# The "Visible" Pin at The Pacific Pinball Museum

**Source:** Mystery Pinball Theater 3000  
**Type:** video  
**Published:** 2022-06-01  
**Duration:** 90m 19s  
**Beat:** Pinball

**URL:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5prqwxfV6uI

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## Analysis

Mystery Pinball Theater 3000 streams from the Pacific Pinball Museum featuring the "Visible Pinball," a fully transparent electromechanical pinball machine based on Bally's Freedom (1975). Executive Director Michael Sheese discusses the machine's custom design by artist Wade Krause, its construction using clear acrylic, and its significance as a side-by-side comparison to Freedom's solid-state successor. The stream includes gameplay, technical breakdowns of EM mechanics, and discussion of the design innovation behind the project.

### Key Claims

- [HIGH] Wade Krause pioneered CNC routing of pinball playfields and custom cabinet design before others were doing this work — _Michael Sheese, Executive Director of Pacific Pinball Museum, discussing Wade's background and innovations_
- [HIGH] Freedom was the first game converted from electromechanical to solid state, making it ideal for comparing both versions side-by-side — _Michael Sheese explaining the choice of Bally Freedom for the Visible Pinball project_
- [HIGH] The solid-state Freedom was the first commercially successful programmed solid-state pinball machine, distinguishing it from Gottlieb's Spirit of '76 (Merco version) which used logic gates and transistors but wasn't programmable — _Michael Sheese detailing the technical distinction between programmable vs. non-programmable solid-state machines_
- [MEDIUM] Bally Freedom solid-state used a Motorola 6800 processor — _Michael Sheese mentioning the processor during technical discussion_
- [HIGH] The three major pinball manufacturers (Bally, Williams, Gottlieb) all made bicentennial-themed games in 1975-1976: Freedom, Liberty Bell, and Spirit of '76 respectively — _Michael Sheese discussing manufacturing landscape and bicentennial marketing_
- [HIGH] Electromechanical versions of solid-state games like Sinbad were simplified versions that couldn't support continuous bonus collection during play — _Michael Sheese describing gameplay differences between EM and solid-state versions_
- [MEDIUM] Gottlieb's early solid-state games used chimes, while later games like Charlie's Angels moved to soundboards with different audio capabilities — _Michael Sheese comparing audio technology across generations_
- [HIGH] One of the Visible Pinball machines was sold to the Exploratorium — _Michael Sheese stating disposal of a clear pinball unit_
- [HIGH] The Pacific Pinball Museum offered EM repair classes with a guest lecturer from Colorado — _Host mentioning classes held at the museum during the stream_

### Notable Quotes

> "It's like what Wonder Woman would have if she had a pinball machine to go along with her airplane."
> — **Michael Sheese**, early in stream
> _Creative analogy describing the clear/transparent nature of the Visible Pinball machine_

> "I presented him with this idea I had to make a clear pinball. And I got the idea when I saw somebody had taken a pinball machine and hacked a big hole window in the side of the cabinet."
> — **Michael Sheese**, mid-stream
> _Origin story of the Visible Pinball concept and design inspiration_

> "They really dumbed down the version of the game to build an electromechanical version."
> — **Michael Sheese**, late-stream technical discussion
> _Assessment of feature reduction when translating solid-state games back to EM format_

> "It's a brilliant idea. I've actually used that little phenomenon in a few exhibits that I've built."
> — **Michael Sheese**, during technical breakdown
> _Reference to the twinkle bulb delay mechanism being adopted in modern exhibit design_

> "Without a clear pin you just never see that."
> — **Michael Sheese**, technical breakdown section
> _Core value proposition of the Visible Pinball for understanding hidden mechanics_

### Entities

| Name | Type | Context |
|------|------|---------|
| Michael Sheese | person | Executive Director and Founder of Pacific Pinball Museum; designer/facilitator of the Visible Pinball project |
| Wade Krause | person | Pinball artist based in Fresno; pioneered CNC routing of playfields and custom cabinet design; created playfield, artwork, and backglass for Visible Pinball machines |
| George Christian | person | Michael Sheese's brother; neon sculptor who created special neon lighting for the bottom of the Visible Pinball cabinet |
| Pacific Pinball Museum | organization | Nonprofit museum in Alameda, California housing over 1,000 pinball machines; hosts the Visible Pinball and offers EM repair classes |
| Mystery Pinball Theater 3000 | person | Content creator/streamer hosting the video from Pacific Pinball Museum |
| David Velansky | person | Assistant/co-host during the stream; participates in gameplay and commentary |
| Grumpy EM Doctor | person | Regular guest/co-host at Pacific Pinball Museum streams; provides technical commentary on EM mechanics |
| Bally Freedom | game | 1975 Bally electromechanical pinball machine; bicentennial theme; basis for the Visible Pinball project; first game converted to solid-state |
| Bally Freedom (Solid State) | game | 1976 solid-state version of Freedom; first commercially successful programmed solid-state pinball machine; used Motorola 6800 processor |
| Alvin Gottlieb Surf the Champ | game | Early clear pinball version created before the Bally Freedom clear machines |
| Gottlieb Spirit of '76 (Merco) | game | Solid-state pinball that used logic gates and transistors rather than programming; not programmable unlike Bally Freedom SS |
| Williams Liberty Bell | game | 1975-1976 bicentennial pinball machine by Williams manufacturer |
| Gottlieb Sinbad | game | Early solid-state game; featured continuous bonus collection during play in SS version; dumbed-down EM version existed |
| Gottlieb Eye of the Tiger | game | Two-player version of Sinbad; had EM version; no two-player solid-state version was made |
| Bally | company | Major pinball manufacturer; made Freedom series and pioneered programmable solid-state machines with Motorola 6800 |
| Gottlieb | company | Major pinball manufacturer; made Spirit of '76, Sinbad, and EM translations of solid-state games |
| Williams | company | Major pinball manufacturer; made Liberty Bell bicentennial machine |
| Mr. Plastics | company | Outsourced plastic cabinet fabrication vendor for early Visible Pinball projects |
| Exploratorium | organization | Museum that purchased one of the Visible Pinball machines from Michael Sheese |

### Topics

- **Primary:** Visible Pinball design and construction, Bally Freedom EM vs. solid-state comparison, Electromechanical pinball mechanics and design engineering, Pinball artist Wade Krause and custom fabrication
- **Secondary:** History of solid-state pinball technology transition, Bicentennial pinball game series (1975-1976), Pacific Pinball Museum exhibits and programming, EM vs. solid-state game design compromises

### Sentiment

**Positive** (0.87) — Stream is celebratory of the Visible Pinball innovation and enthusiastic about technical details. Community engagement is warm. Some minor frustration with technical streaming issues, but quickly resolved. Michael Sheese is clearly proud of the project and engaged in education.

### Signals

- **[design_innovation]** Complete transparent acrylic pinball machine that makes internal EM mechanics visible during gameplay—represents novel approach to pinball education and collector appeal (confidence: high) — Entire stream focused on the Visible Pinball; Wade Krause pioneered CNC routing of clear playfields and cabinets
- **[historical_signal]** Discussion of how Bally Freedom was first game converted from EM to programmable solid-state, marking critical technology inflection point in pinball history (confidence: high) — Michael Sheese explaining why Freedom was chosen: 'first game to be converted over to solid state' and 'first commercially successful programmed solid-state machine'
- **[design_philosophy]** EM designers used creative low-tech solutions (e.g., twinkle bulbs for delay timing) that later became exhibit-worthy examples of engineering elegance (confidence: high) — Michael discussing how twinkle bulbs were used to create short delays via bimetallic heating, and noting he's adopted this phenomenon in modern exhibits
- **[venue_signal]** Pacific Pinball Museum actively using exhibits like Visible Pinball for community education; hosting EM repair classes with visiting lecturers (confidence: high) — Museum offering EM classes with guest lecturer from Colorado; clear pinball serving educational purpose for understanding hidden mechanics
- **[restoration_signal]** Custom clear pinball machines representing new category of museum-quality restoration/recreation work combining historical accuracy with modern fabrication (confidence: high) — Multiple clear pinball versions created; one sold to Exploratorium; demonstrates collector/museum market for specialized custom machines
- **[content_signal]** Long-form streaming content from Pacific Pinball Museum providing detailed technical breakdowns and historical context for pinball audience (confidence: high) — Extended stream featuring hands-on demonstrations, gameplay, and expert commentary from museum director
- **[industry_signal]** 1975-1976 saw all three major manufacturers (Bally, Gottlieb, Williams) release bicentennial-themed games—coordinated market moment (confidence: high) — Michael noting Freedom, Spirit of '76, and Liberty Bell all released in this window as patriotic tie-ins
- **[design_innovation]** Solid-state games initially required feature reduction when translated back to EM format; later manufacturers resolved this through continued EM production for specific markets (confidence: high) — Michael explaining how Sinbad EM was 'dumbed down' compared to SS version; Gottlieb continued making EM variants for European and South American operators

