If you are adding a machine to your private collection, it goes without saying that you want it to look its very best. You can have a complete unbroken set of plastics, a quadruple clear coated playfield and a fresh sheet of Invisi-glass, but if Alec Baldwin’s icy stare is looking back at you from the backbox, nobody is going to notice any of that other stuff. There has been a recent trend for pinball fans to produce their own high quality replacement translites for machines that have otherwise questionable art choices. Again, this is the ingenuity of the community at work. These high quality works are not produced in art houses or fancy production companies, but rather on laptops in people’s homes. Well, one person’s home in particular.
The backglass for the once sleeper pinball machine The Shadow is almost universally panned by the pinball community as one of the worst to grace a machine since the Premier/Gottlieb photographic abominations of the mid-1980s. Necessity being the mother of invention, it was absolutely necessary for everyone to erase Alec Baldwin’s handsome face from the annals of pinball history.
Pinsider Aurich took it upon himself to create a brand new Shadow translite that looked better than the original and was of far better quality than any other alternate translites available on the market. Alternate homebrew Shadow translites existed before Aurich’s version, but none really cut the mustard in overall execution or print quality. For some reason, printing on large scale translucent plastic is tough for most sellers of aftermarket translites. Most are washed out, pixelated or just generally inferior. Aurich’s translite is a true work of art. It encapsulates the spirit of the 1930s Shadow serials and presents it in a straightforward, uncluttered manner. Further, to complete the package, a PETG speaker panel was manufactured and sold with the translite as a set. The new Aurich art matches the art deco feel of the playfield much better, in fact, than the original does. The general consensus from Pinsiders was that THIS version was the absolute definitive version. You can’t blame artist Doug Watson for the abomination that is the original. He was following the high-budget, high-concept, no-substance formula that gripped Hollywood in the mid-1990s, thus the original art is a good representation of those values. Also, I’m sure Williams/Bally/Midway was strong-armed by the production company to push Baldwin as a matinee idol, and what better way to do so than with a big ol’ Baldwin head front and centre. (As an aside, this was just one backglass in Doug Watson’s “Big Head Triliogy”, which also includes Terminator 2 and Demolition Man.)
As beautiful as the new art package looks, I’m torn as to whether I would display it on my Shadow machine, if I owned one. A lot of the drive I have in collecting and playing pinball is the connection it has to my youth and experiencing these machines in public spaces in their original forms. Hence, I have a lot of games that I remembered playing when I was younger, and no games that preceded that era or followed it (ie. no EMs, no early SS, no Sterns). Also, I’m not heavy into modding my machines, believing that a pinball machine is best left alone in order to accurately represent the time period from which is was released. I’ve actually taken out mods installed by previous owners after I have added them to my collection. Granted, I have not come across anything that needs modding quite like the Baldwin backglass does. The purist in me would like to think that I would keep the original on the game as historical document. It is far more interesting to keep it installed and preserve it as a snapshot of history…and to wonder how in God’s name someone at Williams/Bally/Midway AND the movie studio looked at it back in 1994 and said “Yup, nailed it!”. I say study/celebtate/comment/criticize the mistakes that have been made in history, don’t erase them.
But again, I think of how horribly executed that original art is compared to how WONDERFULLY executed Aurich’s art is. I guess it’s a good thing I don’t own a Shadow so I don’t have to make this kind of executive decision.
Aurich wasn’t done yet. Next he tackled Stern’s AC/DC art package…setting his sights on a shirtless old rock and roll star (the Premium edition). For his new version, Aurich took the route of so many eBay alternate translites that came before..he just added boobs.
So here we have a hellish female bearing the name of Helen, complete with come hither eyes, a large chest and erect nipples. Again, his package included extras to pull the package together, including a decal to cover up the sneering Angus Young face on the Pro playfield where the lower playfield resides on the more expensive editions. I personally have a few acquaintances who went bonkers over this translite and bought it without question based on the quality of Aurich’s Shadow work, only to have their wives say “Nope…not in this house!” upon its buxom arrival. It’s not family friendly, for sure. It would work in, say, frat houses and biker bars, but not in a family environment (many Pinsiders agree–the first comment from Jodester says: “This looks cool Aurich! My wife would never let me put it on my AC/DC though…”). What really sends me over the edge is that Aurich had requests in the original thread to make Helen topless. Really? Different strokes, I suppose. Almost concurrently with Aurich’s Helen production, Stern revamped the AC/DC game themselves and offered a “Luci” edition…with…you guessed it, no band members and multiple pairs of cartoon boobs. Aurich claims he didn’t make his Helen translite to mimic Stern’s lead. And I believe him. It doesn’t surprise me that two separate entities decided to add boobs to a translite to generate sales from middle-aged men.
The final occurance in the recent translite trifecta is more in line with historical detail. Pinsider RDReynolds, with the help of Aurich, retouched and cleaned up a poor quality reproduction of a Data East WWF Royal Rumble prototype translite and offered it up for sale to the community.
Pinball history maintains that the prototype was mocked up by either Paul Faris or Markus Rothkranz and submitted for use on test machines, yet was pulled before production due to several wrestlers on the prototype leaving the company before the release and to tone down the super-ripped bodies of the wrestlers (there was a steroid scandal just surfacing in the WWF at the time of the game’s development, and Vince McMahon didn’t want any undue attention brought upon it). Technically, boobs were added to this translite too…but they belong to Miss Elizabeth and she was class all the way so it’s a wash. I’m more comfortable giving thumbs way up to this translite as it’s not considered “alternate”…its considered a repro prototype. Upon first glance, it doesn’t appear to be drastically different from the original other than the fact that there are more wrestlers on it–it has the same art style and primary colours as the original, so it’s a seamless replacement. And the best part is that it was made to be there in the first place!
These three examples of backbox “pingenuity” are beautifully executed, of a high quality befitting of the high standards in the pinball community, and are almost universally accepted as being superior to the original art on the three machines. If Aurich choses to expand his portfolio, I’m sure there will be collectors ready to buy in. But like all projects lately, one must tread lightly in the copyright jungle. Aurich made sure to leave all copyrighted logos and images off of his translites (Midway/Bally logos, AC/DC logo) as to not infringe on any intellectual properties. However, if he were to take on, say, Demolition Man or Wheel of Fortune, he’d undoubtably have to contend with licenced likenesses, logos and trademarks in order to make the work flow with the rest of the machine. Will a pinball company just hire this guy already?
As of April 21st, there was another small run of Shadow translite packages available at $175USD shipping within the US included. Both the ACDC Helen and WWF Royal Rumble are in standby mode, and may be run again if demand warrants. Pricing for a Helen package was $125USD plus extras, and WWF Royal Rumble stand-alone translite was $75. Add a message to the thread if you are interested in getting in on a future run. Links to the original Pinside threads are below.
Further Reading:
Pinside – The Shadow – New original translite
Pinside – AC/DC: New original translite, meet Helen!
Pinside – WWF Royal Rumble Prototype Trans
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