Virtual Addams Family Pinball Machine

While you are making your mind up to make the sensible investment in a pinball machine to call your own ... you might want to follow these steps to the next best thing ...

I recently had to resintall Windows 2000 on my home PC and so took the opportunity to follow and test my instructions from scratch, hence I believe they (and the associated links are up to date as of late July 2003) ... with the expection of the following warning.

WARNING: it seems that, at the moment, the .vpt file and the ROM files you download in the steps F and D respectively below are not compatible. Therefore, if you are following these instructions then, when you reach Stage F, email me instead of downloading and I will email you back the correct .vpt file for the ROM set (2.2MB). I have informed the webmaster who maintains the AJ's PinMAME site and, if and when he fixes this I will update the page accordingly.

A.Download, Install and Check Visual Pinball

1. Download the latest version of Visual Pinball from Randy Davis' Site (I currently have "Tech Beta 6.1" installed), follow the link to "Get it from VPForums" and chose the full version. You will need to register with VP Forums and then activate your registration from the email they send to allow you to do the download.
2. Run the installer and make a note of the directory where you Visual Pinball.
3. Start up Visual Pinball and load (File\Open) Tables\TopSpeed.vpt, then click on the "Play" button in the left-hand menu bar.
4. You should get a cool, but no frills rendition of the Top Speed pinball table. The physics engine is very nice though.
5. if you don't see the top speed table, you may have problems with your display drivers, take a look at http://www.vpforums.com/forum/showthread.php?s=d4898dab42925fba7acf5dfe3f26adfc&threadid=21666 for troubleshooting tips and make sure the top speed table works before you proceed

B.Install VBS Scripts

1. Download the VBS Scripts v3.10 and extract the contents of the .zip file into the "tables" subdirectory of the Visual Pinball installation

C.Prepare Directory for VPinMAME

1. Create a base directory to install VPinMAME into
2. Create subdirectories called "roms" and "samples"

D.Download and Install Addams Family ROMs

1. Download the two "Addams Family/Gold" ROMs (tafu18l1.rom and Addam_l5.rom) from AJ's PinMAME site (a single zip file labelled "taf_l5" under the "ROMS" column)
2. Drop the zip file as is into the "roms" subdirectory

E.Download, Install and Check VPinMAME

1. Download the latest version of "Visual PinMAME" from the Retrogames site (I currently have version 1.12.3 installed)
2. unzip the downloaded zip file into the base VPinMame directory
3. run setup.exe from the base directory and select "install"
4. follow the instructions
5. select "Test" and chose "The Addams Family Special Collectors Edition (L-5)" from the list
6. you should see a not very exciting pinball backboard appear not an error message
7. select "Quit"

F.Download, Install and Test the Addams Family Table

1. Download the "Addams Family" zipped .vpt file from the AJ's PinMAME site (a single zip file labelled "Addams Family" under the "Tables" column)
2. Extract the .vpt file included in this .zip file into the Tables subdirectory of the Visual Pinball installation
3. Start up Visual Pinball and load (File\Open) Tables\The Addams Family1.0.vpt, then click on the "Play" button in the left-hand menu bar.
4. Congratulations, you should see a very impressive rendition of The Addams Family Pinball machine
5. You can drag the dot matrix display around the screen and tinker with the options to have the table run in a window or full screen
6. Press keys 2-5 to add coins and 1 to press "start", return to pull back the plunger and the left/right shift keys to do the flippers