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## Transcript

 Has a clear pin been streamed live before? No, never before. What's up kids? Mystery Pinball Theater 3000 here once again here. Hi Mima. Oh hey, didn't see you there. There's an achievement. We unlocked the oh hey, didn't see you there achievement. Thank you Mima. Once again, I have the honor to be streaming out of the Pacific Pinball Museum. I have two lovely people with me. David Velansky with an I. With a Y. David's in the background, of course. Grumpy EM doctor, as always. And I have the executive director of the Pacific Pinball Museum. Michael Sheese right here. Mima says hi David. Why am I getting a phone call right now? That is spam. I love that sound Mima. I love spam too. yeah we're doing some a little special here michael's here because he's going to talk a little bit about the game that we're streaming today this is wow well i don't even know where to start why don't we have michael start and tell us a little bit of something about it you may not notice it on camera right now i have another camera and i'm going to show a little bit of the size it's it's like what wonder woman would have if she had a pinball machine to go along with Her airplane. Wow, I just aged myself on that one. Wow, I never even thought of that reference. That's pretty cool. I was going to wear a Wonder Woman hat and the thing. Oh, the whole top. You mean her clear airplane. Her clear airplane, exactly. Let's see if you guys can get a better shot this way. Thank you for the follow. Who's that? Bubsheezy. Thank you for the follow, Bubsheezy. Michael. Hi, Michael, says Hema. Hard to get. Yes. So you're right, Honest Jacks. It's hard. This really does... It doesn't translate well over video. If you come here, this is amazing. So, Michael, tell us a little bit about this game, and then I'm going to switch over to my other cameras and get people to see some stuff. Hi, Hotel Town. Can I get more from underneath? Would that show more? We'll see. We'll figure it out. Yeah. Okay. Come on. All right. I don't know where the – oh, there's a camera right there. Okay. So, you know, it couldn't have been done without Wade Krause. I don't know if people know about Wade Krause, pinball artist, but he's down in Fresno. He started out making back glasses and perfecting the art of Marc Silk screening on glass. And then he got a router. And this is before people were doing this stuff. So when he told me he was going to figure out how to route playfields, I was like, wow, okay, that's pretty cool. And I presented him with this idea I had to make a clear pinball. and I got the idea when I saw somebody had taken a pinball machine and hacked a big hole window in the side. Oh, in the side of the cabinet? On the side of the cabinet. You know, that was clever. So you could see the innards? Right. Okay, okay. So you could watch it while it was playing. Somebody could be playing it and somebody would watch it on the side. I thought, well, that's kind of interesting, but you only get to see one part of it. I thought, why not make the whole thing clear? So that's where the idea came from. And then talking to Wade and him saying, yeah, I can make that play field. And I can also probably make the cabinet. So we started working together. And I mainly was the facilitator. My brother Christian and I had the shop to do all the work in. But we basically outsourced the plastic cabinet to Mr. Plastics. Okay. But the play field, the artwork, the head with the back glass, Wade did all of that. And actually on this one, he did do the cabinet. He CNC'd the cabinets for this electromechanical one and also the solid state one. So a lot of people wonder, like, why do we do this? Why would you make a clear version of Freedom, a ballet 1975 game, and electromechanical? Right, yeah. I'm going to brighten this up a little bit here. Go ahead. So the whole idea was we actually made one before this. It was a Gottlieb surf champ, and that's the one most people know as the clear pin. And we switched to a Bally one for two reasons. We wanted to make an electromechanical, a pinball that had been electromechanical and then transformed into electronic. Electronic, what they would call a solid state. Right, solid state game. Right. But we wanted to use the same machine so that when you put them side by side, they're identical. So a little research and you find out Freedom was the first game to be converted over to solid state. Really? Yeah. And is this 1975 or 1976? That was 76, I believe, that they made the first Freedom electronic game. So the other thing was when you look for a game that's made in both flavors, electromechanical. I'll do that. Go ahead. Sorry. Electromechanical and solid state. You know, they're usually pretty heavy on the solid state end and light on the electromechanical because they were making that transition. But this was one game where they made a ton of these electromechanical ones, and they made quite a few of the solid state ones. So I didn't have any trouble finding a donor machine for both of them. Wow. And that was my main concern. But the other thing, as it turns out, is this was the first solid state machine that they made. you know, with this machine. I wish we had the other one here so we could do side by side, but that would be another show probably. Mima's asking, so yeah, Mima, it's a completely custom, completely custom. Yeah, it is. We did take an electromechanical freedom, and we took every piece of wood and converted it to clear plastic is the easiest way to explain it. Okay, cool. Cool. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to grab this extra camera because we're probably going to do more talking about this game as opposed to, well, we'll play it for a little bit. But actually, we do want to play it so we can see some fun stuff about it. Here, let me do this. This is so cool. Yeah, it is very cool. It's worth coming down to the museum to check it out. Hey, Grammy. David, just for you, this is being recorded also locally. So when this goes up on YouTube, it'll be much higher quality than what you're getting right now, guys. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I basically doubled what I'm doing. Yeah, I interrupted Manu because I checked the stream and I'm like, what I'm getting looks a little fuzzy, but... Yeah. Here, I'm going to turn this on. And hopefully you guys. So just so you guys can see here, here's what I'll do. I'm going to switch over completely to this screen here. And this is kind of my. That didn't take long to break. I forgot to put it in my pocket. All right, so let's see. This is the trick about kind of shooting this guy here. Actually, I'm going to take this. Oh, look at that. Yeah, that was why today had to be special. So, this is crazy. So, let's just... Should I play? I mean, do you want things moving? So get on, actually, get on the back of the score reels, because I'm going to start a new game, and they're going to reset. I can't really see from there. Let's see. I can kind of see it. Can you kind of see? I don't know if we're going to see anything when I do it. Here, let's try. Wow. Yeah, you were on the wrong ones. Well, that happens all the time. Now you can get under the play field, I think. Or you can... Hopefully I'll be able to score something and you'd see score rolls moving. This is crazy. Oh, I guess I could have done a multiple player game. I was going to say. Yeah, sorry, Michael. We're still figuring this stuff out. I'm going to switch back over to, so you can see David, you can see the rig and everything. Let's go underneath. See where he gets really caught. I need my glasses, I need to have that. Look at these. Yeah, that's good. What am I looking at right now? So that's a score motor. Sorry. What's that? Yeah. What's a score motor? So score motor, an electromechanical pinball machine can only do one thing at a time. And when it needs to do, like, multiple things, like processing a cue or something, scoring multiple points, whatever, it uses the score motor to sort of, think of it as a cueing system for people who know computers. So when you... Oh, they're under my right hand. Yeah, they're under my right hand. Oh, James. So you should be able to see the bottom. You can see the knockers moving up out of the coil. Ooh. Ha! Love that thousand point shot. Oh, Michael, I did two player and I'm playing your ball. Do you want to take over? What? Ooh, look. I put it in the shooter lane for you. All right, thank you. All right, we're going to do a double shot now. So if I go back to master here. I'm in the side screen, so I'm going to walk around a little bit more. And David, whichever one of you is not playing, maybe field some questions from chat. Yeah, oh, okay. That's a good idea. Sorry, now you get to read the chat and figure out, we have some questions. Let's see, I haven't caught up. Yep, yeah, BorgDog said they also made a version with the pop-up in the middle. Yep, that's true, that was the prototype. Oh yeah, that's Mike. Okay, yeah. Hey, I let him into the EM repair class. Oh, cool. All right. So so Eternal Grammy is Mike, we think. You shouldn't out him unless he wants. But yeah, were you were you here for our electromechanical class yesterday and the day before? We had a guest lecturer from Colorado come out, teach a class. And it's something we want to offer, again, for people who are interested. I'll find out how you can get on a list to know about it in the future. But if I see activity in the chat, that's true. So somebody asked, what's the original game? The original game is Valley Freedom from 1975. So the playfield layout was not changed. The electromechanical stuff did not