What's that sound? It's 4 Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Hello. This was also the first year that I brought Multi-Races, which is a game that allows you to play 10, or at the time it allowed you to play 10, of the approximately 60 one-ball horse race games that were ever created. I got the 10 up and running shortly before York. And similar to the reveal of the MultiBingo, this was kind of just the inaugural run. I wanted to see how it reacted when the public had a chance to play on it for the weekend, and it went very well. So I stationed that beside the MultiBingo, and the MultiBingo, this was its fourth year, I believe, at the York Show, and of course it held up like a champ. The score and instruction card displays decided to fall off of the apron, which is unusual but that older version of the score and instruction card displays I use an updated version for Multi-Races. The older version was held on with hot glue and I guess being bounced in the trailer all the way up to York they eventually fell off and back into the cabinet so I had to fix that. One of them I got back up and running but the other one I was not able to do during the show. So it's sitting in the game room right now, and I need to put it back up on legs, and I'll see what happens. I've been a bit busy since then. I'll talk about that in a little bit. I also brought along Dennis Votel's Universal 5-Star, which I shopped for him, and that went very well as well. It was played pretty much continuously all day Thursday and Friday. Dennis, unfortunately, had to leave on Saturday, but that was okay because a problem developed right at the end of the day on Friday, and one of the coils locked on for replay step-down. So I checked it out, and it was okay. It was still stepping, but it certainly got very toasty, and a little bit of smoke came out of that. But overall, it held up very well, and it was exciting to see people try that game, which hasn't been played by a lot of people, I don't think. Certainly not since 1951. Very challenging to get that star hole. The way that Dennis and I adjusted that relay, it doesn't always kick right up into the star hole if you land down in the bottom kick-out. Sometimes it gives a rather weak pulse to the left or right, which I think adds to the challenge to an already challenging game, I guess I should say. Over to the left of those games was Circus Queen, and Circus Queen unfortunately developed a problem on the last day with moving the screen, and due to time constraints, you know, how everything was going, I wasn't able to help very much get that fixed. I didn't have the schematic with me or anything, unfortunately. So I could have loaded it up on my phone, but I was maning the booth and trying to teach people how to play and so on and so forth. So it was pretty challenging, this past show. Beyond that, there was a Nashville, and Nashville is a six card. It's one of the final six cards that Bally made. Great game but this one also had just a couple of problems that developed from being bounced down the road. They got resolved but one thing I wanted to point out is that Nashville is one of the later games and it uses the comeback key. The comeback key is this little key that the barkeeper could insert on the game to actually rack up credits on the meter for players who had made a bunch or a few and didn't want to cash out yet, or couldn't cash out because the barkeeper couldn't pay them, or whatever the case was. Kind of a clever idea, but unfortunately, the way that it was implemented, there are several switches, and each of those switches needs to be in the appropriate position, or else the game just will not function. And, you know, looking all through the rest of the circuit, there was no problem. We looked at the key, and everything looked okay, but the pressure for the lock cam was such that it just was not quite enough to actually make that switch close that looked as if it was closed. So just another reminder, that stupid comeback key can bite you in ways that you don't anticipate. So that Nashville was Ed's game. That's Ed, Chad, and Len, and the other Ed. And always great to see them. And then over to the right of Nashville there was a Roller Derby. Roller Derby is a fantastic magic screen game. Unfortunately this one was wheeled in with the expectation that I'd have a moment to work on it. It needed screen retiming which thankfully Phil Bogdanoff was there and he was able to help and got the game into a functional state, but there were some other tweaks that needed to be made to it in order to make it reliable. However, he got the screen homing and timing properly every game, which is good. This is a game that I poked at briefly on the way to the first bingo row as I was helping to load up other games, and obviously I didn't quite have it timed correctly when I did that. So anyway, thankfully that one was mostly working at that point and people were able to play it for a bit. And then over to the right Mickey Treat brought a Bikini and a Starlet. The Starlet was the only United game that was there if you don't count the Universal 5-Star. Universal was the gambling division of United before that was dissolved and then just brought back into United proper. And the Bikini is, of course, one of the great Magic Screen games. It has the Futurity feature where you can build up your red-letter game and then play it off at a later time. That went very