u/MonkeySkulls

Last week I asked for recommendations for tables to initially download when I finish my new cabinet. I got a lot of input. I tallied everything up and am posting it here.

To be honest, I will probably try to add each of these tables to my cabinet right away! All of your input was really appreciated, just like all of the advice the community has given me over the past few months!

If there are others that are excellent "must-haves", sleepers, or obsure favorites, add em here.

Here's the list!

(Hmm..., I may have some typos.... Not sure if "Birth Shaker" is supposed to be Earth Shaker??? But I am definitely downloading Birth Shaker if I find it! (No multiball in that one.. just twins and triplettes), but I am not adding the spray bottle mechanical toy......

Reddit Pinball Recommendations (Vote Tally)

• Medieval Madness — 8
• Attack from Mars — 6
• Tales of the Arabian Nights — 5
• Star Trek: The Next Generation — 4
• Theater of Magic — 3
• Blood Machines — 2 (Obscure)
• Doctor Who — 2
• Fish Tales — 2
• FunHouse — 2
• Vulcan Steel — 2 (Obscure)

1 Vote

• AC/DC
• Addams Family
• Alien Star (Obscure)
• Back to the Future
• Bad Cats (Obscure)
• Barracora Cosmic Gunfight
• Batman '66
• Baywatch
• Big Bang Bar (Obscure)
• Birth Shaker (Obscure)
• Black Knight 2000
• Black Rose
• Bride of Pin·Bot (Obscure)
• Cadet JP (Obscure)
• Captain Fantastic (Obscure)
• Charlie Brown Christmas (Obscure)
• Champion Pub (Sleeper)
• Clue (Obscure)
• Congo (Underrated/Sleeper)
• Creature from the Black Lagoon
• Circus Voltaire
• Dark Chaos
• Deadpool
• Deer Magic
• Diner (Obscure)
• Earth Wind Fire Deluxe (Obscure)
• Eight Ball Deluxe (Obscure)
• Elvis (newer one)
• Evel Knievel
• Futurama
• Getaway
• Gilligan's Island
• Goat Simulator (Obscure)
• Guardians of the Galaxy
• Guns N' Roses
• He-Man
• Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure
• Jaws
• JP's Space Cadet
• Junk Yard (Sleeper)
• Jurassic Park
• Laser Cue (Sleeper)
• Lesson and Hot Cake Party (Obscure)
• Lord of the Rings
• Mars Attacks
• Mata Hari
• Monster Bash
• NBA Fastbreak
• New York (Obscure)
• Party Masters
• Party Zone
• Pirates of the Caribbean
• Pink Floyd (Obscure)
• Pizza Time (Obscure)
• Shooting Star (Obscure)
• South Park
• Spanish Eyes
• Stranger Things 4
• Supersonic Deluxe (Obscure)
• Surf 'n Safari (Obscure)
• T2
• Taxi (Obscure)
• The Matrix
• ToM
• Tron Legacy
• Whirlwind (Obscure)
• White Water (Sleeper)
• Who Dunnit
• Wizard (Obscure)
• World Cup Soccer
• And... Everything by VPW Workshop

I'm getting close to finally being able to play virtual pinball. My cabinet is nowhere near finished, but it's getting close enough that I can start building my table collection.

I've watched a lot of the YouTube videos and "best tables" lists, but it's always more fun hearing what people in the community actually enjoy.

So I'm curious...

1. What's your absolute favorite table? (or your top 3)

2. What's your favorite sleeper or underrated table?

3. What table (or tables) best showcases what virtual pinball is capable of?

4. If someone was building their very first collection, what 5 tables would you tell them to install first?

5. What's the one table you find yourself playing the most?

I'm just about to start installing toys.

I briefly thought about installing the solenoids on the bottom of the playfield monitor mounting board. this would give me a little extra freedom to put them anywhere.

I didn't think I saw a downside.

but then a little more thought and I think that having a bunch of extra wires going to the bottom of the playfield Mount would definitely make removing the playfield monitor difficult. although I probably don't need to remove the playfield very often, if maybe if moving the cabinet.

does anyone have stuff mounted to their monitor mount? any regrets or recommendations about that?

