# Episode 384 - 70 Games in the Multi-Bingo, Reflex Positioning **Source:** For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast **Type:** podcast_episode **Published:** 2016-12-01 **Duration:** 19m 20s **Beat:** Pinball **URL:** https://foramusementonly.libsyn.com/episode-384-70-games-in-the-multi-bingo-reflex-positioning --- ## Analysis Nick Baldridge discusses reaching 70 completed games in his MultiBingo homebrew machine and the technical work involved in implementing various bingo game rules and features. He covers United Manufacturing's game design evolution across three eras, details on implementing complex search algorithms for magic line features, and his plans for future games including Big Time and the Miss America series. Additional topics include modifications to his game room, button remapping strategies, and community news about The Pinball Podcast's 100th episode celebration and Robert Madel's documentation of reflex unit positioning issues. ### Key Claims - [HIGH] Nick Baldridge has completed 70 games in his MultiBingo machine as of November 30, 2016, with game 71 in progress — _Nick Baldridge stated directly: 'I'm up to game number 70 that's complete and I'm working on game number 71 which should be finished tonight. Tonight being Wednesday, November 30th of 2016.'_ - [HIGH] All 70 games use the same 25-hole playfield with rollovers, with 104 total bingo games using this standard playfield — _Nick Baldridge: 'all of these 70 games use the same 25-hole playfield with rollovers... There's only a hundred and four, I believe, games which use the same standard playfield.'_ - [HIGH] United Manufacturing games can be divided into three distinct eras with different circuitry and feature implementations — _Nick Baldridge: 'united can be split into basically three different eras you have the initial era where things are really really alien... you have kind of a middle era... The late era United games and these start with triple play'_ - [HIGH] Late-era United games switched to a mixer configuration almost identical to Bally's design — _Nick Baldridge: 'The late era United games... switch to an almost identical setup to their competitor Bally. They moved the mixers up to the top of the back door.'_ - [HIGH] Robert Madel documented that operators modified reflex units in bingo games to prevent feature awards without passing through mixer number one — _Nick Baldridge: 'Robert Madel... has put together an awesome document about the reflex unit and how his games in particular were cheating him. The operator had modified the Reflex units in many of his games to prevent them.'_ - [HIGH] The Pinball Podcast is celebrating its 100th episode on February 19th in Las Vegas with a listener meetup — _Nick Baldridge: 'The Pinball Podcast is celebrating its 100th episode in February, February 19th To be exact, in Las Vegas, Nevada.'_ - [MEDIUM] Nick Baldridge has implemented a search algorithm using dictionaries and mutable item lists that can extend to work with all Bally-produced magic line and roto feature games — _Nick Baldridge: 'my search algorithm basically uses a dictionary... The magic lines what I'm doing is including a single item list which is mutable... I can actually extend uh this particular search algorithm to work with every other game that Bally produced'_ - [HIGH] Ryan Claytor created the artwork design for The Pinball Podcast's 100th episode celebration t-shirt and poster print — _Nick Baldridge: 'my good friend and comics artist Ryan Claytor is, or has rather, illustrated an awesome design for them, which is both a t-shirt and a poster print.'_ ### Notable Quotes > "70 is over halfway through the total number of bingo games. This is a pretty exciting milestone for me." > — **Nick Baldridge**, early in episode > _Establishes the significance of reaching 70 games in the MultiBingo project and demonstrates personal investment_ > "united can be split into basically three different eras... I think Linderant knew what he was doing, I think." > — **Nick Baldridge**, mid-episode > _Reveals technical understanding of United Manufacturing's design evolution and hints at intentional design decisions by the company's engineer_ > "I can actually extend uh this particular search algorithm to work with every other game that Bally produced which is uh pretty fantastic I pretty excited about that" > — **Nick Baldridge**, mid-episode > _Demonstrates the broader applicability of his algorithmic solution beyond a single game implementation_ > "I like having the reflex, but I do like the game being fair and allowing me the full range of motion of the Reflex." > — **Nick Baldridge**, late in episode > _Expresses preference for fair gameplay mechanics while acknowledging the reflex unit's role in determining game difficulty_ > "Tropics itself is one of only two games that has an advanced score as part of the Select feature." > — **Nick Baldridge**, mid-episode > _Identifies a rare and valuable feature in bingo game design history_ ### Entities | Name | Type | Context | |------|------|---------| | Nick Baldridge | person | Host and creator of MultiBingo homebrew machine; bingo pinball enthusiast and technician; running 'For Amusement Only' podcast | | Robert Madel | person | Bingo game collector who documented reflex unit positioning issues in his machines; previously appeared on the podcast | | Ryan Claytor | person | Comics artist and friend of Nick Baldridge; created artwork for The Pinball Podcast's 100th episode celebration | | MultiB ingo | product | Homebrew multi-game bingo pinball machine created by Nick Baldridge; contains 70+ completed games using electromechanical gameplay | | United Manufacturing | company | Historical bingo game manufacturer producing games in the 1950s; Nick Baldridge analyzing their design