A tribute to the Big Bang Bar pinball game! The unofficial page for Big Bang Bar pinball.
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The fire, exterminating one of the BBB and a Kingpin and some other rare pinball games. Here is the story, told from the owner:
Greetings from USA ! A little background on my BBB:
Reading your site caught me by surprise as I was the one who lost the BBB & Kingpin in a fire, along with 16 other pins (mostly newer Williams stuff) and including one of every Capcom game. This happened in March of 2000 and I had both KP & BBB for about a year before they went up in a poof of smoke. The entire house burned to the ground on a windy March day claiming a 4-day old Revenge from Mars, too.
Right now, I'm one of the lucky people who are getting a “new” BBB from Gene at Illinois Pin Ball, so as you can imagine, I'm looking forward to it. I couldn't imagine replacing something so rare, but Gene is making it happen! Absolutely amazing…
I originally purchased my BBB for $6,000 (US) back in 1999 (I thought it was a fair price for such a fun and rare game when Medieval Madnesses were going for $4,800!) and once word got out that I had one, I was very often asked to sell it. One of the most frequent emailers who asked (begged) me to sell mine found one on his own and after a short time owning it sold it for $25,000 (US) on ebay. I remember the owner telling me later that he was more in love with owning it than playing it (I thought it was a bit overrated myself, too, once it started earning “goofy” money in the $20k ballpark). He thought Attack from Mars was still the best and decided to keep his AFM over BBB.
Following the owners ebay sale, one of the developers of BBB (may have been Rob Morrison—not sure) auctioned his personal BBB on rgp and I think high offers were over $25k. Another BBB developer, Steve King, told me via email that he would only part with his machine if you paid off his mortgage! Seriously, he felt the game represented a year out of his life and it was too important to part with it. I don't blame him a bit!
Anyway, just wanted to lay to rest any thoughts of rumors about the fire—it definitely happened—and it did claim a virtually brand-new Kingpin that looked like it was just pulled from the box.
Everyone was safe, except for our 2 gorgeous dogs, who both died of smoke inhalation. The fire occurred under my bedroom, where I was sleeping only an hour beforehand, so every time I count my losses, I must consider myself lucky. The whole house disappeared in 3 hours.
