Who We Are: The Story of Pinballs Store

Some businesses are born from market research. This one was born from a living room in Normandy, back when the sound of a pinball machine was just another household noise — right up there with clinking dishes or the TV.

Here, in a few pages, is where Pinballs Store comes from, and why a small French company spends its days designing electronic boards for machines the world had decided to let die.

Evreux, a house, a machine

The founder of Pinballs Store grew up in Evreux, Normandy. In that house, the pinball machine was not a curiosity to show off to guests — it was a living piece of furniture. His parents played it. In the evenings, on weekends, between other things. A child who grows up with that does not learn pinball — he absorbs it. He understands the weight of the ball before he learns to read the scores; he knows the snap of a slingshot before he knows what a slingshot is.

That is a distinction that matters, and it explains a lot about what the company became. A pinball machine, for him, was never a collector's item. It was a family thing.

And the same house taught him to look up

The same household passed on something else: a love of the sky. Telescopes, clear nights, the habit of looking far. You might think that has nothing to do with a tilted playfield full of solenoids and switches. In reality, it is the same mental gesture.

Observing a star means accepting to look at something very old and very patient. Repairing a 1981 pinball machine is a bit like that: you open the backbox, you look at a board designed by engineers who retired long ago, and you try to understand what they had in mind. Astronomy and vintage electronics require the same things — method, raking light, and a great deal of patience.

The soundtrack: 1970, 1980, 1990

He immersed himself in the best genres and artists of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s — the exact era of the machines he would later bring back to life. That is no coincidence, and it is not surface-level nostalgia.

Those decades are when rock hardened and fractured, when new wave arrived with its cold synths, when sound transformed year after year. And meanwhile, in the factories of Chicago, pinball machines followed the exact same curve: mechanical bells and chimes gave way to the first electronic sounds, then to synthesized speech, then to samples. The backglasses of the 1980s share the same colors, the same typography, the same heroes as the album covers of the same year. They are two facets of a single popular culture.

When you grow up with that soundtrack and in front of those machines, you do not see them as relics. You see them as works of art. And a work of art is meant to be restored.

Leaving, and taking pinball along

He took the passion with him. He traveled across Europe, he lived abroad. You can move a lot of things; a pinball machine weighing over a hundred kilograms is another matter. But the obsession fits in a suitcase.

Those years of travel undoubtedly shaped what makes the company distinctive today: Pinballs Store is a French company — based in Villefranche-de-Rouergue — but it speaks to its customers in French, English, German, and Italian. Technical support is free in all four languages. This is not a marketing argument: it is simply the way the people behind this story have always lived, between countries and languages.

Today, he is part of the international pinball community, alongside his young wife. The business is a family affair, in the most literal sense.

"A pinball machine is meant to be passed down"

This is the conviction that holds the whole structure together. At Pinballs Store, pinball is a legacy. These machines should not end up at the dump or in an attic: they should pass from one generation to the next, like a watch, a piece of furniture, a musical instrument.

Except that a pinball machine is not a watch. It is an electromechanical beast that needs to be repairable to survive. And that is precisely where the problem begins.

The problem: an entire generation of machines is dying

Take the machines from 1977 to 1989 — the Gottlieb System 1 and System 80/80A/80B, the Williams System 3 through 7, the Bally (1977-1985) machines. These are the first microprocessor-based pinball machines, the hinge between electromechanical and digital. They are also, often, the most beautiful.

These are exactly the ones dying today, and for two very concrete reasons.

1. The battery

Nearly all of these CPU boards had a soldered battery to retain settings and high scores. Forty years later, those batteries have leaked. The electrolyte eats through the copper, creeps along the traces, attacks the components and the IC sockets. On the Gottlieb System 80, battery corrosion is so well documented in the community that it has become proverbial: it destroys the CPU board even when no leak is visible to the naked eye.

2. The chips

The rest of the problem is the components themselves. The original integrated circuits — RIOTs, PIAs, specific RAM, Gottlieb daughter boards — are no longer manufactured. They can be found second-hand, at climbing prices, with no guarantee of functionality, and the worldwide stock is only shrinking. Repairing a 1982 board with 1982 parts means chasing a dwindling resource.

The result: thousands of magnificent machines, in perfect mechanical condition, are out of service because a small green rectangle of a few centimeters is dead. A machine that can no longer be repaired is a machine that will not be passed down.