across three distinct eras | | Bally | company | Competitor to United Manufacturing; influenced late-era United design decisions, particularly mixer configuration | | Tropics | game | United bingo game featuring Select-A-Feature and Select-A-Spot; one of only two games with advanced score in Select feature | | Triple Play | game | United bingo game marking transition to late-era design; next game Nick Baldridge is implementing after reaching 70 | | Big Time | game | Bally game being implemented as game 71 in MultiBingo; requires five buttons; uses moving numbers reflex feature | | Beauty Beach | game | Bingo game planned for implementation after Big Time in Nick's development pipeline | | Miss America 57 | game | Bally bingo game Nick Baldridge plans to implement; identified as a fantastic game with Red Letter feature | | The Pinball Podcast | organization | Pinball podcast celebrating 100th episode on February 19th in Las Vegas with listener meetup; produced by Knapp Arcade Foundation | | For Amusement Only | organization | EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast hosted by Nick Baldridge | | Pinside | organization | Online community where Robert Madel posted bingo section documentation about reflex units | | Showboat | game | Real-life bingo game Nick Baldridge has played in person | | Caravan | game | Real-life bingo game Nick Baldridge has played in person alongside Showboat | | Turf King | game | Game in Nick's personal collection; only machine not set to free play; used to measure coin input versus output | | Linderant | person | Engineer at United Manufacturing; likely responsible for design decisions across United game eras | ### Topics - **Primary:** MultiBingo development milestone - 70 games complete, United Manufacturing game design evolution and technical implementation, Bingo game rule implementation and programming complexity, Reflex unit positioning and fair gameplay in bingo machines - **Secondary:** Search algorithm development for magic line and roto features, The Pinball Podcast 100th episode celebration, Personal game room maintenance and modifications - **Mentioned:** Button remapping and workarounds for limited control inputs ### Sentiment **Positive** (0.82) — Nick Baldridge expresses enthusiasm about reaching 70 games, appreciation for the technical challenges being solved, and positive reception of community contributions like Robert Madel's documentation. No negative sentiment detected. Tone is professional, educational, and celebratory of his progress. ### Signals - **[design_innovation]** Nick Baldridge has developed a novel search algorithm using immutable dictionaries and mutable item lists to handle magic line and roto feature positioning, with extensibility to all Bally magic line games (confidence: high) — Detailed technical explanation of algorithm implementation using dictionaries and mutable lists; claim that it can extend to all Bally games - **[restoration_signal]** Significant ongoing work implementing 70+ historically-accurate bingo game rules and features on a single homebrew platform (confidence: high) — 70 completed games with detailed schematic analysis; ongoing implementation of United and Bally games - **[historical_signal]** Technical documentation of United Manufacturing's design philosophy across three distinct eras, with evidence of competitive response to Bally design decisions (confidence: high) — Detailed breakdown of United's three design eras, including mixer configuration changes mirroring Bally's approach in late-era games - **[product_concern]** Documentation by Robert Madel reveals operators modified reflex units in bingo machines to alter feature award probabilities and game fairness (confidence: high) — Nick Baldridge references Robert Madel's Google Doc detailing reflex unit modifications that prevented features from being awarded without passing mixer number one - **[community_signal]** Community member Robert Madel created comprehensive documentation about reflex unit cheating methods, shared on Pinside to educate collectors and operators (confidence: high) — Robert Madel published Google Doc on Pinside's bingo section analyzing reflex unit positioning and operator modifications - **[event_signal]** The Pinball Podcast announcing 100th episode celebration with listener meetup in Las Vegas on February 19th, featuring custom artwork by Ryan Claytor (confidence: high) — Nick Baldridge announces: 'The Pinball Podcast is celebrating its 100th episode in February, February 19th To be exact, in Las Vegas, Nevada' - **[technology_signal]** Nick Baldridge implementing button remapping strategies to accommodate games requiring more inputs than available physical buttons on MultiBingo (confidence: high) — Detailed explanation of remapping yellow, red, green, and blue buttons for games like Big Time and Bounty with multiple button requirements - **[design_philosophy]** Nick Baldridge advocates for full-range reflex unit functionality to maintain game fairness and difficulty balance rather than disabled/modified units (confidence: high) — 'I like having the reflex, but I do like the game being fair and allowing me the full range of motion of the Reflex' --- ## Transcript What's that sound? It's 4 Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Welcome back to 4 Amusement Only. This is Nicholas Baldridge. Today is going to primarily be a news day. It's odd to think of bingo news, but here we are. I've been tirelessly I've been tirelessly working on the Multibingo and I continue to add more and more games. I'm up to game number 70 that's complete and I'm working on game number 71 which should be finished tonight. Tonight being Wednesday, November 30th of 2016. 