change. It's just the cabinet, right? The play field. The play field changed a little bit. Only in the bonus, the center wheel thing, it had different scoring. That's all. But other than that, same layout. And, yeah, it's a Bally Freedom. You know, the three pinball manufacturers all made bicentennial pinball machines. Bally made Freedom. Williams made Liberty Bell and Spirit of 76 was by Gottlieb and I didn't know if Chicago coin ever did anything but they all they all made them in 75 so they come out 76 and yay raw pinball is American as apple pie so freedom is kind of kind of neat that in that if you buy a Bally replacement CPU board and you have to set the little dip switches this is zero zero zero one oh the first one so and what it's a little hard to see on the stream the the play field itself is also clear there's a there's a layer with art in it so it's you know there's stuff obscured but I mean like if you look here you can kind of see a bracket is mounted on the bottom side so you can you can sort of see through it. The lighting is kind of making it better for streaming, but lesser for being able to see through the play field. But go ahead, Michael. I think you've actually got it turned down. My brother Christian's a neon sculptor. Oh, it is kind of dim, yeah. And he made a special neon hue for us to light up the bottom of the cabinet. All right, I'm going underneath. Oh, I don't even know if that's going to be a good shot because there's a lot of layers. I got to do it. Is it working? So Michael, do you want to just play your ball and you keep talking? Oh, yeah, yeah, if you want. I got to do it. This is amazing. I got it. Yeah, there you go. Oh, look at that. Oh, got it. Let's see. What are these other questions? Yeah, so the whole reason maybe somebody missed this for doing this particular pin was because they made the first solid-state pinball off of this electromechanical game. And it was the first commercially successful programmed solid-state machine. Oh, this is scary. Just so I don't get into trouble, because everybody talks about the other Spirit of 76 by Mirco. And their game was solid-state, but it wasn't programmed. All it was, was they basically took an electromechanical game and replaced everything with logic gates and transistors. Oh, I didn't realize that. That's good to know. I didn't realize that. When you turn it on, it doesn't boot up. It comes on instantly. And you can be playing instantly when you turn on the Mirco Spirit of 76. But you couldn't take what they made and make another game programming a different set of logic. Right. Yeah. And the other thing was they took, I think they took flying carpet and basically copied the playfield. So it wasn't like it was a new design or anything, but it was unique. But Dally had already started the developing programmable system. And this was the first result of it was the, in 76, the Freedom, the Solid State Freedom. I think it used a 6800 processor Motorola. Oh, so it's a Mac. Or an Amiga or an Atari ST. All right. Oh, my God. Hey, Manu, your geek is showing. He is? If you start talking about Amigas. Did you have a video toaster? I did. I was actually a video toaster dealer. Oh, my. That was amazing. I went to Minneapolis to the New Tech University. Oh. Somebody pointed out that the back glass video is upside down. It is? Yeah. I didn't notice it either. Oh, wow. Thank you. Yeah, who was that? Let's see. I'll take donkey clunk it's upside down yeah oh no no no the back wait a minute is yeah it is god that's so funny that it's you can just not even notice yeah thank you oh nice eternal Grammy he's uh he he considered you being under the game, shooting the video up, he mentioned Danny Thomas and the glass coffee table. Let's not talk about it, but you can Google that. It's for adults to read. It sounds like an upscrit video. It's worse. It's worse. It's worse. Sorry to disappoint you. There's no Scotsman here. It's worse. Not that I'm encouraging people to look that up. I love how it was upside down. Grammy, that was amazing. Grammy is amazing. Here, let's... Where is it? Here we go. Rotate 180. Boom. Thank you. You're welcome, Manu. He didn't say anything. Come on. Yeah, the blood was rushing to my head, and I didn't even notice. All right. Back glass. How's this look, guys? Better? Should we start over? I don't know. It's good. So, Manu, if you started your stream over every time there was a mistake discovered... I would never stream. I don't know where I'm... Someone else should play. I am... All right. Start a new game or something. I don't know. I'm in the middle of... This is a new game? I'm just in the middle of goofing off. Wait. 36 to 77? Who said 77? I was playing both. Michael was telling a story, and we ended up not playing against each other. Oh, that's crazy. Yeah, there's something misaligned here. No, no, just make it go harder. I don't know if there's a piece missing. Is there supposed to be a gate there? It looks perfectly clear. I don't know. I should know. If you have spinners, you want to shoot them. Not like I'm doing right now. So, Michael, is the Exploratorium the only other place where one of your games is? Or is there? No, I actually sold the Exploratorium to Clear Pinball. Okay. One of them went. Oh, you don't know where it went. Okay. Oh, you're being raided. Thank you for the raid, Todd Russell. What's a Ralph? Raid? A raid. A raid. So someone else is running their stream, and they're ready to stop, and so they send all the viewers here. So we just got a bump of I don't know how many. There's a million people watching now. It never matters how many. Absolutely. So, you know, one really interesting thing, when the solid stake came out, it was – I think it kind of thrilled players because they didn't have to wait for the score motor to do the scoring since it was solid state. It was immediate And you also didn lose points if you hit one target and then another target right afterwards It would count them both So my first game was a solid state Sinbad Right And the feature of that game that you couldn get on the electromechanical is when you drop all the targets you collect the bonus, and you keep playing. So the EM doesn't do that. EMs that do collect bonus, there's usually a saucer or something that will stop the ball. So on Sinbad, you drop all the targets, you collect your bonus, and you keep playing. So while you're playing, you're hearing the chimes go for the bonus. And when it's done doing the bonus, it chimes all the stuff you did while you were playing, while you were collecting bonus. It's really crazy. And then you get all caught up. But yeah, that really just defies. But how do they do that electromechanically? They don't. So in the electromechanical version of the game, the targets don't reset and you don't collect your bonus in the middle of the ball. And that's when I really felt like, oh, they really dumbed down the version of the game to build an electromechanical version. There were operators who weren't ready to move to solid state. So Gottlieb and the other manufacturers continued making electromechanicals for a while that were sort of cousins of their early solid state games. Yeah, the Italians, the Spanish, and South America really wanted to keep electromechanical pinball going. So they didn't buy into it. They didn't buy into it. So, I mean, like the Gottliebs started with System 1. I'm trying to remember. It wasn't all of the titles that did an EM version, but you had Sinbad for sure, and they did a two-player Eye of the Tiger. There was Cleopatra, and then they did a two-player Pyramid or something, I think. Something Pyramid. This would be so – if there were only a place we could look online. No, but I mean, Charlie's Angels has an electromechanical. Spacewalk became Countdown, and that was... But Countdown doesn't have an EM countdown. Is there a countdown? It's called Spacewalk. And what about Close Encounters? Yeah, Close Encounters does have a mechanical. And there's a billiards... Oh, there is. Yeah, that's right. I've seen it. In fact, the... You guys don't... Manu, go have lunch. You can go have lunch. See you guys. Michael and I will talk for a few seconds here. Yeah. No, no. We – okay, you can look all this stuff up, but I really know Sinbad because I had the game at home and I played the solid state. And when I finally learned about electromechanical and I had the opportunity to play it and I saw the difference, I thought, wow, they really just dumbed it down to do that. They took Eldorado, became Eldorado. Now, Eldorado – no, Eldorado – well, they did do a solid state version of Eldorado called City of Gold. but that was a different situation they they took a play field that existed in the em era and created a solid state version of it these other ones i'm talking about like gottlieb puts out i don't know if they came out exactly at the same time but they they bring out sinbad one of their early solid state games it still had chimes where like charlie's angels has a soundboard which makes four different three different beeps um so it still had chimes but they also had an electromechanical version of Sinbad and Eye of the Tiger, which is the two-player version of that game. They didn't do a two-player solid state because it didn't change the cost that much. So another interesting solid state with this game, they added another chime in because now they could play a song because it was computer controlled. And so when you, just about every solid state game Bally did had four chimes, I think all of them that I can think of, before they went electronic to electronic sound. And they would all play a little song when you started it up. It was usually that horse