What Pinballs Store does: making these machines repairable for good

The answer from Pinballs Store is not to try to resurrect 1980s electronics, but to replace them with something that is still manufactured — and will still be manufactured in twenty years.

Specifically: FPGA-based replacement boards. An FPGA (field-programmable gate array) reproduces the behavior of the original hardware. This is not software emulation: your machine's original ROMs are interpreted within the FPGA. The machine does not play "approximately" like before; it plays like before.

And above all, these boards solve both problems by design:

• Plug & Play: the board plugs in where the original one was.
• No battery. No more corrosion. Ever. This is the end of the failure that kills machines.
• True Freeplay, while keeping the original coin mechanism functional — because the coin mechanism is part of the object, and a pinball machine that still accepts a coin is a pinball machine that still tells its story.

The systems covered are precisely those of the threatened generation: Gottlieb System 1 and System 80/80A/80B, Williams System 3 through 7, Bally (1977-1985). This is not a catalog chosen at random: it is the list of machines that need saving.

If you want to dive into the technical details, we have written a guide for each family:

• The all-in-one board for Gottlieb System 80
• Replacement boards for Gottlieb System 80B
• Williams System 3-7 replacement boards
• Bally (1977-1985) replacement MPU boards

A range designed as a toolkit, not a store aisle

Pinballs Store does not sell pinball machines, toppers, or decorative accessories. Only replacement boards. This is a deliberate choice: do one thing, and do it right.

The range goes from small rescue boards to complete solutions: the GoPOP80 (pop bumper driver board, €29), the Godri80 (System 80 driver board, €99), the Gosof (sound board with speech, €129), the BallyLa_60 (lamp driver board, €149), the Lisy80 (€199), the BallyDri (€199), the BallyFA for Bally (1977-1985) (€299), the WillFA7 for Williams System 3-7 (€349), and the GottFA80_Plus Light (€349) or the GottFA80_Plus Full with integrated sound board (€399).

Every board is covered by a 6-month warranty (parts and labor) against any failure not caused by misuse, and by a 30-day money-back guarantee. Technical support is free, in French, English, German, and Italian — and it is provided by people who actually open backboxes.

Why it matters

Getting a Gottlieb System 80 running again is not just about turning lights back on. It is about putting back into circulation an object that gets people playing together, standing, side by side — which has become rare.

The little boy from Evreux watched his parents play. One day, someone else will watch their parents play on the same machine, restored, with a board that has no battery to leak. That is the whole idea. A repairable pinball machine is a pinball machine that survives; a pinball machine that survives is a pinball machine that gets passed down.

FAQ — Pinballs Store

Who is behind Pinballs Store?

A family. The founder grew up in Normandy, in Evreux, in a house where his parents played pinball and where they also observed the sky through telescopes. He later traveled and lived abroad, before turning his passion into his profession, alongside his wife. The company is based in France, in Villefranche-de-Rouergue.

Does Pinballs Store sell pinball machines?

No. Pinballs Store designs and sells exclusively replacement electronic boards for vintage pinball machines. No machines, no toppers, no accessories. This is a deliberate choice: to focus on what actually prevents old machines from working.

What is an FPGA board, and how is it different from emulation?

An FPGA is a field-programmable gate array that reproduces the behavior of the original hardware. The machine's original ROMs are interpreted within the FPGA: this is not software emulation, and the game behaves exactly as it does on the original board.

Which systems are covered?

Gottlieb System 1 and System 80/80A/80B, Williams System 3 through 7, and Bally (1977-1985) — that is, the generation of microprocessor-based pinball machines that today suffers from battery corrosion and the disappearance of original chips.

Why is removing the battery so important?

Because the soldered battery is the leading cause of death for CPU boards of this generation. Over forty years, it leaks, and the electrolyte eats through the traces and components — often without any visible leak. Pinballs Store boards operate without a battery: the problem is eliminated permanently.

What is the warranty, and in which languages can I get support?

6-month warranty (parts and labor) against any failure not caused by misuse, plus a 30-day money-back guarantee. Technical support is free, in French, English, German, and Italian.

Write to us

If you have a silent machine in a garage, a board covered in verdigris, or simply a question — write to us. We respond, and we do not charge for advice.

Our Contact page and our FAQ are there for that. You can also write directly to contact@pinballs.store. And if you spot our name on an exhibitor list at a show, come see us: we maintain a calendar of upcoming pinball events.