well. And so let's talk about Coin-Op Carnival. So I had the booth this year. This was my first year with a booth, and that went pretty well. Like I said, it was pretty challenging with the technical demands that people had, which were quite reasonable. It's just I didn't have time to address them, which was really unfortunate. So I tried where I could but I couldn't do very much so I would try to help somebody for about five minutes and then get pulled in another direction or had to go talk to somebody at the booth. So it was pretty challenging. On top of that the bingo row was a little bit farther away from the booth than I had initially anticipated and that caused a little bit of trouble because I had to stay within eyesight of the booth most of the time. And I was able to do that, but it was challenging for sure. So that was good. But thank you to everybody who came out and took a peek at Coin-Op Carnival. I know I wasn't there for long stretches of time, and unfortunately, or what seemed like long stretches to me, they probably weren't. But I know there were some people who probably would have liked to have had a longer conversation with me about the book, and unfortunately I wasn't able to do so. So thank you for your patience and for those who purchased the book, thank you for that. And I had a great time talking to you all and I wish there was more time, of course. So that was the booth. But now I need to give out some thanks. So thank you to everybody who brought a game for the bingo row. It was very much appreciated. This year was a bit lighter than most, and that was because of a few folks who weren't able to come, either due to conflicts or last-minute cancellations or what have you. And one notable absence this year was Jeffrey Lawton. Jeffrey has been every year since close to the beginning of the York Show, and he has always brought one, two, or even sometimes more games in the early years, and he really helped ignite my passion for the bingos. I had played some Magic Screen games and my first show was a York Show and Jeffrey told me, "I'm going to bring a game that you'll like to play something that you haven't seen before," and he brought a Bally Nightclub, which still remains one of my favorite games to this day. Magic Squares and there's something about seeing those numbers rotate for the first time, which is pretty awe-inspiring. I very much enjoyed that, and of course I've enjoyed talking to Jeffrey and getting to know him and becoming friends over the past many years. So, Jeffrey, we all missed you, and we hope that you'll be able to come next year. So Jim, Pete, Ed, Lynn, Chad and other Ed, all of you thank you so much for bringing games. Dennis, thank you so much for allowing the 5-Star to be in the lineup, and it was well received. Had a lot of compliments and comments on the games from people, got to teach some people how to play, just generally spread that bingo word. And it's thanks to you. However, it's also thanks to my friend Sam. Sam is a local guy and he and I have been running kind of in the same circles but we haven't really had a chance to get to know each other until this trip. I mentioned that I was heading to New York and how crazy I am and bringing all these games and so forth and he said he was in. So thanks to Sam, I was able to cancel my truck rental, which I do every year. I rent a big old box truck and make the haul up to York. And he had a trailer, and he was willing to make the drive with me and go to his first pinball show. And he told me he had a blast, and he couldn't wait to go again. And so, Sam, thanks so much for your never-ending positivity, for helping load the games and unload the games and set them up, tear them down, and everything. It was very much appreciated, and I had a great time getting to know you, and hope we get to do that again at some point in the future. And also, Dan. So Dan came over and helped load up on the evening before York, and that went very well. Dan's a super nice guy. I've known him for just a very little bit, but he definitely helped get everything into the trailer that needed to get in there. And he was another just fount of positivity, and I really appreciate all the help that you guys gave. So that's about it for Bingo Row, but I wanted to talk for a second about Coin-Op Carnival. This was my last tour stop on the Coin-Op Carnival release tour, and it went very well, thanks to everybody who came by. Ryan, meanwhile, went to Expo and also another tour stop in Wisconsin. And both of those went very well indeed, and I think everything went great as far as the tour goes. I'm excited that the tour is wrapped up and we can really focus our attention on Coin-Op Carnival number two. Work has begun of course in earnest on that some time ago but now we're able to completely focus our efforts now that seminars and so forth are done and move on and release the next volume. So between now and then there are some other things that need to happen but I'm excited that this chapter has come to a close and excited for the future. So this year, Woodrail Row was actually adjoining. So instead of being opposite of the Bingo Row, it was actually set up directly beside. And that was kind of cool because this year there was a game that kind of straddled the line between Bingo and Woodrail, flipperless amusement type pinball, and that was Gottlieb's Watch My Line. That game has a figure-eight style layout with