race. Oh, okay. Yeah, because Gottlieb did a song as well. Yeah. Forget what they did. It's in my head and I can't get it out. By the way, I restarted everybody's sounds because I was on the other screen. I'm going to roll this puppy. So someone just play. I don't know if I can. You're allowed to. So we only have five digits. Is there a... Is there a light? Hey, Knockout, what's up? I say hi to some people. Just to let you guys know, we are here to say Hollywood. What's up, Hollywood? What's up, Garage? Motherfutter, my buddy, how you doing? Pacific Pinball Museum today, streaming the Visible Pinball Machine, a project that was put together by Michael Sheese, who's the executive director of the Pacific Pinball. We should say he's also founder. And founder. I don't know. Does he like the word founder? You know, he'll always be the founder. He can't not be the founder. Someday, someday, there could be another executive director, but he'll always be the founder. Okay, so. It's true. Oh, there he is. Oh, my God. He's right there. What was that? That's the sound of rolling it, my friend. That's a hundred thousand. That's the sound of rolling it. There's a, you can bring the other camera over. There's a little noisemaker. Son of a. Yeah, it's kind of cool. Oh, you're going to double roll it. You need to make it do that sound twice. roll it let's see yeah so we could I mean we're gonna look at the back of this which is a little weird looking but this board in here so normally this would be you know double wood there's there's two things of wood here so you have the tilt ball which you can see we didn't Center which is one of the things you need to do when you move a game but we as long as the game tilts we're not worried here. So, tilt knob. Up here you can't really see it, there's a ball that rolls in here. It's a tilt that is activated if you try to put something like an ashtray under the front legs and make the game less speed. Backward fuse block. This is the counter, how many games have been played. That's the noise maker I was talking about so that thing just makes that yeah yeah and uh there's a this is a a plug that's just here well i mean you can unplug you can take these pieces apart right so there's a jones plug um and and then this is another this is another sort of a slam tilt sort of a slam to the side switch here. Michael's opening it up for a moment. And I was like, there's a feature back here I wanna show, but I'm not, I guess we could slow tilt it to turn the delay relay on. What can you guys still see that? What's Michael gonna show? Let me switch to this, cause that's gonna be a little bit bigger. So I wanna show this, the score motor here. And, yeah. So there's a little switch on top. It's a homing switch. So when it rotates around and hits that part of the cam, that switch opens and stops the motor. But as soon as you start the motor, it closes and it keeps the motor running. So all you've got to do is tap it, and you can see it run. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to say, or Mono could shoot from the side and do something you can't do in any other pinball machine. You can only shoot through the door. Yeah. All right. It's funny. We forget. It does look kind of cool from, you know, when you're looking through. Oh, yeah. No, no, no. It looks cool. Yeah. Okay. Oh, and my classic tilt cam. Yeah. I don't need it. No. You could just be on the outside there looking at it. Okay, so here's a feature I wanted to show you guys. This is a really cool thing that they did. Leave that open, I think, because I want to slam tilt. So if you've played, I think only Bally did this. In a Bally Electromechanical, when you slam tilt, it turns off, and it stays off for a short period, and then it turns back on. Well, in a solid-state game, how do you measure a short period? Well, they came up with something really simple and elegant. An electromechanical game. You said solid-state. Oh, did I? I meant electromechanical game. How do you measure a short period? And there are games that have little circuits of capacitors and stuff. So in this game, look back here, there's a relay with a light bulb. So that is a flasher lamp. They're usually used in the back glass to highlight the name of the game or something like that. So a flash lamp works. It's a twinkle lamp. A twinkle lamp? Yeah, a flash lamp. Oh, a flash lamp is a bright light. Yeah. So it's a twinkle lamp. it turns when it when its energy when it receives voltage it turns on for a short period and then off and then it starts to regulate itself turning on and off but when it first turns when it first gets voltage it turns on for a short period so when you slam tilt this game hopefully we can fine there is oh wait are we ready hey see it's actually did it oh are we on the wrong one yes that's the over-the-top one okay hey I'll rock off did it go though I didn't get the lights off it's ready yeah sorry ready yeah Wow but it's weird it didn't turn everything off we must have something out of adjustment in the game. Yeah, probably. So, by the way, the one you were on, Manu, that is the over the top relay. So when you do roll this game and the buzzer goes off, the length of the buzzer is controlled by that bulb turning on and then switching into its twinkle state. So that's the kind of thing where without a clear pin you just never see that. Yeah. You know, people know the tilt-bob a little bit. Do that one more time. Yeah, yeah. But that would be happening in a game in a closed cabinet. Right, and it should have turned all the lights off. It's a little weird that that's not working. I'm sorry. But, yeah, that would happen inside a closed cabinet. It wasn't – the only reason there's a light bulb there is they're sitting around in a room, and they're going, how are we going to create a short delay? Yeah. And someone probably went, what if we ran it through a twinkle bulb? I mean, brilliant. It's a brilliant idea. I've actually used that little phenomenon in a few exhibits that I've built. Oh, they're right behind you. Yeah. The thing that's cool about the twinkle bulb is the way it works is it's a bimetallic strip that's got two contacts on it. And they're normally closed. So when you turn power onto it, it lights up the light bulb. But it heats up really quick. and one of the bi-metallic strips heats up and it bends. Because when it heats up it's bi-metallic so it's like a thermostat switch. So it heats up. So it's got two different metals sandwiched together, one that heats faster than the other. So it shrinks and it ends up moving. It ends up opening the switch and then it cools down real quick and then it closes again. So they're usually in the backbox for attract mode. They're the lights that blink the title. Okay. That's how those work. Pretty simple. That's some pretty Rube Goldberg-ish type of stuff. I know. That's some of the stuff I love when I've learned about the game. It's just these elegant little solutions to problems they came up with. Oh, I need to ban somebody. Uh-oh. Are we done with that game? Are we going to fire up another game? Let's fire up another one. Okay. Three people, right? Yeah. Let's do this. One. I just hit them three times. Two. Did I do it right? And three. Is that right? Yeah, I got three up, right? How do I know I got three up? Well, OK. Well, we have a light bulb out. Oh, I see. So it should it should be lit here. The Michael, there's some things missing on the back glass. So something I've noticed on the clear pin back glasses is there are there are numbers like ball in play light numbers that show only when their light is on and there's no highlighting, whatever, that stuff just came out clear on the clear pin back glasses. So like the ball and play lights, I have to kind of reach around over here so I can point. So the ball and play lights are here. The light bulbs are there. But the number that's normally obscured by paint with or without a blocker behind it aren't on this so um we need to like the match numbers yeah also they're they're the lights come on but you don't know what what's being lit okay so am i playing should i just play some pinball yeah can i invite our buddy jim upstairs sure monu any any objection Yes, a sign of release. Okay. All right, I'll go second. I keep unplugging my camera here. It's still in your pocket. Do you want some tape? No. No. Well, maybe. All right. Freedom, what you got for me? could you get different bulbs for different durations like old christmas lights i've never i don't know i mean you wouldn't want to change the well i guess you wouldn't have to use the same socket base you could just wire in whatever you wanted if they work the same way i suppose all that's missing is a pneumatic tube hey bass tone what's up buddy how are you All right, so I think I want spinners. If I can hit the freaking ball. Oh my God. Step one, get the ball in the player. That's a good step to follow. This thing really gets moving though. I want spinners and I want drop targets. That's what I want. Now, what do the arrows mean when it spins over the arrows? Different things. What was that? I think we got a score. Yeah. and I think I got a hundred thousand oh you know why that didn't like no I think he only punched off two games all right really yeah I wasn't sure what I did all right I mean I David you're out maybe you're out David all right just I'm out Just deal with it, okay? And I lost my ride home. But that's okay. I got to try and beat me. I'm going to go have some fun. Oh, my God. Is Michael going to beat me? Your score is kind of the same whether you play it or not. Is Michael going to beat me? Possibly. I have played this a lot. Ooh, look at that save. Good save. You