PINBALL TECH OF THE MONTH PAT CHOY – ANAHEIM, CALIFORNIA


Pat Choy from Anaheim, California.

Q: Where are you located, how long have you been around pinball and how long have you been working on games for?
A: My name is Pat Choy, and I do full service pinball store – we do tech work, on site repairs – mobile repair service in your home, full restorations – play field swaps / full cabinet restorations and silk screening and installation of decals, and we retail and sell games too.

Q: How did you first get into the hobby?
A: Bought my first game in 1991, Williams 1980 Black Knight pinball. Hobbyist / collector from 1991 to 1998… in 1998 started my first company Perfect Amusements when I lived in Chicago , then in 2007 I moved out to southern California and started my second pinball company Endless Pinball in 2007. Endless Pinball is now 15 years old!

Q: Did you jump right into repairing machines or did you learn under someone else?
A: A little of both, I learned on my own, but also posted questions on rec.games.pinball newsgroups – there was no google back then.

I was lucky enough to have Williams and Bally employees who were friends of mine and that helped speed up the learning curve tremendously. Plus a lot of hard work and reading too.

Q: Did you have a background in another field that made that transition easier?
A: My background / my college degree is a double major in Mathematics and Computer Science so I believe the analytic skills help me in repairing and troubleshooting pinball games.

Q: Some techs have a particular aspect they really enjoy working on or they have a specialized set of skills (ie: boards, EMs, new Sterns, restoring cabinet art, etc) – Do you specialize in something? What’s your favorite aspect to work on?
A: My favorite tech work is troubleshooting and fixing games. Why isn’t this working? It’s like a jigsaw puzzle trying to make all the pieces fit and work again.  I also really enjoy play field swaps and full cabinet restoration work especially applying decals to beat up cabinets. The satisfaction level is great since you are taking something that doesn’t look very nice and you are making it look almost brand new. That’s very satisfying and fun. I also enjoy doing board level repair and fixing circuit boards as well. I’m not thrilled about working on EM games though, they are just too temperamental and tweaky although I can and have worked on them. 

Q: What are you working on now? What has been your favorite project/game that you worked on?
A: I’m working on a ton of stuff right now – full restoration on white water – new cabinet decals and play field swap out. Troubleshooting many games – Data East Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Medieval Madness, Twilight Zone, Scared Stiff, Indiana Jones, that’s a partial list. Covid and people staying indoors have really ramped up pinball work for us.

My favorite project of all time was being involved with the Skittles company. They came to us and wanted a reskin of a game – they wanted a Skittles pinball game. So we took a 1979 Williams Flash pinball game and re-skin it as a Skittle pinball game. We sanded the whole cabinet down to plywood and we also sanded the play field down to plywood. They brought in a team of artists and made decal overlays for the play field and created new art for the cabinet and back box, our job was to install everything perfectly. We even removed the metal coin door and replaced it with a plexiglass see-through door with shelves inside that would hold about 20 packs of Skittles so you could get free Skittles candy whenever you wanted! That was a fun and challenging project. I love doing custom work like that. Those projects are rare and few though since they are so costly. We ended up building just 3 of these custom Skittles machines.

Q: What is the best way to contact you and what areas do you service?
A: Best way to contact me is email: [email protected] or by cell phone (630) 220-8478 (text messages are always great).

I service all over Southern California… Basically as far south as San Diego, inland empire areas like Riverside and Temecula, Orange County of course, Los Angeles areas (North Hollywood, West Hollywood, Beverly Hills), and the valley (Sherman Oaks, Woodland Hills, 1000 Oaks, Ventura, Moor Park, etc). I cover about a 200 mile radius of Orange County.

No, I don’t operate games on location.



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