I was going to answer another post by basically posing the question I'm about to bring up. but I thought it is better suited in its own post and not to detract from the exact situation the other poster was talking about.

a lot of times we see a post that is talking about how a rule is supposed to be implemented. there's lots of heated debate talking about how the rule was intended to be used.

I don't know if it's because I'm old school. but maybe it's more that I'm sort of a free-flowing ruling's type of DM...

if someone in my game says they want to do something and I make a ruling. if the player says that they think it should work a different way, I don't spend any time looking it up. If what they're telling me makes sense, I almost always will simply side with the player.

If it's the right interpretation of the rule or the wrong ruling, I honestly don't care.

I care that the player came up with a cool idea. I want to side with that player so they're cool idea can make it to the table. I want all that to happen relatively quickly. and I want to get on with the action and the fun.

I should mention that I don't just let every single thing they say go. like I said above, it needs to make sense. It has to make sense in the world. It has to be plausible.

So if a player says I knock the wizard tower over on the bbg... this isn't a very plausible or realistic idea. I wouldn't let that go. your ideas need to be grounded in the reality of our fictional world.

I also understand that some people may make a ruling and get out with the game, and when they come here to Reddit and they're explaining the situation that some of the details get omitted So that they can make their point easier. I see the value in coming here after the fact and debating rules and their interpretations.

So I guess I'm just wondering, do a lot of DMS let their game grind to a halt while they discuss how something like initiative should work in some weird edge case. or do they let their game stop for 10 minutes while they figure out if a certain spell radius starts in this square or that square.

nothing a single player can do is going to break the game.

I would rather get a ruling wrong in favor of keeping the game and the flow of the night moving.. if you think about sessions in the past that you did not enjoy, I bet a lot of them were when a lot of out of game debate was happening. and I bet a lot of the games that rank amongst your favorite are when the whole vibe of the night and the game just slowly really well.

in the process of building the first cabinet.

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I'm about to install my PC into the cabinet itself.

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I am a bit stuck in a loop though.

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I'm not sure what size SSD I should use.

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I have a brand new 500 GB SATA drive.

I have an older 1 TB m.2 SSD from an old gaming computer.

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My plan has been install Windows on the SATA drive. probably install all of the pinball programs, Doff, pin-up popper, etc onto this drive as well. just drive will be drive :C. I did think having the pinball stuff all on the second drive would be smart. but I think that I might have some issues because installers will want to put those programs onto the C drive.

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at that point I would use my older 1 TB SSD. and put all of my tables, pup packs, all the game files onto that SSD.

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If I go forward with that plan, are there any issues? like I mentioned where popper thinks things are supposed to be one place even though I told them they're somewhere else?

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A second question, for those of you who have a decent size collection of tables, have any of you started to run out of room at 1 TB? I know when TB seems like a lot, table files aren't all that big, but when you start adding pup packs, duplicate updated tables, the worrying side of me is concerned that I run out of room. I don't necessarily think I am interested in having a massive size library of tables. I thought more of a curated collection of tables. I really enjoy. but I also know I like collecting things..

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this will bring me to my second option for storage. I could just bite the bullet and spend $300 on a 2 TB SSD. this seems like it solves any of the file location issues that I'm worried about. basically everything would be on the C drive. It also alleviates the running out of storage issue. whereas I could see a large collection eating up a whole terabyte, having about 1.5 TB for game media and 500 GB for Windows and programs offers quite a bit more. headroom.

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any thoughts on any of this?

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I'm about to start installing the PC and components into my new cabinet.

for the cabinet fans, do most people connect them to the PC or just hook them up to the cabinet PSU with a thermostat or fan controller.

seems like hooking up to the cabinet, and not the PC seems like a good idea, as then the PC board is easier to remove if needed.

any recommendations on what type of controller to hook up to the fans? I am not even sure what term to search for.

I am building my pinball cabinet currently.

I have decased my PC and mounted it on a removable board.

on that PC, I have Windows installed on a SATA SSD. I have a separate m.2 SSD which will have all of the pinball programs and table files.

in the future, maybe 9 months from now... maybe longer?... I might be upgrading my gaming PC. at that point I may want to:

build a new gaming PC

move all of the gaming PC into the pinball cabinet

and move all of the pinball cabinet PC into a light gun arcade cab

The absolute easiest and probably smartest thing would be to upgrade my gaming PC now. and then just build the pinball cabinet into its final form, and put the components that I have that will go into the lycan cabinet into a box until I'm ready for that project....

but this isn't really an option for me today..