must be the Monopoly guy! Hey Arthur, how you doing? This is a special stream at the Pinball Museum in beautiful Alameda, California. And this is a beautiful game. It is completely clear. It is the visible ball. is completely clear. It is the visible pinball that was built by the guy who's playing it right now. And Wade and my brother. And Wade and his brother. And the guy who's also kicking my ass right now. There we go. Thank you for the follow. What is his name? Sveds? Sveds Leet? Hmm. Alright, let me make sure... There we go, now I've got one more target to go. Then it's kind of like Evel Knievel gives you... Oh, okay. I think it'll give me... There we go. Okay, now what's it going to give me? Extra ball! Oh no! That's not good for me. That means you plunge again, doesn't it? It does. Sorry. That's okay, I'm here just to make the stream look good. I'm not really... Oh, man, he's ripping those spinners. Oh, I see. It's a little tricky to see on the clear version, but you can see the wheel gives... I see. Yeah, it's hard to read the label. Yeah, it is. So when the wheel spins... I should put another line in there, I guess, so you can actually see that. It points to an award. Yeah. And that award is collected how? All right. On bonus, et cetera. Hey, can we do this gem here? I sure you can I think we've been at the long big thing that we did that nine hour thing that I can't remember yeah how are you good to see you thanks like right yeah your buddy here so my bus Jim came on board when it was just this room and he and I ran it for... it was Lucky Juju back then. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lucky Juju. Yeah, we ran it together. He took Friday night, I did Saturday night. Wow. And then we just kept running it. It was a secret little place to play pinball. How many games were here at that point? Twenty. We had 19 games and then one cocktail on wheels that we would roll out so we could say, we have 20 games! Dang. Yeah. That was impressive. That's nothing now. Now we're going to have 20 games down. Can we restart and do a Grammy Airplay? I mean, remember, your donations are – no, we're not restarting. Okay. We're going to do – we're going to finish this. Can we restart? No, I got a deficit. I got a deficit. I'm nice to Michael until we play pinball. Then I'm going to be mean. Reminder, your donations to the Pacific Pinball Museum are tax deductible. Thank you, Grammy, and posting that link up there to PacificPinball.org. You know, some tables have mini playfields. You can do an entire double-decker playfield since it's transparent. You could. You could. The playfield's the hardest part to make, though. The playfield is, yeah. The cabinets are easy. Well, they're easier. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do, Michael? Oh, crap. Spinner! Nope, no spinner. I need a spinner Oh there you go It's only worth 10 but it's points I'll take points I'll take points over no points Oh this looks bad Another lazy spinner And spinterrupted So that's a term we coined When a ball rips the spinner But then it comes back and stops it Spinner interruptus It's a spinterruption Spinter rupture. Yeah. All right. Wow. What am I doing? Oh, there's my bonus. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, he got the double bonus shuffle. The ballet double bonus shuffle. That's better than the harlot shuffle. That's what I'm looking for. I'm sorry. No, that's all right. That's supposed to be internal. I'm still picking your bottom. I know. That's supposed to be internal monologue. What ball are we? All right. And Jim's probably going to mop the floor with this. He probably will. He's, don't put any money on it with Jim. Don't put any money on me. Wedge head junkie, that is brilliant. Oh, that's Larry. Guys, great presentation, but could you please make yourselves more clear? What, what, what? Oh, I get it. So Larry's part-time job? He's a comedian. Oh, okay. All of you should wear chroma cam. I don't know if Larry Lee needs it. Could you please make yourselves more clear? I love it. I love it. Nope, nope. You know, that's a good point. The ultimate thing that I wanted to do was have a visible pinball being played by a life-size visible man. So if Jeremy has the idea next time we all have to wear the chroma key and so we can all just be like these floating heads I like it. Let's move this guy to another location. Oh, damn it. So, so actually, so actually, these guys are going to be in constant action when people are scoring. I can't really get that high. This is fifth ball. It's either your last ball or Uh oh The lights are incorrect I think it's last ball 39 to 49 I think you can do it I believe in you man I'm putting money on you That's just like anything but a house ball Oh trust me this knows how to house ball You know that Nope didn't work I can still see you Alright here we go I need that saucer up top There we go That gives me something. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Oh, no. Here we go. Spinner. Oh, that scores a value. I don't know what. And a spinner. Oh, Michael, look out. Look out. MPT in the house. Oh, it's done. It's done. Yeah. You did it. Without bonus. Oh, he did. He skunked it. All right. But that's only one. All right. We're not done. We're not done. Now there's four professional pimples. ball players here. Wait, are they waiting in the parking lot? No, they're right here. Invite them in. Oh, wait. We have one more ball. You guys didn't finish the game. Do you want to finish the game or do you want to start? Oh, do I have an extra ball? Oh, no. Did I play? No, I'm the second player. I'm first player. Did I get an extra ball? No, I might have miscounted the... It's player two. All right. Yeah. He wants to find . It's a walk off, though. Yeah, it is. It's a walk off. It is. I'm not doing that. Yeah. Chris, keep adding the insult to the injury there. Now game over. Oh, yeah. Now it's game over. OK. I know. I wouldn't do that to you. How bad do you want to get? There's one. There's two. There's three. There's four. So it's like one and two are out. The three and four are out. OK. All right. All right. Should we let our? I always do that. All right. So let our new guest go first. Oh, yes. Yes. Joe? Ben? What's that? Oh, OK. This is Jim Gruber. You all know him. Everyone knows me. Everybody knows Jim. Everyone knows me. Employee number two. I'm going to plug his band Cleveland. Should look it up on Google Cleveland. Cleveland. Plug the, uh. There we go. Where's the money shot? That's the camera. Cleveland. Okay, all right. We'll leave that there for later. Not to be confused with any logo that looks like that. Yeah, yeah, definitely. So let them know what they're seeing from the back is... Yeah, someone else can narrate my game if they want. Yeah, appropriate. Color commentary, oh. Well, I got a big... Those are scoring relays. So they're responsible for making the score reels turn, the chimes make noise. They also come into play if you win a game. That's why there's a lot going on. It's not just turning a score reel. I'm going to blame talking on my horrible ball. Am I player four? We're player three. I'm the hammer. Cleveland rocks. Yeah. How's everybody doing? Yeah. You're the only one who can do anything and watch the chat at the same time. Wow. Okay. Takes a little practice. I know. It's difficult. I've already told you I need this screen down here so that I'm not having to show my nostrils to the camera. Yeah. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. That was almost good. Maybe I'll try bringing readers. I've never tried playing with readers. What's a reader? Reader glasses? Yeah. Oh, okay. Where am I? You'll know what readers are when you get there. Am I there? I'll probably be there. Michael keeps his around his neck. I might be there. Readers. Can you play pinball with those on? Sure. Because I can't see the screen. Like I have to keep doing this. Yeah. Oh, I can see it. I can't see close. So we were also talking about how this is the stream with the other camera where everyone gets to see a ring. Whoa. I saw that one coming. You have to load this up with Power Balls. 180. Yeah. Yeah. That was really. I am. That's what you get when you put a couple of professional pinball players together. If you guys think that we're playing not very good, let these guys have it. You'd be 100% correct. Yeah, please like, subscribe, and share if you think I'm not doing well. We handicapped ourselves. I broke this thumb. I'm too, right? Yeah. Played worse. Sweet as. To follow Michael's idea, maybe you can find Slim Goodbody leotards online. Remember Slim Goodbody? Yeah. Oh, my God. That was the creepiest dude in the world. I don't know who that is. He wore a bodysuit that looked like the innards of a human. Oh, damn. Oh, that was. Oh, I like that. No, that dude was creepy. He was creepy, though? Yeah. No, no, no. He was anatomically correct. It wasn't. It was creepy. Meanwhile, David's on a chair. There you go. David's trying to catch up with me. We're playing the dollar point. So my complaint is there's nasty ball hop on both inlanes, but the way you fix it is by driving these in deeper, and you can't do that on the plastic. We'd have to really, it's like the holes just aren't quite deep enough. if I tried it, I could shatter, I could put a crack through the whole thing. So we just live with the ball hop. We're playing a showpiece. I was going to say, this doesn't have to be the best playing game in the museum. It plays, though. It plays great. It's just the ball hop. People are watching the stream. They're seeing the ball hop. Why don't they fix the ball hop? Ball hop is hard to fix on this game. I know how to fix it. I know. 16 