Are you Ready to get Scared Stiff?

Scared Stiff Details

GAME DETAILS

Manufactured by: Bally Manufacturing Co.
Date: September 1996
Type: Solid state
Generation: Williams WPC-95
Production: ~4,000 produced
Pinside Price Range: $6470 - $7530
Cabinet: Normal
Display type: Dot Matrix
Players: 4
Flippers: 2
Ramps: 2
Multiball: 4

DESIGN TEAM

Game Design: Dennis Nordman Mark Weyna
Mechanics: Bob Brown Joe Loveday Win Schilling
Software: Cameron Silver Mike Boon
Artwork: Greg Freres
Animation: Adam Rhine Brian Morris
Sound: Dave Zabriskie Paul Heitsch

Sources:
https://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=3915
https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/scared-stiff

Pinside Club Thread: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/scared-stiff-clubmembers-only

FuLL MODDING AND RESTORE LOG

Full log of all of the stuff I’ve done to my Scared Stiff is on a running log that can be found here:
http://arcadeshenanigans.com/blog/2018/7/13/scared-stiff

Latest Stuff

The kind folks over at SFGE voted my Scared Stiff as Best in Show for Modern Pinball at SFGE 2019.

Super proud of this trophy and the very gracious compliments my game received at SFGE 2019.

Thoughts on Value

My last Scared Stiff sold for ~$8,000 in 2016 along with 2 other B/W titles of similar value. Believe or not even at that price I didn’t actually “make” anything on that transaction. I’ve seen them sell for as little as $5k (off-route) to as much as $13,000 (Bryan Kelly or HEP Restoration). That is a broad range and I suspect this one would come in somewhere on the top end in the $8500-$9000 range, as of the time of this article. I don’t treat Pinballs like investments and I expect the value will drop over time.

Admittedly, that is more head-cannon than researched value than sales-data in the upper-end restoration, used pinball market. There is more supply than demand in pinball and prices are ticking down a little for some of the Bally-Williams 90’s titles as they get pressured by the CGC Remakes & Stern’s release cadence. Titles that were in the $10k range in 2015-16 are capping around $7k in late-June 2019. Some of those “Pinside Top 20” titles are starting to break loose out of collections. It’s a good time to be a used-pinball buyer!

Scared Stiff isn’t rumored for a CGC-PPS remake, at this time but an “Elvira 3” pinball is rumored from Stern to be announced this year. Stern’s remake of Star Trek largely decimated ST:TNG values but that isn’t always the case. Stern’s remake could influence the resale value of Scared Stiff but I suspect it won’t be a popularity coup d'état. Scared Stiff’s value is propped up by charm and x-factor. Solving for x-factor is hard and I’m not sure Stern is up to the task.

Acquisition, Restoration & Modding

There are symptoms of tension between the bean counters & the design team at Bally-Midway when this title was on the line. They were all factory-wired for LED eyes in the skull pile at the back right of the machine but those LED eyes were not included. The machined aluminum extension arms that go onto the kickers to support the finger puppets were also excluded from most production models. The enthusiast community answered both readily by providing the kicker extensions engineered from the original designs and by providing the mode-aware LED eyes that can be added to the skull pile.

My Full Ownership Log with this game can be found here: https://arcadeshenanigans.com/blog/2018/7/13/scared-stiff

10-Minutes w/ Scared Stiff

… here you find my poorly-played 10 minute review of this Scared Stiff machine. In my defense.. playing with the left-flipper hand woven between the tripod legs is weird. Also, I’m just an average player - so there’s that too :)

Pictures….

Scared Stiff is a very photogenic pin.

Playfield Detail

The playfield on this particular machine is really-really good. Typically, they take a ton of abuse at the Terrifying insert at the foot of the crate because of bounce back and the kick-out scoop. A huge piece of factory mylar was applied in this area to protect it. The mylar on this machine is still pretty clear (not-yellowed) but there is a very-slight (2cm maybe?) nick in the mylar at that scoop eject point over the terrifying scoop. If left alone, it would eventually allow the ball to start abusing that insert.

At some point in the distant future, I’ll commit to a full mylar pull but for now I put down a floating playfield protector.