multiple trap holes like a bingo. And I've long wanted to play one, but they're pretty rare. You know, you don't see them every day for sure. So Sean, who brings a few wood rails every year, and he always brings cool, unusual ones every year, he brought this, set it up right beside the bingos, and got to play it. In fact, that game saw a lot of play all weekend long. People really like the figure eight, I think, and it's also very challenging. You can only get three in a row. The game doesn't register four in a row or more, and it gives you five replays for three in a row. It doesn't matter if you're vertical or horizontal. You get five replays no matter what, but it's a pretty cool layout and it's really challenging banking it off of just the right posts is really difficult and there is no ball return hole. Gottlieb put out a factory bulletin advising operators to drill a hole in the plate or make adjustments so that the balls could be returned if they land in the out hole. This game was as from the factory so it had the plate over the out hole. So if you mistimed your shot or you didn't land in one of the trap holes, it could land in a hole that did absolutely nothing for you. The other interesting thing about that game is that there is score. So for each hole that you land in, you get that many thousands of points, or tens of thousands of points. Yeah, tens of thousands. So if you get a 14, you get 1.4 million. You can win on points, but it was set for just an astronomically high number of points because if you think about it, if you get 13, 14, and 15, you're already at over 4 million. So it's not a game where you're typically going to win on points, at least how it was set, you're going to win based on three in a row, and that was challenging. I was able to do that one time in the few games that I played, and I felt pretty good about that. So next to that was probably my favorite flipper game of the show. It was Gottlieb's Lovely Lucy. My daughter is a big I Love Lucy fan, and so I've wanted to play this game for a long time, since before she became an I Love Lucy fan, just based on the layout. It's got six gobble holes right in the center of the playfield. This might be the only asymmetrical layout that Gottlieb made in the woodrail era. I know one of the woodrail folks was mentioning that too. But that's part of what attracted me to it, the layout of the gobble holes. They're not quite symmetrical in their layout, and that makes it very challenging. So the idea is everything must be completed twice. There is a set of bumpers up at the top, some active pop bumpers and some passive dead bumpers, and they all need to be unlit twice. So you unlight them the first time, and it lights the 100,000-point rebounds on the sides of the playfield. You unlight them the second time, and it lights special at the rollovers, which lead down to the big center area with the gobble holes. It also lights a horn and a drum, which are down on the playfield, just for a light show. There's no other purpose for them. It's just cool looking. So I think that's neat. The other sequence that I mentioned is tied to the gobble holes. So there is a lit gobble hole, which changes with every switch hit, basically, and you want to sink the ball in the lit gobble hole. When you do, you're considered in tune and then a second ball, which lands in the lit gobble hole, will award you a replay, but on top of that, it also lights the next letter in Lovely Lucy. Once the entire sequence is complete, Lovely Lucy, you get five replays. Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! And it's quite a feeling. So all weekend I was watching the title, waiting for people to leave it with just one letter left. I was able to knock out a few letters prior to that in a previous game, so I figured no big deal. So I played a handful of games, and each game only takes a minute and a half or something like that. It's a very quick game because of the gobble holes and also because I'm a terrible player. So I was able to get in tune pretty much every game but I was never able to capitalize on it. It was so infuriating but in the best way possible. So I kept on trying, going back to it, going back to it, going back to it. Whenever I could sneak a second I would go play a game and every time I would leave and man the booth or I'd be talking to somebody about bingos or I'd be teaching somebody to play or whatever the case was and then I'd look back and somebody had completed the sequence. So I'd have to wait again. And anyway, eventually, on the final day, I was able to complete the sequence, and boy, that felt great. So that game is still very high up my wish list, if you happen to know of anyone that has one for sale and certainly interested in talking to them. Just a great game overall. And the geometry is fantastic. The gameplay hooks are such that I just never want to stop playing. It's great. So another rarity that came this year was Green Pastures. And Green Pastures is a game about croquet. It is loosely based on a movie, is my understanding. And it's pretty neat. The backglass animation is pretty cool. I wish I'd had more time to play that one. I funneled pretty much all of my spare playing time into Lovely Lucy. And so I wasn't able to give that one its real due. But it was a beautiful game. Pat did a great job with that one. And I'm just so glad that I got to play it. It's one of those games that I'll probably never