The Shadow Gets Handles

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We just finished a cool mod on this Shadow pinball machine: We installed Demolition Man handles on it! Check out the process, and some cool shots of the finished project.

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This is what The Shadow normally looks like. Well, kind of. Our customer already put in a custom backglass, mirror blades, and made some other lighting changes to the playfield.
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And he decided he wanted to put the handles on the game. Or rather, he wanted us to put the handles on the game. Here’s Kris with the trusty router.
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This is the first step in the conversion: making room for the metal plate that holds the handles on to the outside of the game.
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There’s the metal plate in place.
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There’s Kris reinstalling the mirror blades. They do a great job of covering up the metal plate!
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Here the handles are, fully installed!
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Of course, the game needed quite a bit of play-testing to make sure everything was working just right.
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This is actually a really cool conversion. With the handles up top, you get to stand back just a bit more, and really take in the whole game.
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It only takes a game or two to get used to the new controls, changing the lanes on the sword shots with the thumb buttons feels more natural than the second flipper button on the cabinet.  The handles make make way more sense on this game than they ever did on Demolition man.
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Nice shot of the ball-launch trigger alongside the new handles.
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Our customer already had LEDs in the game, which made for some really cool shots of the handles in the dark.
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Bally made almost 4,250 of these games, by the way.
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At least one of those is exponentially cooler now!