So the question revolves around the swapping of the pinball PC.

If everything related to pinball is on one SSD, the plan would be to take that SSD card and put it onto the computer that's coming into the pinball PC. So basically the computer gets upgraded, the ssd stays the same

is there any issues doing that?

I'm okay with a little bit of setup to make it work. setting up buttons and displays is only one-time job. I'm okay with all that.

but what I want to avoid is a massive amount of setup around the tables. I'm currently operating under the impression that it won't be much of an issue because of the SSD. as long as the programs have the right directory to look into, and that directory naming stays the same there shouldn't be any issues.

is that correct?

A different way to look at this, if I were to have built a second pinball cabinet, I would probably be able to clone this drive onto a second SSD. and put it into the second cabinet. is that also correct?

If the second cabinet cloning works, I think that's exactly the same. same as the future PC swap I'm anticipating.

this question isn't dealing with anything I'm currently going through. I read post and this question popped into my head. I thought it's an interesting topic....

it's pretty common to be against AI in D&D, and lots of places for that matter... I get that.

but if someone is using a random name generator is this different?

I suppose on the back end what's happening is different. The random name generator is just pulling names from a database and mashing them together.

I guess I'm not exactly sure what AI would do on the back end to create 20 random names for for some dwarves.

with the general consensus be that using AI to generate names would be in poor taste?

A couple days ago I posted a question about some 3D printing I was having done.

I didn't have access to an FDM printer but did have access to a resin printer.

I needed to print three items.

A bracket to hold my GPU

a bracket to hold my PC PSU

and a pin-nado for a blower fan toy

in my original post I was wondering if printing in resin would be fine.

So I'm now at an interesting situation.

I did print both the GPU and PSU brackets in resin. they turned out good. they feel solid. I used ABS like resin.

but, I also found a guy locally who would print both brackets and the pin adi for $25 in fdm. So I had him do that as well. I pick those parts up tonight or tomorrow.

So I'm in a situation where I have a resin and fdm bracket for my GPU and PSU supports.

The vibe of the other post from a few days ago seemed to lean towards using the resin was okay since it was convenient.

but now that I actually have both options, basically in hand... I think I'm leaning towards using the fdm.

is using the fdm seem like the best solution?

(I really have to stop overthinking everything....)

I'm about to mount my pinball PC, which is mounted on a sliding board, to the inside of my cabinet.

is it worth considering some sort of anti-vibration material in between the mounting blocks that hold the drawer slides? something between the block and the actual cabinet? or is this this unnecessary?

If anyone has done this? what material did you use?

exact same questions but for the pinball controller. The pinball controller will be mounted on a board suspended above the floor, near the front of the cabinet. this board could also be isolated with some anti-vibration material, in essence separating it from the actual cabinet by the anti-vibration material. material. again, it's just unnecessary? If anyone's done this, what material did we use?

I am working on my actual cabinet build now.

and finally fir the first time I am actually thinking about tables.... almost there .....

for someone just starting their collection, what's the best way to start collecting tables? or what would you do if you were starting over?

go one table at a time. get things dialed in.. play it and then go to the next table. repeat.

start downloading 10 tables?

100 tables to start?

download duplicate tables to experiment with which ones you like better?

would you recommend a giant collection or a small curated manageable collection?

I'm assembling my PC for my pinball case.

I have a file for a power supply support to mount the PSU onto the board. I have the same thing for the graphics card.

I have both of those supports printing currently in ABS like resin. I have a very large build volume on my printer so I can print these with no problems. they appear to be printing fine, I've got about 2 hours left in a 21-hour resin print. everything looks good.

My question though, is do you think having these parts in resin is a bad idea.

I would prefer to use fdm. The problem is I don't have an FDM printer.

moving forward, I will have access to an fdm printer. My friend has one that he's not using. he says I can grab it and use it indefinitely. I just lack space, and have never used an fdm printer before, so I anticipate having to spend some time to try to get things dialed in and working.

So my current plan is to finish the resin print that I'm doing currently. use those parts to get things built and spaced out properly.

after that, I would be able to get access to the fdm printer, and print everything with fdm at my leisure. but I can continue with the actual cabinet build. in the meantime. It would be relatively simple procedure to replace both brackets later.

