FINALLY!

After investing more than 846 hours over a span of 2½ years, the Golden Spike Pinball Machine is finally finished!




From around October of 2018 to May of 2021, I have been designing and building every aspect of a homebrew pinball machine called Golden Spike. The game is themed around the United States' first transcontinental railroad that was constructed from 1863 to 1869 and the two railroad companies (the Central Pacific and the Union Pacific) that built it.

In the game, players have to make shots to build tracks, construct trestle bridges, blast tunnels, acquire locomotives, and fend off the occasional Indian attack on the track crews to complete the railroad. The game has a total of three multiball modes: the Track Frenzy (2 ball) in which players must construct as much track as possible, the Indian Attack multiball (2 ball) in which players must spell I-N-D-I-A-N-S to repel the attack and protect the track crews, and the Railroad Completed multiball (3-ball) which happens upon completion of the Central or Union Pacific's part of the railroad.

Check out my writeup about building it here!

If you're interested in using my driver board design for your own pinball project, feel free to check it out on the downloads page -- I've licensed it under CC BY-SA 4.0!



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This website was last updated 1/5/2022

If you want to see what I have changed, click here.