The New Wood Base

Obviously the big difference between the normal Super Chexx Pro and the Super Chexx Premium is the wood base featuring hockey sticks. The bases come in 6 different colors shown below:

White Wash, Espresso, Golden Maple, Clear Maple, Cherry Wine, and Ebony are the current color options. I personally think that the dark colors are the best looking of the 6, the lighter colors don’t give off the same ‘luxury’ appearance.

On top of the base, the outside of the rink is also covered in the same wood. That wood matches the base perfectly. The video below shows the base pretty well:

Moving the Game

I’m sure one of the thoughts you might have is, how do I move this thing if the base is all wood and there’s no give for getting it out of doorways? Luckily ICE thought about all of this, and the game splits into 3 parts, the base platform, the hockey stick legs, and then the base game with the bubble on top.

This allows the game to fit through any doorway 28.5″ or wider. The game weighs 250 pounds as well, which is a 60 pounds than the standard version.

Is Super Chexx Premium worth the extra money?

This is a tough question, and only you can make the decision how much aesthetics are worth to you. Frankly, if you have the money and want to own this long term, putting in the extra money towards this probably wouldn’t be a bad investment as these games hold their value over time and you’d probably eventually get your money back out of it.

Playing it, there’s no difference from the regular base versions, so there is no additional fun to be gained from the upgrade, only visual appeal. But it’s not that much different from pinball machines, where people spend $3k to $4k more just for different artwork. In this case though, at least you can see where all the extra money is going, wood is expensive and crafting this can’t be easy.

You can order Super Chexx Premium via the link below:

Super Chexx Premium

Good luck with whatever you choose. Super Chexx is a great game to have at home.

My Own Bubble Hockey Cup Holder

In order to make one, I tried thinking up a bunch of designs. I had thought about an overhanging one but I didn’t want to scratch up the paint on the side. I then had the idea to use the bubble bolts and washer to secure a cup holder to the unit. The video is below:

I added the words Hockey Time to the sides to kind of give it a cool custom effect. I pretty much could write anything I wanted, but decided to go somewhat generic.

Unfortunately, they only work in the two corners opposite the hinge because the hinge side only has one bolt. I’ve been thinking about one to go in that corner but haven’t worked out my design yet on it. Doesn’t really matter though as just having the 2 looks (and works) really good.

I’m making them in black, red, and blue currently to match all the different color bases. I made a video below to show the different color combinations. They work on every thing from the original Chexx games to the new Super Chexx pro since they all use the same hole patterns. I made them so they would work well for cans and bottles. If you’re trying to put a 52 oz big gulp in there though, may not work so well. I’ve also made some new multicolor USA, Canada, and USSR Super Chexx cup holders as seen in the video below.

If you’re interested in a pair, email me at gameroominfo@gmail.com. Most of the time I have some already printed so I can get them shipped right out.

Also, if you want to make yours a little more customized for NHL teams, there’s an easy way to do it. First get the cup holder, then order the stickers from my Amazon affiliate link below:

NHL Stickers at Amazon

Then you can attach them to the cup holder as shown below. Comes out pretty slick.

Four cup holder option

A lot of people were asking me for a 4 cup option. Problem is, there isn’t a second bolt over there to hold it on, so with only one bolt it could swing out and around. I worked on this for quite a while to come up with a solution that looks great and stays in place.

See pictures below if you’re interested in a set of four:

Chexx Cup Holder

This is a mod I made personally for my game. I wanted to make a good cup holder for my Chexx game that would look cool and be reversible if needed. So I designed this cup holder and printed it out on my 3d printer.

It works really well for bottles and cans, but wouldn’t really work for those huge big gulps with the wide bases. I have a video of it here:

If you’re interested in buying a pair of Super Chexx bubble hockey cup holders from me, email me at gameroominfo@gmail.com. I offer the normal ones in black, blue, red, white, etc, and you can see the custom multicolor USA/Canada/USSR ones above.

Chexx Riser Platform

Constant back aches while you play due to the game being too low? I’m 6’4″ and for me it’s a big issue. So I’ve came up with a solution, a riser platform. I’ve got a picture of it below what I got done:

If you’re interested in possibly purchasing one of these once I’ve got mine done, let me know. Shipping might be a little expensive, but the one I built seems to work really well so far. Probably can even customize the color (red, white, or black) if desired. I painted my black to match the rest of the game. Email me at gameroominfo@gmail.com if you’re interested and maybe I’ll make a couple extra for people. Here’s a video of it below:

Chexx Goal Mods

Goal and player mods are by far the most popular things to mod. One of the best goal mods was posted a few years on instructables. Basically, he used some nails, red paint, and some netting to make authentic miniature goals. They’re probably the best Chexx goals you can make at this point in time. The link is below:

Chexx real goal mod

Pretty awesome overall.