on this game, big deal. Very big deal. Uh-oh. That did, okay. Oh, what was that? How was that? Crazy. Oh, this is a weird thing. What others call, some people call a disaster. I call it an opportunity. I'm playing and you guys are playing like you're playing. I get to complain about the ball hopping. I get to complain about that drop. Maybe that's what, that'd be good. It's just a drop. Oh, no catch. No catch. You guys are making me look good. There you go. It's a gimme, dude. Oh, wait, it's me. I think I'm... Is it? Michael, wait. You were one. Yeah. Yeah, you're one. Okay, I go post-hammer. I know that. Yep. All right. I kind of lost my lead. I should shut up. This thing looks like it could catch a fire. Why is this one unplugged? Well, Michael... Oh, these three are unplugged. Yeah. All three of those are unplugged. Because I know the answer. So they're for coining. And these games are all in free play. So we don't do the coining. But they would normally be plugged in. There's a problem we never finish troubleshooting. Yeah. There you go. Oh, tilt. Hey, the tilt works. You can see it right there. The tilt works. Still swinging. Okay, that was me. I did that. What happened, Zen Boy? There's been activity. A lot. I can't read it all. Tell me if there's anything there I need to respond to. No, we covered it all. Thank you guys for joining us today, actually. This was a stream that we really had to think about how to do. Even still, you need to come down to the museum to see this thing in action because it's pretty amazing to see all the clear plexi. Well, not plexi, but clearness. Is this me now? It's whatever plastic Michael chose and doesn't tell anybody. It's pretty sick. It's a secret. It's a proprietary, special plastic, unobtainable... Ancient Chinese secret. Very expensive. Hey, Michael, how heavy is this pinball machine? 400 pounds at least. This machine is heavier than other electromechanicals. It's heavier than some of the heaviest solid-state games. Thank you, Jersey Jack. I'm sure there are games that are heavier. But, yeah, it is. And you can't, you know, we always have to remember you can't just throw a pin dolly under it. Yeah. because it's not constructed the same. It can't take the same stresses as a regular wood frame cabinet. You know, you'd probably get away with it, and it wouldn't be a problem, but it's got a neon tube in the bottom, yeah, and that's what I worry about because neon. So it's a good question. It's a tough question. It's an easy and tough question. How many pinballs at the museum? how many pinballs at the museum I guess specifically how many pinball machines are at this Webster Street yes in this location so I think we're up to a hundred I think we are at a hundred I think we're at a hundred I don't know if we counted the two in there that are not electrified they're custom games so a hundred okay and the reason I you know why I worded it that way I'll follow it up with how many pinball machines do you think are under the ownership of the Pacific Pinball Museum's world? Let's say ownership or stewardship. Stewardship. Stewardship. 1,300. 1,300. 1,200. You said 1,300? 1,300. They're in a big facility that looks like the thing from Indiana Jones. That's unique. House ball. Unique machines. We've been selling off duplicates. We've been keeping COVID. Is this me? Yes. I'm three. Yeah, you're after me. Oh, JoeJ12, welcome to the theater. Still drains the ball the same. That's right. It's clear. Oh. It certainly does. No clear apron. Should have done a clear in. Yeah. That was the one thing that was really hard to do. Yeah. But you could just make a clear thing to go here and here. I can't leave, but I really want to leave now. Oh, wait. We did that on the other one. The surf champ. Yeah, the surf champ does have that. Surf champ wasn't . No shame in that. I had a good ball one. One good ball a game, and it was . The warehouse is so cool, I wish it was open to the public. One great ball a game is what it takes. And then all the other ones have to be good. You can't have one good ball. El Rocco has been to the .. Can I tilt it? I tilted it. I don't believe it. Rocco's been anywhere else? You know, it's like in that movie when Gant gets shot, you know, 48 hours a day. I can't believe it. I got shot. I got shot. I got shot. I love it. The tilt got an obvious answer. How many people in the chat came to the one big show we were allowed to do at our warehouse? It was called Shoot the Moon 2016. Well, I was asking the chat. I know, but I was just chatting. Was Rucko there? I would assume that Leslie was there. All these guys. Oh, she came for a sale. That's right. We've opened it up for a sale when you can see it sort of in its storage configuration. Hand raised. Cool. Awesome. That was Lawrence. Yeah. All right. Good job, guys. We set that up to be an installation for multiple shows. And then there was a big warehouse fire. And everyone, no, not ours. But everyone got very worried about people being in warehouses. And, I mean, I realize it's just the way it had to be. But, I mean, there was nothing unsafe about our setup. All our cords had been checked for temperature. Yeah. It's a shame. Let's see. All right. All right. You should have a shenanigans card on file just in case, you know, and then just pull it on that guy. Hey, hang on a minute. Here, that's shenanigans. I called it. Yeah. Shenanigans card. I'm going to do another walk around with the camera that's over there so you guys can see some more. It was not the Pottery Barn neighbors. No, I'm talking about the Ghost Ship Fire. Ball 5. The Ghost Ship Fire just made everybody very aware of warehouses being filled with people. And, you know, we had our exits marked. We had emergency lighting. We had no overloaded power cords. we had it was it was not a situation that was going to cause a problem but if there had been a problem somebody would have had to answer and no one wanted to so make that sweet sweet noise mama I just need to make sure you tilt before you You beat me. Oh, look, look, skill shot. Oh, crap, that was dumb. It's just going to come back. Oh, no. That was the worst skill shot. I know. Not that you're the worst. Oh, come on. Bonus. Bonus, bonus, bonus, bonus, bonus, bonus. Oh, no, you beat me. Bonus, bonus, bonus, bonus. Is this the last ball? This is the last ball. Is this it? But you did not roll it yet. No, I didn't. I want to hear the noise. Who's the fourth player? Me. Okay, you got 51, bro. You can do it. You can do it. Michael, listen. You can do it. Sorry, I'm blinded by your score. All right, yeah, of course I can do it. I have complete confidence in myself. Don't call it a comeback. He's been here for years. Oops. I'm not going to bounce it. I didn't realize. I'm going to go four. He's got a Konami code. So I have to make... Wait a second. I was playing your ball. Oh, was that mine? Damn it. Did I get extra balls? You did get extra balls. I mean, I just added to your score. Damn it. Do we have a light out? Why are we not... So same player, shoot again. We have to see if that ball's... If that light's coming on. So what we're going to do, Michael, is we're going to take... I was at 51. You got nine plus this. Just subtract that. Yeah, but what about, and you got the 1,000 that he got? You didn't get to play your extra ball. I'm sorry. Wait, don't we still have another? I blew it. I blew it. I demand a rematch. So I just have to make one little quick comment. So I mentioned there was a warehouse fire. And the chat doesn't remember the fire. Oh, really? And I'm like, I've never forgotten the Ghost Ship Fire because of how it impacted us, because we couldn't do what we wanted to do. I should say, if we had thrown a bunch of money into a warehouse we're renting, we could have opened. But who puts $100,000 or $200,000 into a rental warehouse to have a pinball show a couple of times a year? We're not sure we'd ever make that money back. We don't know how long we can be at the warehouse. So I don't want to get into more than that. But it was just kind of funny that that's not forefront in everyone's mind anymore, and it is still very much forefront in mine. I think of it all the time. Not only that, there were a couple people that used to be upstairs that practiced electronic music. They both died in that fire. We knew them. Oh, Chelsea and Travis. Yeah, Chelsea and Travis. They were performing, I think, when it happened. so it hit close to home on that one too. Wow, I didn't know that. Yeah, I remember going over there and looking at it at the fire. They were a block away from Acme Fire Extinguishers. Yeah, and the fire department. And the fire department was right there. I mean, what a shame. It was horrible. All right, I'm going to take one more look. So for the new people who showed up, we're streaming this beautiful Freedom Pinball Machine, which is also aka the visible pinball machine that was created by our friends here at the Pacific Pinball Museum. And I have – can I do this? Yeah, I can do this. Oh, that's the back glass. Let's look at the topper. So you can see the back glass. Somebody go stand behind it. And Michael's going behind it. So it's funny. There's a question. There was a question in the chat. Why are two pop bumpers red and one's blue? That's cool. And I'm looking up online just to kind of confirm. I think it's because a white bump bumper is boring, so they wanted to highlight the red and blue. Only every picture I look at has two blues and a red opposite this one. So I don't know. Michael, do you remember? Did this game come with these pop bumpers? Why does it have that? Well, the other pop bump, the other games I see. Why sky blue? How do you make a rainbow? Actually, you