So I guess my question, is resin a poor choice for a long-term solution for these parts? both parts are not under a great deal of stress. they are just stopping the GPU and PSU from tipping. they're not holding any weight under normal circumstances. If one of the items were to get hit from the side, this would cause stress on the printed part. but either with resin or fdm a strong enough blow to the side would probably break either.

this is a very long way of simply asking...

any opinions on if I could keep the parts as resin? or if it would be much smarter to simply replace them with fdm.

I'm thinking about adding a fan to my cabinet for tables like twister.

there are a couple options. I'm not loving any of them. before I go through the options that I am considering or that have at least crossed my mind, does anyone have any real world solutions that they have used that they're happy with or unhappy with?

The first option is the pin nado 3D printed part. this is what the way of the wrench video series uses. It's a 3D printed part that attaches inside the cabinet right behind the coin door, the ductwork exits the bottom of the cabinet does 290° turns and directs the air from under the cabinet directly underneath the coin door up into the face of the player.

this is probably the option I'm going to go with. It's a proven solution. I'm not sure what I don't like about this option.

an option that I don't like, is simply mounting a fan on top of the back box. seeing a fan up there to me seems like an afterthought.

I did see a pretty slick option, I think it was a 3D printed part that replaces a bill acceptor in the coin door. door. It looks like this part closes with gravity automatically. and then gets pushed open when the air vents through, this works like the pinato shooting the air up into the face of the player. this is a pretty cool option. although my coin door does not have a bill acceptor spot. and I don't think I want to get a different coin door.

this option is a bit custom. I guess. I'm wondering if anyone has done that this exact thing before. I was thinking in my back box possibly underneath the DMD, cutting a slot, covering with a grill, and mounting a fan directly in the back box blowing into the face of the player. player. since this is completely custom, and my 3D sculpting skills are pretty minimal, I feel like I would have some issues making this work. I think the grill underneath the DMD would blend in and just look like a piece of audio equipment or not in use. this seems like a really clean option, though. I'm not sure if the fan would produce enough Force to travel the entire length of the cabinet and hit the player with enough Force. I think it probably would be fine. when thinking about a Air Force like this, the pinato option has to go through 2 90° turns, So that air flow is going to be lessened as well.

any thoughts, horror stories, or success stories?

I never tow my trailer. ever. It's parked on a campsite. our actual site has two big bonuses. The back of the RV trailer is facing the river, and the campsite is facing openness. So my site itself is on the river at the end of the campgrounds.

for this reason I would like an unit that has large windows on the back. I don't want the TV on the back. If I want a fireplace on the back. I don't want the kitchen on the back. I want Windows. and a sliding glass door would be great.

I don't necessarily want to sacrifice my campsite view as well. we do have a deck alongside of our trailer.

the layout that I like the most is a pretty common layout for fifth wheels. rear living, with a mid bunk. The thing that I like about these, is obviously that it has pretty secondary bedroom in the middle of the trailer.

another layout that I like, are double loft with a rear living room travel trailers. oftentimes these are called destination trailers. this gives me more sleeping space, this gives me a massive open space at the rear of the trailer, allows me to have my windows at the back. The problem with these, is that I don't have kids stay with me. and sleeping in one of the lofts is not ideal.

so I like the mid bunk. I like the openness of The loft units.

the problem is I can't find travel trailers/destination trailers that have the exact layout that the fifth wheels have.

. obviously one option would be to go with the fifth wheel. but since I never move the trailer and never will, if you like paying for the fifth wheel and better suspension is sort of a waste of money.

there is one travel trailer made by puma that offers a a mid bulb that matches the fifth wheel RL mid-bunk variety. I don't have that model number but the problem with that unit is that it feels sort of cheap, and the main bedroom I believe doesn't have any type of slide out which makes things feel cramped. (although I'm not 100% sure that it doesn't have a slide out)

that's a long way of asking.... does anyone know of any mid-bunk travel trailer?

like I said, I can find mid bunk fifth wheels.

I'm just starting to get into figuring out how to do this. I haven't modified any Ikea stuff before.

I'm creating a built-in section to house a TV.