70 is over halfway through the total number of bingo games. This is a pretty exciting milestone for me. And in fact, all of these 70 games use the same 25-hole playfield with rollovers that I initially started with. So this, I haven't even ventured into the territory of alternate playfields yet, but I'll be there soon enough. There's only a hundred and four, I believe, games which use the same standard playfield. So, in another thirty some games, I'll be working on alternate playfields. It's a pretty strange feeling to be here. I've been playing a ton of these games that I've never seen before, games like a lot of the United To read instantly países are not qualified to be part ofaves weirdithelton biology.com only this season,a diffuse opportunity keeps everyone ready for the fun, and play each one of your favorite epic terre. In fact, there is only...I've played a real showboat, I've played a caravan and I think those are the only two in real-life that I've played. But through the help of themulti- now I've played a whole lot of the games I will say That they are quite fun and different. From a typical ballet perspective, what I see in especially the early United games, starting with Tropics which added Select-A-Feature, is a lot more player choice. Once you earn the Select-A-Feature, which can be earned separately from Select-A-Spot, you can actually choose The game will automatically step up and award you all three extra balls. This gives you a excellent chance of winning. I'm enabling the selective feature is typically not too hard but it does depend on the position of the mixers and the reflex units in the United Games. In most cases, it's pretty advantageous though to the player. So that's one example of a feature. It's probably the most beneficial. The other thing that you can do on many of them is enable both super cards. If you do this and you shoot your last ball before the time tree runs out, then it's possible that you have a four in a row winner where before you had absolutely nothing because your super card layout is quite different from your main card. It's a three by three grid instead of a five by five. That's a pretty fantastic feature. Tropics itself is one of only two games that has an advanced score as part of the Select feature. And initially when I implemented it, I didn't read the schematic appropriately and made it so that it jumped your odds all the way to the top, which would have been absolutely bananas. If it jumped your odds all the way to the top, then it's quite likely the skilled player would walk away with the maximum payout, which is 300 replays. But as it actually stood you only earn one extra step on your odds unit That means that you earn an extra something like a dozen replays maybe a few more depending on if you had a four or five in a line but it a pretty good feature It gives you a lot of stuff to think about And as United went and they put out a ton of games for the time period They were really, really active in 1953 and 54 and uh... then they started to scale back in 55 and 56, they only released a few. So, I'm up to 1955 with United. I'm uh... at Triple Play, which is the next United. What I've seen going through the schematics for each game and of course mapping everything electrically is that united can be split into basically three different eras you have the initial era where things are uh... really really alien if you're coming from a valley perspective uh... you have kind of a middle era where things are obviously built off of the bones of the early era and uh... There are some changes made during this era which enable new features and also kind of incorporate some changes to the circuitry which are similar-ish to Valley games. I think this was clever. Linderant knew what he was doing, I think. The late era United games and these start with triple play and these later games switch to an almost identical setup to their competitor Bally. They moved the mixers up to the top of the back door. The mixer motor and clutch driven affair is very very similar to Bally's Shepard brother Steven the Bora aslоборо Guide Israel ass almost all the way to the end work hallway the and how it looks at the schematic for playtime yet but from what I read which was the United's last game for what I read that is almost So, that concludes today's einaval, in between craftals and incarnations. . chcez Gentile diasporačića nkt 자�ative кино Hitler Among Lie Ming-Woa, Even n klaučića The position revealing the bottom number at the top for the top number at the bottom depending on how you're moving it uh... it's a really cool feature it was the first moving numbers feature it's very eye-catching and uh... it really helps you put together some interesting wins and then working on that and uh... figured out a way to implement the search algorithm which didn't that can be easily going into this singingwise Reviews by referencing at single item list of panic position of and d magic line self for he current I'm not sure if I made it work. It's functioning. So that's exciting. But for programmer people, my search algorithm basically uses a dictionary which is an immutable set of data. The magic lines what I'm doing is including a single item list which is mutable and I'm changing that depending on the position of the magic line so The way that I have that set up I can actually use that for magic squares and the roto feature Uh so I can actually extend uh this particular search algorithm to work with every other game that Bally produced which is uh pretty fantastic I pretty excited about that The game is a great game. There's still some tweaking to be done, you know, to make it a little prettier, but as far as that algorithm goes, but I'm fairly happy. And this directly opens the door for Big Time, which is game number 71, and the Miss America series. Miss America 57 is a fantastic game, so I'm