This next guy made a goal light and better lighting under the scoreboard. Unfortunately, it’s a little over the top for most people as it requires a substantial amount of wiring and soldering.

Chexx goal light and rink lighting addition

Wish it wasn’t so complicated. I personally just updated my original Chexx lighting with this:

Chexx lighting mods

If you own an original chexx, it’s pretty easy to upgrade your lighting with an LED bulb. I did this here:

Chexx LED lighting upgrade

It’s the easiest thing you can do to get more lighting in your game. The original bulbs also have problems with causing too much heating in the electronics above, causing them to eventually fail and the plastic to warp.

There’s actually an ebay seller now that sells an LED board for the Super CHEXX games, it’s here:

Boston Pinball on Ebay, Super Chexx lighting mod

It’s a pretty nice LED board. I haven’t personally tried it though, so I can’t vouch for the improvement.

Chexx player mods

Besides lighting and goal mods, the player mods are the most popular items. Most people pick up NHL players directly from ICE themselves. The only disadvantage to that is that the players don’t actually have names and numbers, which most people kind of want. I actually made a page on how I added names and numbers to chexx players here:

Adding Names and Numbers to Chexx players

In addition to this, there are a couple people who custom paint players for money. These custom painted players are far beyond what ICE offers, but they’re also way more money, so you kind of get what you pay for here. Typically custom players are slower than the ICE players as they require. I haven’t used this place below so I can’t comment on how good they are personally, but the results pictures are great.

Custom Chexx and other game players at Party Pucks

They’re probably the best option right now if you want something a little more higher end.

Chexx Mods

There’s also a Chexx mods place online that’s selling a custom scoreboard, boards, etc. Based upon the feedback I’ve seen online, I think they must be pretty good quality and the comments about customer service have been great. You can find them at:

Chexxmods.com

I believe I’ve seen two people with the scoreboard and one person with the boards so far. They look pretty good on the website. If you don’t have enough money for a new machine, some of their upgrades look really nice. The video below shows a lot of their upgrades.

How much more will it be?

Will there be an upgrade path for older games?

What are all the upgrades over the previous models?

Pricing Changes

I’ll try and answer those questions now.  It appears like there’s a $200 increase over the previous base model, from $2499 to $2699.  That price is excellent considering the new technology added, a lot of value was added for not much of an increase.  The popular NHL version is now $3199, which is great for NHL fans (I have the retrofit NHL players on mine).  The extra money on the NHL version gets you:

• custom goal horns for each team you select (so if you select the Chicago Blackhawks as one of your teams, you’ll get their official goal horn when you score).
• NHL logos on the LCD screen
• 2 custom painted NHL teams of your choice.  When I was redoing my original Chexx for example, I selected the Chicago Blackhawks and Colorado Avalanche as my teams.
• Optional team logo at center ice

Upgrades

According to people in the know, there isn’t an upgrade path for older models unfortunately.  The only way to get the new LCD screen is to get a new machine.

As far as the upgrades go, the new model now features:

• new 5″ lcd screen
• brand new commentary and sounds
• new controls for deluxe home version
• red/green/blue led spotlights
• video clips shown on the screen
• lights inside the goals
• custom goal horns in the NHL version

A pretty substantial upgrade over the older model.  If you liked the game play before you’ll be happy, it is completely unchanged.  All the mechanical parts are still the same so if you’re familiar with working on them the new one won’t be any different.

Super Chexx Pro Ordering

I’m saving my money right now to upgrade my original Chexx.  Every time kids come over they ignore my foosball table and pinball machines and play game after game of bubble hockey.  They did finally release videos (shown below).  If you want pictures or to buy one because they’re so sweet, they’re available at their main website through my affiliate link here:

Super Chexx Pro Bubble Hockey from ICE

Shipping is free on the games as well, which is pretty awesome consider how big the packages are.  The other good thing is the high resale value on Super Chexx tables, unlike other game room equipment they hold their value really well.  My original Chexx is worth $1000 to $1500 still, probably more than it cost originally 35 years ago.

Here are some more videos of it in action:

This video demonstrates the new goal horns and better sound quality.

This video shows off the LCD and new intro.