know what? This one has two reds and a blue with the blue in a different place than ours. So I don't know if it's maybe every game came out a little different. That doesn't make a lot of sense. I would say the reason there are two red and a blue is because if one was just white, it would look kind of weird. And I'm sure they were going for the red, white and blue. Yeah, pretty sure that's this. This was the we mentioned it earlier. but for people who weren't here, this was one of the Bicentennial 1976 releases. That were made in 75. Yeah. Yeah, well, you had to get ready. Everyone was prepping. I mean, I remember in San Francisco, the buses were red, white, and blue for the year. Yeah. Everything was red, white, and blue. The toilet paper was red, white, and blue. People were like crazy. Wow. Yeah, Bicentennial cuckoo. Yeah, they had to comment. Were you there, or do you just know that? No, I was there. The thickness of this plastic or whatever it is, it's ridiculous. Well, it's three-quarter inch, just like the cabinets are. Wow. It's crazy. So that's a good point. People don't really know the thickness of the wood in the cabinet. Now you can actually see the thickness of the cabinet. It's to scale, one to one. And that makes it really, you know. Well, you guys, it was really fun getting beat. Next time I need to get trounced, I'll come around. Yeah. Should we leave this here? Yeah, sure. Here, I have a sparkly one, too. Ooh, a sparkly one. Oh, you know, Manu was looking for stickers for his streaming rig. Sparkly. You need a little sparkle in your life. All right. All right, thanks, Jeff. Have fun. All right. See you, bud. actually thank you bud good job thanks actually I want to show you guys one more thing which are pretty cool most cabinets made of 18 millimeter plywood I'm gonna show this millimeter you know pinball is American and we use inches sorry I had to say that 18 millimeter no because 20 25 millimeters is an inch I I think so yeah that might be right 0.708 you thought it was three-quarter right it's three quarters three quarters okay so that's 0.75 yeah oh yeah 0.75 inches yeah 0.75 inches yeah so let's see Manu's giving you a little bit of a look of the decor in the room here so this was This was the original room where you started. You had one room started here And this is the future location of the the 12 game lineup of members choice games we did a poll a few months ago to ask the members what games do they want to see come back or come here that you haven't been here and we've been working on those games to bring them in and have them all ready to go there's my lunch sitting on scuba please don't leave your food or drinks on the game. And so, yeah, we'll have a different set of 12 games in here soon. Yeah. Oh, where is this located? We are in Alameda, California, just across the bay from San Francisco, across a bridge or through a tube from Oakland. So we're in Alameda. You can just look us up online. Right there. Oh, look at that. 15, 10 weeks? There's it. He has it. It's a macro. PPM. A macro. I got one for PPM. We're open six days a week. We're closed on Mondays. Monday nights are when we fix the games here. Let's see. What are we open? 11 to? To 9. We open 11, and then are we open later on the weekends? 11 to 9, and then on Friday and Saturday nights, we're open until 10. And the way it works here is the games are all in free play. You pay $22 to get in for the day. You have in and out privileges. There's all kinds of food options nearby. Or you could just jump in your car, go wherever you want, come back, play some more. We have a couple of games up in front that are on Coindrop. So you don't need to pay entry to play those games. But, you know, you get a chance to, I mean, even if you're not very good at pinball, you get to play a lot of pinball for $22. Because you just keep playing. You can also learn a lot. And you don't have to pay to come visit our museum. We're a non-profit 501 . We let anybody come in, and you can read all the material. But if you want to play the games, we ask for an admission, because that's how we keep it going. But you can spend an hour or two hours just reading all the information that we put up. We have two exhibit rooms where we have oddballs, is showing right now, which is just a strange collection of innovative machines. And the other one is called Pointy People, and that deals with modern art in pinball that happened in 1965 is when it started. Has it ever ended? Probably not. Hi, Hot Dog. Thank you, everybody, for joining. We're going to do one more. Okay. One more three-player. I think you were cheated out of a win, though. I agree. All right. So David, you're going to be collateral damage right now. I'm sorry. What does that mean? Do I go first? Yes. Okay. There you go. So I have to be very confident to be able to do a walk-off when you go first. I heard that. I processed it later. That is my goal. I want to do so well that I'm like, oh, can you just drain that ball for me? It's like an interracial kiss on a 70s sitcom What was the first one? Sammy Davis Jr. Not that I know of Archie Bunker kissed Sammy Davis Jr. That was not the first interracial kiss on TV It was a pretty big one Holy cow, you don't know which one I'm talking about Oh, oh, Star Trek Yeah Yeah. Yay! Which couple had the first? Oh, oh. Which couple? Liz Shatner and Beyonce. Oh, you made me do that! Oh my god. Michael, you're up. I can't believe you tilted me. You tilted me. I had to save it for my wife. OK, so here's the other. So who said I'm a rock? Michelle Nichols. Yes. Okay, now, first couple that had a bedroom with one bed that they shared on TV? Oh, that's a tough one. First couple on TV that shared a bed? I think I know the answer. Actually, we should let the chat. We should let the chat. Oh, they probably said Star Trek before me. What about Spencer Tracy? Oh, the Flintstones. Spencer Tracy? I think they had separate beds. This is coming to dinner. Did Adam's family have one bed? Who was the woman in it? I know what I'm thinking. What's the question? You guys are schooling me. Which, let's say, primetime TV couple was the first to share a bed that you could see on TV? I know this. Because, I mean, Lucy and Desi. No. Lucy and Desi, they were actually married, and they had two beds on TV. Hop Docs is Adam's family. David Bison says the Flintstones. I'm like, he's... So Flintstones, it could... That might be right. Mary Kay and Johnny? No, leave it to be that they did not have one bed. If we even saw their bedroom. No, we never did. We never... I don't know if we did. So I thought... I thought the answer was Brady Bunch. They had one bed. Yeah. I don't... Am I one? Am I up? The whole family slept in that one bed, right? Am I up? Yeah, you're up. I'm really missing the player up lights. Wait, what's that? I missed that. No, what did you say? The whole family slept in that one bed. Yeah. The Grady Bunch, right? The Grady Bunch. Yeah, she was. Right, Lucy couldn't stay pregnant. Dick Van Dyke show. Does somebody have enough? Does somebody have enough? Oh, that might be right. Is Dick Van Dyke, is that right? Can someone look up the right answer so we don't have to do that and just go ahead and, oh wait, am I scoring for in the right place? Is it me? Yep. Hey, does somebody have enough points to do the Brady Bunch redemption? Oh, did I? I won't even be able to hear anything. No, you can watch it later. Oh, I can play it later? We'll watch it later. Is there like... There we go, there we go. Wait, wait, stay here. Oh, stay here? Do I get to be on the Brady Bunch? You get to be, yeah. Oh, man. Ready? I'm Alice. There you are. What? Thank you, Flipstream. How do you do that? Oh, this is me. Thank you, Flipstream. Oh, Flipstream, whenever you get a chance, take a picture of Michael right now. With an exclamation P. Boom. Ooh, yeah. Rock that spinner. Yeah. Oh, you know what? Someone said this. Okay, it's the person who said Mary Kay and Johnny were the first couple to share a bed. Did they look that up? No, that was Flipstream, which you probably know. And he knew that? I don't even know the show. No, Flipstream knows a lot. Oh, Mary Kay and Johnny is the name of the show. Yeah. I don't even know this show. I'm 100% sure Flipstream did look that up. I hope my question was interesting because I didn't know the answer. You spurred a lot of chat there. I think you automatically get double bonus on third ball. Oh, on third and fifth ball. Is that lit? The green? I think it is. All right, let me make sure I'm player three. Uh-oh. Crap. Yep. Oh, crap. Someone said I had trouble hitting the spinners. I don't know that I was aiming for the drop targets, if that makes a difference. Thanks for showing up, bye! How ugly did the pinball museum build this see-through machine? I guess we have people joining us later. You have to tell the whole story again, Michael. Yeah, we have built a total of five clear pinball machines. There's the first one we built, actually, I guess technically six, because we built the prototype clear playfield for the surf camp and that lives with Dan Fonce. But built three surf champ clear pins and two freedom, one EM and one solid state. And two of those, two of the surf champ pins were bought by the Exploratorium. And one of them, is that the Exploratorium? And the other one I think is in New York. and you did this in a collaboration with Wade Krause and you know when I was listening to you tell the story the first time you said artist Wade Krause I talked to him and talked to him about that title he thinks artisan is more what he does and I don't remember if that was the term he came up with or I said what about artisan because he feels like