The bottom will be Billy bookcases with doors. this will be topped with a walnut shelf. easy enough.

a TV will be centered on top of the shelf.

on the left and the right, and when it custom make some skinny 10-in shelf units. these are basically just these little cubbies going up the left and the right side flanking the TV.

above the TV, I would like to add A. skinny roll of cabinets across the top of the whole thing.

two questions.

is there a pre-made option for the left and the right side of the TV? instead of custom making them. custom making them will be relatively straightforward.

across the top, since I went doors to making these cabinets is not really an option. I want the size of the cabinets from left to right to match the labor cases on the bottom. The only option I'm currently coming up with is using the extension. I think I can get those with doors.

there's couple of issues that I haven't been able to wrap my head around yet.

The extensions don't have a bottom shelf. this the solution for this just to fill the extra shelf. seems easy enough

The second question, what's the best way to mount these onto the wall? made simply sit on top of the bookcases. that won't be a workable solution. the only thing I'm thinking currently, is some sort of hidden 2x4 in the shelf mounted to the studs. this will hold the weight of the shelves

any other ideas how this works? seeing other people do it. starting to go through those photos and videos now. looking for a solution.

does Microcenter change up bundle contents with any regularity?

Ive narrowed down bundle purchase, but the motherboard in the bundle is a little bit too silver for the look I'm going for. So I've landed on a different bundle with a more appropriate looking motherboard.

I'm not necessarily in a rush to purchase my components. So I definitely have time on my side.

do they rotate up their bundles very often?

I'm assuming the answer is that they do in fact change them. but there's not necessarily any type of pattern as to when this happens, and of course there's no predictable pattern as to what the next components will be.

I just picked up a ryzen 7 5800 XT. I got it from MC as an open box. It was $150

the plan was to go with the ryzen 9 5900xt, this was $250.

this is paired with a rtx 4080s. I have a 4k monitor.

I don't play a lot of games. couple hours of game time a week at most. I don't do anything too demanding of the CPU.

do you think there'll be any noticeable performance regrets?

do you think when the anniversary edition 5800 x3d comes out I should consider it? although I don't think my needs justify a $450 CPU.

maybe when the 5800x3d launches, the used CPU market will fill up with reasonable prices 5700, or 5600 x3d chips? if so that be a meaningful upgrade?

I've been stalking the local Microcenter for open box deals. I basically took my son's old PC and have been upgrading it piece by piece when I got the deals. and now I'm kind of mashing parts from his old PC with the new parts. so now I have two pc

s, one is the gaming PC which I'm outlining here, the other parts are going into a dedicated pinball cabinet.

gaming PC build:

ryzen 7 5800 XT

Microcenter open box, this wasn't my first choice or my second choice, but I got this very cheap and It will handle my light gaming and normal usage perfectly. when the ryzen 7 5800x3d 10th anniversary launches, I may consider upgrading to that, or when other people are upgrading I may be able to score a ryzen 5 5600 x3d before a good used price.... although I don't think either of those upgrades will be necessary for my use. but if I did upgrade, I got the open box 75800 XT cheap enough that I probably would make money selling it used.

msi mag. b550 tomahawk Max, ended up buying this brand new.

RTX 4080s, open box from zotec.

32 GB ram, 2X 16, ddr4 3600, g-skill rip jaw. but this used on eBay, upgraded the old system from 16 GB. The 16 GB is going into the pinball computer.

Samsung 900 pro 2 TB. another Microcenter open box. I ended up scoring this a couple months ago, so we were in the middle of rampocalypse. but the open box got it under $300. building a PC in 2026 is pretty painful in general, but I felt like the open box was a win.

secondary storage, back in December I got a 2 TB crucial external SSD. I use this for STL files, I keep some of my game library on there.

nxzt 240 mm AIO. I salvaged this from the old PC. but I did get a peerless assassin cooler from Microcenter, another open box. got it for half off. I think it was $24. It was missing parts, so they opened a new box and gave me all of the parts from the box. The cooler itself was never installed. The plastic is still on the contact plate.