And here’s a video of them setting up a new one out of the box:

I’m pretty excited to see exactly what is all going to be shown on the scoreboard besides what the videos have shown so far.  I’m glad they finally upgraded the electronics.  I know that several people were investigating to see if they could redo the original electronics with a raspberry pi and an LCD screen.  However, I don’t think any of them progressed very far.  I know a lot of people are impressed with what the Super Chexx Pro Bubble Hockey game sounds like so far, it’s a huge upgrade in quality.

For more information on Chexx games and other bubble hockey machines, check out my bubble hockey guide here:

Bubble Hockey Buying Guide

Step one, get the materials.  In order to do this, you’re going to need an inkjet printer and to order some decal paper to go through it.  I looked all over for good decal paper before finally finding this stuff here on Amazon through the affiliate link below:

Amazon Decal Paper Link

And here’s a picture of what the package looked like:

Once I got the glossy vinyl decal paper in, it was time to get the fonts ready to go.  I had to figure out what kind of jersey font I needed, what size, and what color.  I found the perfect font here:

https://www.dafont.com/jersey-m54.font

I downloaded that font, and brought it into Microsoft Word 2016.  From there, there’s an outline option, and you can see the different options I tried below:

Problem is, my printer doesn’t print white, which wouldn’t be an issue except for my players are all wearing away jerseys, lol.  So unfortunately, I had to go with the solid black numbers and letters all around because the other ones just weren’t dark enough.  If I had white jerseys though, they would have been perfect.  Maybe someday I’ll have a printer that can print white and I’ll be able to make them a lot better.

In any case, after I printed my jersey numbers and names based upon the mid 90’s Blackhawks and around the year 2000 Avs, I started cutting them out and installing them.  You’ll want to let the ink dry before installing, and not press too hard or the ink will smudge some (but not too bad).  I took a bunch of pictures below to show the end result.  I’m very happy with the end result, much better than the plain jerseys that were there before.  Hopefully this helps someone else out too.  If this does help, I’d appreciate it if you’d like my Facebook page or at least share it with your friends that might be interested.

I’ve also got a lot more bubble hockey/chexx information in my Bubble Hockey Buying Guide which has a bunch of info on mods, repair, buying, etc.

Here’s the video, hopefully this helps someone out.  I have other help guides in my Super Chexx Bubble Hockey guide.

I made a video below to show how to replace the gearbox.  I had to do it one handed so it’s not the greatest, but hopefully it will show you how it’s done.  I actually ran into problems the first time I did it because I pushed the rod in too far into the collar, which didn’t all the collar to clamp down on the gearbox properly.  Once I backed it off a little, it all worked fine.  I must also say, I didn’t realize how bad some of my gearboxes had gotten, the new one is much smoother than the old one.

Novus 2 is used to clean the clear bubble over the table.  It’s great at taking out fine scratches and other marks, but won’t help with really deep scratches.  It’s also good at cleaning a lot of other arcade things like pinball machines, but that’s another story.  For really deep scratches you’ll either have to replace the bubble (which can be very expensive at $400) or use a process called flame polishing which can sometimes work but is risky.  I’ve flame polished some pinball ramps before and you have to be very careful not to melt things too much.  You can buy Novus 2 through our Amazon affiliate link here:

NOVUS 2 Plastic Fine Scratch Remover – 8 oz.

For the playfield, the best thing to use is Pledge.  It cleans the surface plus makes it slick for the puck to slide on, making the gameplay a lot faster.  I typically only screw in one of the bubble screws instead the 15 or so you normally use because that way I have easy access for cleaning and other things.  There’s no reason at home to have that many bolts put into it.  You can get pledge about anywhere, but if you want to order it online, you can get it through our Amazon affiliate link here:

Pledge Lemon Clean Furniture Spray – 9.7 oz(pack of 1)
Hopefully this helps the first time your game gets dirty!  You’ll have a nice clean bubble hockey the next time your friends come over to play.

There’s a lot more bubble hockey/chexx information in my Bubble Hockey buying guide which has mods, buying advice, adding names and numbers, etc.

Chexx Bubble Hockey Parts

Here are some affiliate links below for parts that you might need for your Chexx or Super Chexx:

Dome Bolt Kit

NHL ICE and decal kit

Hockey Goal Net

Bubble Hockey Dome

Gear Box

Chexx Hockey Rod Grip

New side decal

Super Chexx Puck

Chexx Puck Ejector Assembly

There are some other packages you can pick that have different groups of items, but the ones I listed above are the most common.  I bought a new dome, new ice, players, grips, and puck for my game.  If I had to do it again, I’d buy all the stuff all over again, totally worth it to make the game look like new again.