he's not creating new There we go. Like new art. He's building things. So same player shoot again. I'm noticing it lit now. Double bonus too. There was a televised play, You in Your Small Corner, that had an interracial kiss six years before Star Trek. Oh! Oh, man. Televised, was it like primetime nationwide TV? I know, but David Paisan is another epic trivia person. Oh. Black man and a white woman kissing. Where am I? Wow. I don't know if anybody's been keeping score, but we're getting our asses kicked. All right. Oh, Michael. Damn. Yeah. Okay. We're going to do something about that. We've got to bring it. We've got to bring it. You just trip him when he walks next. Put your foot out. Oh! Ouch. I've never seen it do that. Do you see it? Do you see it, Michael? It jumped up here. Oh. I've never seen that before. Do you want to catch it? It's going to go in the shooter lane. Yeah. Oh, it should. Ha! Michael doesn't want to see that. No, you didn't want to see that effect. That was epic. Wow. Okay. Wow, Monty. Broke the game. I'm going to save that replay. Broke the machine. If I still have the replay, I think I waited too long to get that replay. I know, right? I deserve that one. Ah! Hang on a second. I want to see if... It's my turn. I want to see if we can see that replay. I want to see if you can see it. I might have waited too long. Oh, I waited too long. Yeah, so it's... Look, you got a replay of my fan pointing at me. Yeah, that's the replay show. Well, anyway. If only this whole thing were being recorded. I have a joke redemption where it's like the glass just shatters. Here, someone... Not the Invisiglass, please. Yeah, I know. Yeah, we put the special glass on for today's stream. I guess it was stuck on a plastic. Oh! No, it was a bounce. No, it jumped and it just went into a place where the ball should never go. It was amazing. It's you. No, it's you. You're two. You're two. You're two. You're right. You're winning. You want my score? No, no, no. I will happily give you my crap score. What have we got? Ball three? I got time. I'll eat your most great ball. I feel like I can do it. I feel like I can do it. So what else do we need to say as we start to wrap up? I don't know. So people who joined late, there were lots of stories about the building of the game early on. These things get restreamable later, so you can always go back and watch it again. I know. And we did an overview of a lot of things that you can see through the cabinet with the handheld camera. If you guys go back early in the stream, look at the VOD. I actually get underneath the game, like underneath. Like Danny Thomas. Now I really got to check that out. Yeah. You'll think I shouldn't have mentioned that. I don't like that reference at all. Oh! You built this. You built this. Yeah, I'll turn off the geeks later. Oh, no! I have a chance for the buzzer. Yeah. David, thank you for the sub for five months. Hey, do you want to put the camera on the other bulb for if the buzzer goes off? Oh, it's too late. I can't believe it. Oh, you almost did. Oh! Michael, look at your ending score. Oh, wait, no, no, I'm looking at the wrong one. I thought you exactly rolled it. No, no. That would be too. That would be amazing. Yeah, pretty amazing. Hey, the fishbowl. All right, so you're last. You have a chance. I don't have a chance. Keep it alive. I don't have a chance. You can always have a chance. You can play one solo game. You've got to believe me. No, I don't care if I lose. I'm sorry. I was talking about Mickey Mouse. But we want you to roll. Thank you, Minnie! I'll be Mickey, you be Minnie. Alright, 20. I need 90. Yeah, you're Minnie. Okay, here we go. Alright, I'll be Minnie. We don't need no chipmunk effect. I'll be Minnie. We can do this. No, no! Now they need the chipmunk effect. Alright, I thought it was coming. Oh, I guess we're supposed to keep talking otherwise there's nothing good. You want to talk? Our voices are being modified on the screen right now. How does that kick in? Oh, somebody does a redemption. Oh my god. Yep. So Michael now he's... I don't know how that stuff works on Twitch. I think it means a lot of those kids get to eat. AHAHAHA! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Oh, I was playing yours. You weren't playing mine. But it is a buzzer. So I got an extra ball. Oh my god. No, that's okay. I just wanted to hear that buzzer. So the buzzer went? Was there one? I had the ball, I had the ball. You rolled the game. I did not roll the game, you shot. You rolled the game. You shot your mouth. The other one playing went rolled. All right, I'm sorry, Michael. That's all right. I gave it to you. I gave it to you. You get zero if you put out a turn. Other than go away. I'll give you zero. All right. Let's see how much of a hill I can climb. Oh, yeah. Sometimes you just got to let the ball do what it's going to do. Nicely. Nicely played. Oh, no. That's pretty deadly. You know, you should put the camera on the spinner switch and let people see how a spinner works before we end. Or you just want to call it, huh? Yeah, we got to start to break it down. All right. Next time. Yeah. In another 10 years when we do the clear pin again. This was great. This was great. So, yeah, there's another one of these at the Exploratorium. Yeah, the Surf Champ is there. So what's coming up is we're going to have this one. I'm still working on the solid state one because I blew up a lot of the drivers on it. This one plus the solid state version and a lot of info will be in the stem room when it's done. Okay. And you'll be able to compare apples to apples because the games are identical. And you can see exactly what they did. You know, they took out – the play field is pretty much the same. It's pretty much empty. Yeah. But the play field, the only difference is there's diodes on the coils. That's about it. Other than that, they're pretty much the same. Do you think it's still absolutely necessary for pinball machines to take up the same amount of foot space, real estate nowadays that they don't – you're shipping around empty cabinets basically. So – This is way different. You wouldn't want to change the dimensions of the play field, right? So you still – you want that. If you were to reduce the cabinet much, you also don't want to change the feel. The weight of the machine. The weight, the heft of the game. Just in terms of player feedback when you're hitting it, I mean, you could feel some of the games are just, like, really have a lot more movement. Yeah. So, in fact, we've never displayed it, but when the manufacturers were switching to solid state, there was a concern that the games would be too light. And were they worried about them just walking away? They were worried people would walk off with them. And Williams made a steel cabinet for Rancho. I think. So we have it. We've never shopped it out or brought it in yet. But there's a game with a metal cabinet that they thought was going to be how they kept it heavy enough to not walk away. Think about that when you move a Jersey Jack game. Okay. Then they're very heavy. They absolutely need to be the same size for the nudge weight and heat buildup. So the nudging thing is part of it. but also there's a perception when the machine is in your location. I mean, if you had a play field this size and a good back glass, but everything else was smaller, I don't think people would be drawn to play it. They'd want to play the big. Yeah, the big whatever. So I think there's a lot of that in that equation as well. Basically, we're already set. This is our standard. You know, I mean, we've done it before. we've done the tour i mean what you know pinball machines didn't start with a a back glass in the backbox and they started by making a small thing and as they got bigger like you could never go back yeah because that's what drew people to the game so making it more colorful putting more bells and whistles like it's hard to remove that stuff yeah because you know you don't really in fact there were games where they took the scores away from the back glass they had it just down here on the apron yeah yeah I was wondering whether there could be some cabinet adjustments for people in wheelchairs we have people come and play in wheelchairs I did I did once play in a fun tournament where they put short legs on the games so that they were all really short I mean you you know that's you could do that for wheelchair accessibility you can certainly make a game short you know I did a I did a nursing home once wanted to bring in some something for them to play and I brought in a regular pinball machine they're all there this was because the first one I did they were all pretty ambulatory in this nursing home they're all in wheelchairs so I took that one back out and brought in a cocktail and they yeah you know they loved the cocktail but the nurses hated it because it was electronic and electronic sounds they kept hearing the beep beep beep and they thought somebody's coding somebody's flatlining go blow go blow so they made me take it out oh no it's just a GC I have one more thought but I lost it that's alright I love you anyway thank you guys so much for joining us yeah so check out the Pacific Pinball Museum I'll be back next month David and I will find something else fun that we can stream out of here something unique, something fun. It won't be Orbital One. F that game. You're going to stream the one at Freeball Watch instead? I will. Alright. Thanks, guys. Bye. Thanks, Flipstream. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

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*Exported from Journalist Tool on 2026-04-13 | Item ID: 8c0aaa3b-4eaf-4b68-9b98-18f827c874fc*