PSU is a Corsair RM 850x. I purchased this when I picked up the 4080 super. I did get it on sale on Amazon, but not a huge savings.

since I talked about the pinball PC. I might as well outline that as well...

most of the parts were from my son's old 2019 PC.

ryzen 5. 5600x

b550 udac

RTX 3060ti

The pinball cabinet, the 3060 TI will have a hard time hitting 120 HZ at 4K. when I purchased the 4080 super, it was going to go into the pinball cabinet. but then I decided I wanted a new to me computer that could do 4K. I suppose I should not have started playing games on the PC while I was waiting to put it into the pinball cabinet. lol. my plans moving forward for this, depending on how much I actually use the pinball cabinet, I may pull out the 3060 TI, and bump up the GPU a little bit so I can get closer to 120 MHz at 4K. If I did that, I would end up taking the 3060ti and the PSU and I would put that into the next project down the road, which is a dedicated multi-cade that runs a light gun setup.

primary storage would be a 500 GB SATA SSD. this will only be for the OS.

secondary storage, WD blue sn550 1tb, this will hold all of the pinball tables. this was taken from my son's original PC.

cooling will be the peerless assassin that I got for $24 as an open box.

The PSU is from my son's original PC. I think it's a Seagate 650. It was originally paired with the ryzen 5600x and the RTX 3060 TI.

in this PC does not need a case, it will be mounted directly inside of the pinball cabinet.

I have a pretty special use PC building. it's going to be mounted inside of a pinball cabinet, it is only going to be used to run virtual pinball. It will run one 4K display although I just downgraded my build and I don't ) lmy GPU is going to push 4K all that well. More on that in a moment.

My question is about the drives. I have an m.2 1tb SSD. this drive will hold all of the pinball tables and files.

I'm going to put windows 11 onto a second drive (or I suppose this would be the first drive), and I am considering an SATA drive. this drive would probably only be 500 GB. (full blown virtual pinball cabinets are expensive to build. I'm trying to cut some corners, and save a few bucks.... lol)

is there any issue with running the OS on a SATA drive?

If you read this far, I'll ask you a more exciting question.

I've gone through a lot of variations of what I'm going to do for a GPU. and ended up building a system with a 4080s. that was going to go into the pinball cabinet.

within the last couple of days, I was almost going to buy a 5070 TI pre-built from Microcenter open box. but I have decided to scrap that plan.

I'm keeping the 4080s as my 4K gaming computer.

and I'm going to stick my old 3060 TI system into the pinball cabinet. for running virtual pinball, 120 HZ is pretty important. I don't think I'm going to make it that high with the 3060ti. my logic is that in reality, I think about 85% of my enjoyment of building a virtual pinball cabinet, is the building of the cabinet.

after the cabinet's built and tested, it will still get played, but it's in no means going to get played everyday. in reality I could see myself playing pinball for maybe an hour a week. that's not quite enough. play time to justify putting something like a 4080s system or a 5070 TI into the cabinet.

If I do end up playing more, I'll be able to pull the 3060 TI out, and put in a more capable GPU. at that point I would take the 360 TI, I will use it to build a dedicated light gun arcade cabinet.

any thoughts on the 3060 TI in a dedicated virtual financing? 4k as close as I can get to 120 HZ as I can. I should mention, that the GPU also has to push out two smaller displays. neither of them are 4K. One of them is simulating a. matrix so that's pretty low workload. The other is a 32-in 1080 display.

I have a power spec reserved. it hads a 5070ti. open box, I need to replace the aio cooler, but the warranty is still new and intact. the price is $1600, plus the price of the AIO, installation is free if I buy it at the same time. so let's say the price with the upgraded AIO is $1750.

I have been considering a 5080.

I am setting up to play at 4k. although I don't play that many games lately.

when I do, I play cyberpunk, DRR. not really into competitive shooters. maybe a little bit of halo MCC. so high frame rates are not my biggest concern.

a similar 5080 system is about $2500. this is a pretty big difference in price.

the 5080 has a ryzen 7 9800x3d, the 5070 ti has ultra7 265kf... so the ti version has a bit weaker game card, but I do other stuff too. with either CPU would be fine for the amount of stuff I do.

I am totally overthinking this. is there any reason I won't be happy with the 5070ti... I am coming from a laptop. moving to 4k OLED, so I am expecting to be blown away just OLED.

I am not concerned about the open box concerns. long story, but I have purchased a 5080 open box about 6 months ago. this PC seems to have disappeared and is now living in my son's house. like I said, this is a long story. about any advice that I should simply go get the 5080 PC, this isn't really an option. lol