Personally I would forget about Timezone and teenagers. Timezone is old school and today's teenagers have the attention span of a goldfish and will be bored and move on from a pinball machine in 10 minutes to check their Iphone/update their Facebook status and will not be back to play again.
The tween market and even younger is where your new market is. Their overindulgent parents will provide the money source in order to keep them quiet for a few hours of peace.
Stern's next pinball should be a Ben-10 Alien Force pinball machine, you put a ticket dispenser on the side, some flashing RGB LED lights as a topper that regularly go off even when inactive, and enable the ability to have an attract mode that plays actual soundbytes from the cartoon to capture attention.
You site said machine in a Playcafe adventure centre where bored middle class housewives spend quite literally hours drinking mochachinos while their kids go crazy in the game room. Behind the coffee serving counter on the back wall you put rows of cheap action figures and toys all the way up to a top of the range Nintendo DS handheld (this will be the ultimate attainable prize).
Attach a neon sign with:
(COLLECT TICKETS BY PLAYING GAMES AND WIN THESE PRIZES!!!!)
The items on the back shelf
can only be bought with redemption tickets - 10 tickets for a Ben 10 figure all the way up to 10,000 tickets for the Nintendo DS handheld.
The kids will nag and nag that they want that toy, and keep coming back to Mum/Dad for more money to spend to attain it, and the parent will cave in and indulge them just to keep them quiet.
This will need some good cooperation with the site manager so a decent profit share package will need to be in place - the offshoot is that the site manager may take a bit more interest in the cleanliness/functionality of the machine itself (unlike your typical pub pin).
Don't thank me Stern, just send me a cheque instead.
