Site report by Simeon Brewer.

Location: The Galleria is on (literately) the A1, north of the M25 at Hatfield, Hertfordshire.

Update:

Pinball News reader Margaret Goodwin tells us that the Austin Powers and Addams Family in the report below have now gone and been replaced by a Lord of the Rings game which appears to be in very good condition and fully working.

The Hatfield Galleria is one of the largest factory outlet shopping centres in the UK. It also has a cinema and lots of places to eat.

Situated along the walkway between the shops and the cinema, to the left of Mai Tai restaurant, is an arcade called Fantasy Zone.

Just inside, and to the left of the entrance are two pinball machines; Austin Powers and Addams Family. Both machines are 50p for a credit, £1 for 2 credits - and AP has 5 credits for £2.

Austin Powers did have a number of faults with it at the time of playing. This was my second visit to Hatfield, and on the first occasion, Dr Evil did not work (the whole rising from behind the time machine movement was missing). Still the case on this visit, and on closer inspection this time round, an error message is produced which says that his motor is knackered. However, more problems have now arisen with this table.

Fat Bastards toilet is defunct. If you are unlucky enough to hit a ball into there, it gets stuck. The gameplay stops, we wait a bit, the table hunts for the stuck ball and it's 50/50 whether the ball gets ejected through a small hole in the side of the toilet. By the end of my credits, I had four balls wedged in there. Needless to say, the Fat Bastard bonus
doesn't work, with no audio at all. That whole ramp is dead. Worse than that, the multiball is pointless. As more balls got stuck, it was reduced from three to two to one ball during multiball!

There is also a sticky patch to the right of the bumpers. Can be sorted by a slight knock - but be careful of the tilt. And when you get an extra ball, or a replay, or a jackpot, the machine emits an ear-splitting crack. It's quite painful and a bit of a shock. I can't believe that is a valid sound. The display says something like "Sound E8". I reckon that's broken as well.

On the plus side, the replay kicks in at 50 million. Hit any kind of special bonus shot (the laser shot into Austin's hole was my favourite), and you are there straight away. I'm certainly not in the league of some of you out there, but I paid for 10 credits and got 16 plays (including a match). Not bad.

Moving on to the Addams Family was not much of an improvement. I don't know how I have managed to avoid it, but it was my first go with this table. I don't know if this is right, but the whole upper portion was in darkness. I could just about make out "thing's" hand grabbing the ball, and couldn't see the ramps and loops up there at all. After a couple of dismal plays, I gave up. Perhaps somebody in the locality who is familiar with this game could give it a go and give us an update? Also, the location of this machine is
not great - right next to the entrance to the staff room, and I seemed to be in the way most of the time when playing.

I reported the Austin Powers faults to a member of staff who asked me to show him where on the game the faults where. He then said he would "get somebody to have a look at it". I hope that means it will get fixed soon - as I am rather taken with the Austin Powers table.

Currently, these are the only tables in Hertforshire that I know of, so something is better than nothing. Hopefully, the AP issues will be fixed soon. If so, I'll be hoping to challenge the 500 million high score in the near future!

For information on getting there, check out http://www.thegalleria.co.uk/

Update

Went back and sunk another £2 into Austin Powers to check its condition.
Fat Bastard's toilet has been unblocked (if you'll excuse the pun) but all other problems remain. At least it is more playable. The Addams Family is still looking sorry for itself. I was the only one in the arcade - which was worrying. It was school chucking out time too; where are the kids hanging out nowadays? I blame PS2 and X-Box.

Anyway, back to the pins.

Nobody seemed to be on duty to report the faults to, so will head back over at some other time (hopefully it will still be trading!).

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