Norton man turns pinball restoration from hobby to business he’s passionate about

Brian Soares was never a pinball fan as a kid. The Attleboro resident remembers playing a game or two over the years, but that was about it.

Today, the basement of the Norton family’s 50-year-old home is filled with pinball machines. And not just any machines. These are machines he’s collected, others he’s lovingly restored over the past two decades, and a number of custom beauties, conceived, designed and built by Soares.

Official numbers are hard to come by, but he is probably the largest manufacturer of custom pinball machines in the US, and perhaps the world, shipping his creations all over the country and even internationally.

“It was always just a hobby,” he said. “I never expected so many people to like my work. It’s really grown.”

When the company he worked for was acquired last year and he found himself without a job, Soares took some time off and decided to focus on his hobby.

“People ask me if I’m a good player. I say no, I’m terrible,” he said. “I just like the whole idea of it. I like the artwork; I like doing all the mechanical design work… I’m totally into the game, I just can’t play it.”

The company he founded is called Gameroom Pinball LLC and business is booming. At the heart of his work is the idea that pinball is one thing, but having a custom-built machine in your home, office or shop that reflects your passions or industry is another. Some of his customers enjoy playing, while many others appreciate the look and feel of the machines he designs and builds.

Soares graduated from Attleboro High School in 1992 (he has a banner from that year’s baseball team, for which he played, in his basement). He studied mechanical engineering at Northeastern University and earned an MBA from Southern New Hampshire University. He has had a long and successful career developing cutting-edge medical devices such as neuroimplants, knee and hip replacements (and the robotic systems used to surgically implant them), and the world’s first fully implantable artificial heart, which was featured on the cover of Newsweek magazine in the early 2000s.

The custom pinball business may be booming now, but it didn’t start out that promising. In fact, it didn’t start out as a business at all.

“It was 2006 when I made my first machine,” Soares said. “I was just fixing it up. Because it had tobacco stains on it and my wife said, ‘You’re not bringing this into the house.'”

He took the game apart, repainted everything, replaced old parts, and when he showed his handiwork to the previous owner, it received rave reviews. It was perhaps the first sign that Soares was onto something.

“The guy I bought it from was absolutely blown away when he saw it,” he said. “He was like, ‘I’ve never seen anyone do anything like that.’ So I started making a few more.”

The man was so impressed that two years later, when he had another old machine that needed a new lease of life, he contacted Soares.

“He said, I have a game that’s really great, but maybe you can do something with it.”

Soares, a father of four, refurbished the device, adding images based on the Pixar film Cars, a car radio that could play a CD of music from the film and more.

From 2008 to 2010, Soares refurbished a number of other machines. Notable was a machine from the 1962 Boston Red Sox, which was completely renovated in December 2009. It was completely ‘rethemed’ and modified.

The machines just kept coming. If he didn’t know he had a thriving business, maybe his wife, Tracy, would have.

“She was like, OK, if you’re going to make another one, you have to sell something,” Soares said.

An impressed New Hampshire entrepreneur building a new facility called The Pinball Arcade saw the Red Sox machine in late 2010, as well as a more recent Patriots machine, and wanted them. And that was just the beginning.

“All of a sudden I had all these people from New England coming to the place to see these games, because nobody was really doing a custom style to my standards today,” he said. “They were terrible, but everybody loved them because they’d never seen anything like them. Even collectors hadn’t seen them.”

What followed were machines specifically targeted at the Bruins, Celtics, Yankees, Red Wings and the Harlem Globe Trotters, plus a game between the Patriots and the Red Sox.

Soares’ talent and ambition both grew as he delved deeper into his hobby. In October 2010, he started a blog (Gameroompinball.com). Thousands and thousands of hits followed, as did more sales, including some from international customers.

His work begins with old machines. Soares strips them — the paint and the parts — and prepares them for restoration or a whole new life.

He points out that there is a difference between restoring an old machine and modifying it — virtually creating a new one. Restoring is fairly simple, and the goal is to simply bring the machine back to life, hopefully even better than it was.

When customizing a machine from scratch, Soares first chooses a theme. It can range from the aforementioned sports teams to rock bands to high-end car brands to beloved television shows and movies. He then has to brainstorm both the graphics for the physical object of the machine, as well as the modes or levels of the game he is planning. The elements he has to work with include the playfield, plunger, flippers, bumpers, scoreboard, etc., many of which will determine the aesthetic look of the machine.

Nowadays, games also have built-in computers. Making them light up, flash, play music and sound effects, and keep score requires hours of reprogramming. This is where Soares’ professional experience comes in handy. He also makes good use of a 3D printer, and occasionally outside designers, artists, and other collaborators to help him execute his plans.

A major turning point came in 2017, when he reached out to Reby Hardy, the wife of professional wrestler Matt Hardy. A well-known pinball fan and fellow DIYer, Reby not only encouraged Soares’ work but also collaborated with him on a game she completed with her husband in April 2019, called “Matt Hardy’s Expedition of Gold.” She soon began helping Soares with artwork for other machines he created.

As for the duo’s pièce de ré sis tance, there are actually two: a Ferris Bueller’s Day Off machine, and one dedicated to the Adam Sandler film, “Happy Gilmore.” The former won the Best Homebrew Pinball Machine award at the 2022 TWIPY awards show, held as part of that year’s Texas Pinball Festival, and among its many high-tech delights is a small television set that’s part of the game and plays the beloved 1986 film starring Matthew Broderick.

The Soares and Hardy families are now close and Brian and Reby’s collaboration continues, with him doing planning, customer interface work, engineering, programming and construction; she helping with creative ideas and graphic design work.

A recent success for the duo was placing a New York City-themed machine they designed for the JP Chase Morgan Sapphire Lounge in LaGuardia Airport’s Terminal B. For that project, Soares even hired voice actors to add some real new yawk accents, as well as multiple tracks of songs about the Big Apple.

Soares said most of the machines he works on are restoration jobs. The custom machines are where his imagination and ever-expanding design, programming and building skills come into their own. While each project can take hundreds of hours of work, the price tag for a custom pinball machine can run into the tens of thousands of dollars.

One afternoon in May, Soares gave a brief tour of his two workshops, one in the basement, the other in a large shed in the backyard. In the latter, three beautiful machines were being carefully prepared for overseas shipment, all white and decorated with anime-style characters, soon to be in the possession of the person who ordered them: a world leader whose name must remain unmentioned.

“That’s pretty much the market for custom machines now,” Soares said. “It’s professional athletes, it’s celebrities, it’s Hollywood… I think now I can add political leaders from foreign countries.”