear spot between the top jet bumper and right rollover (no Mylar there). Fortunately the spot is completely hidden from any normal viewing angle. The mini-playfield, Space Station toy and plastics are all excellent. Unfortunately the ramp is a pending disaster. It has many cracks and a missing chunk at the entrance. But it doesn't look all that bad and seems to work well (for now). Hopefully someone will see fit to reproduce this ramp in the near future. The cabinet is okay, but could stand some touchups. The translite is not perfect, but new translites are still readily available. The boards are original, matched, clean and un-hacked with no replaced or burnt connectors. The only issue I found was with the top left display. It was either replaced or re-soldered. Unfortunately the mounting pegs are broke and it's resting against the face of the display panel. My biggest concern is the ramp. Otherwise, this game has a lot of potential.
Promotional plastics for Space Station.
Shown above is the two page promotional flyer for Space Station. Click for larger picture.