looking forward to getting that implemented. Knapp Arcade is a game that is based on the original game of the game, but on top of that, there's a variety of other Miss America games which I've never seen before, which have additional features like the Red Letter game, which is present on many of the Magic Screen games. And speaking of MagicScreenGames, I haven't forgotten. I'm still working on those. I have about five left to produce. I have, let's see, Bikini, Lido, CanCan, Boundy, and I think one more. Ballerina. That's what it is. I'll be working on those starting with Ballerina here shortly. I do want to comb through some more United games. Yes I uh, technically think that も minds is on something like the It is the officialny of Crane updates of Comingaison Anime Broadcasters mondo.org. Acommerce With Link is streaming at sqAT.com Tune.io Click the link at the top right of your screen to download. I'm seeing how they work. You might be asking yourself or me, Hey Nick, how are you implementing those games that require additional buttons? You only have the three foot rail buttons left, right and R. And yes, that's true. I do however have the pick a play buttons, blue, green and red as well as yellow. The is a dead button unless you're playing for extra ball So what I'll likely end up doing is repurposing yellow temporarily until I get the drawer constructed which will give me access to more buttons and red and I'm sorry red will remain the same but blue and green will also be remapped in that way On a game like Big Time for example where I need five buttons, I can use left right R, green and blue to move the numbers. And on a game like Bounty, I can use the yellow button to simulate the white button. And I can use the R button to simulate the gold button. There's some tricks that I can play with the buttons that I have. The will it be perfect nope not yet but uh... it'll at least allow me to test these games and play them while I'm figuring out that last bit uh... that's coming up uh... aside from that you know i've really done very little in the game room here uh... i did I'm going to modify my mystery coin mech for free play again. Since the vast majority of my game room is on free play, I figure I might as well. Turf King is now the only game in my game room that is not on free play. And uh... I like it that way at the moment. It's got a different kind of play style and I like measuring my coin input versus output on that game in particular. I'm enjoying the way that that one is at the moment. The other thing I did was fix a post that had come loose on my pop card just with repeated pinball bashings It it hogged out a fairly substantial hole so I did the old toothpick and wood glue and uh... that works perfectly uh... so now I'm able to play it again. The issue was that uh... a post would fall over during gameplay and kind of make it so that the ball would wedge between one of the ball guides and a lane Guide. So, fixing that is a good thing. In other news, at the top of the podcast I mentioned that there's a lot of news and there is. The Pinball Podcast is celebrating its 100th episode in February, February 19th To be exact, in Las Vegas, Nevada. They're having a meetup there for listeners. And my good friend and comics artist Ryan Claytor is, or has rather, illustrated an awesome design for them, which is both a t-shirt and a poster print. Beautiful artwork. Ryan always does excellent work. Knapp Arcade is a pinball podcast that is produced by the Knapp Arcade Foundation. Knapp Arcade is a pinball podcast that is produced by the Knapp Arcade Foundation. In bingo news, Robert Madel, who's been on the podcast a couple times, has put together an awesome document about the reflex unit and how his games in particular were cheating him. The operator had modified the Reflex units in many of his games to prevent them from The default position of the reflex allows for features to be awarded without having to pass through mixer number one. He's got a great Google Doc which he posted up on Pinside's Bingo section and I'll be including that in the show notes. That's a fantastic document That's a fantastic document for those of you who haven't worked on a reflex unit before and want to see if your game is actually doing what it's supposed to do. There are some bingo collectors who like to disable the reflex unit, basically reducing the amount of portioning that the game does. I'm not one of those. I like having the reflex, but I do like the game being fair and allowing me the full range of motion of the Reflex. So if I'm winning big, it's harder to earn features and odds increases because the Reflex has to be in a particular position versus just always getting everything that I want from the Reflex all the time. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the title of this episode, but it's a little boring. I think in that way it makes it easier to beat the machine. It doesn't beat it for you, that's for sure, but it does make it a little easier. So again, I'll include a copy of that in the show notes. And yeah, I think I'm going to finish up big time here. I just have a little bit of artwork left to position. I've already got the game logic done and everything written. So once I get the artwork positioned, I'll be able to test and we'll see what happens. From there, I'll be moving on to either Beach Beauty or Beauty Beach, Beauty Beach, I think, and then United's Triple Play. And we'll see what happens from there. All right. Well, thank you very much for listening. My name again is Nick Baldrige. For more information, please visit www.foramusementonlypodcast.com or bingopodcast.com. _(Acquisition: groq_whisper, Enrichment: v3)_ --- *Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 14d08661-60fd-4b52-ada4-00a7bd8a98f7*