get to play again. So pretty cool. Beyond that, there was a Gottlieb Poker Face, which I played before. That is a very challenging game. There are five gobble holes, and it's really tough to put a good game together. That said, I saw somebody do it and it was cool when they did. The game made a lot of noise. It was neat. There was also a Gottlieb Silver here. That was Mike's game. I'm really glad he brought that. Unfortunately, that game, Silver and I, just can't seem to get together ever when it's working or when there's not a line or whatever the case is. So this is like the third or fourth time I've had the opportunity to play at Silver and haven't been able to. And I've had the chance to buy one a few times, but I haven't bit. I've heard it's a fun game, but I have not had the experience, so I'm not sure. That said, it's really cool that he brought that. Just a lot of great games this year. There was a Crisscross. That's one of my early woodrail favorites. One of the first shows that I—I think the first show that I went to, there was a Crisscross there, and I just loved the challenge of it. There's a roto target, but only, of course, one number is exposed. Hitting that is such a challenge, but it's so rewarding when you do, and you get that shot kind of dialed into your brain there, and you're able to make it over and over again while spinning the roto so that new things happen. Very satisfying. And beside that, there was a Sit and Pretty. That's a fun game. Just a really fun game. I only had a chance to put one game on it, and I did horribly. No surprise. So, beside that, there was a Williams Control Tower. That was a neat game. It has a kick-out hole in the center, which is really integral to the scoring of the game, the sequence, and it's really fun to try to get the ball to go where you want it to in that game. So another one that was there and this is another game that I never thought I'd have the opportunity to play, so I'm very thankful that Jack brought this game. It was a Keeney Thriller. And Thriller is themed on a motorcycle racing around in a bowl, and it's just really cool. There's a ton of backlit animation of this motorcycle racing around. So every time the score increments, the motorcycle zooms around. Just a really cool effect. And the gameplay, you're trying to light different bumpers to, of course, increase your score. So for every hundred, the motorcycle zooms around the bowl. Every thousand lights up an indicator on the back glass. It's a low-scoring game. Very fun. Very challenging. So that was just great. Glad he was able to bring that. Beyond that some other standouts. There was a ground-up restored EM version of Mata Hari that was there and it was absolutely gorgeous. That was done by Don and Don won best in show for that game as he very much deserved. That game looked and played beautifully. Congratulations, Don. I was also tipped off about a Williams Aztec and my first experience with that game was at a show and I played it and I found it rather uninspired, I guess I'd say. The gameplay revolved around hitting the ball into this kick-out area in the upper right and I was able to just do it over and over and over again and collect extra ball after extra ball and so my game just never ended. I made some ridiculous score the first time that I played it and so I've never really thought much about that game after that. I've worked on a few and they're fine. It's a fine game. It's just not my cup of tea. But there was one that was at York this year and it was beautiful. It played fast and nice. It played better than any Aztec I've really played before. So most of that was due to the very nice gapping that it had on the pop bumpers and the slings. That worked very well, and the pops were extremely active and throwing the ball everywhere. So great job to Jim for his game, and it was a lot of fun to play. And I did not get endless extra balls. I did get a few, but I felt like it was much more balanced than most of them that I've played. So Multi-Races and the MultiBingo, I have not yet actually looked and seen what the counter is for each game and figured out how many plays each got. Multi-Races had an issue where the button that actually played most of the games, the play all button, would stick down. And if that happened, it would fire multiple times in some instances, so there were a few times where I had to go free it, but that only lasted for a few seconds. So due to the physical limitations on the counter, I think that only added about 50 games to it and from provisional looks that I had, it looks like there were about a thousand button presses on Multi-Races, so that comes out to about 200 games, which is a reasonable amount I think for the first year, especially with that kind of funky button and the need for the explanation that everyone required for that. So that was pretty good. I have no idea how much the MultiBingo received. I'll have to take a look at that here soon. But in Multi-Races news, what I've done since I came back, and I apologize for the lateness of this episode, but I just got on a programming tear, and I went through the rest of the games that could be added to Multi-Races and added them all. So at the moment there are 36 total which can be played. That doesn't sound like much compared to 60 but if you consider the fact that artwork just doesn't exist for a goodly chunk of those that brings the total up pretty high actually. So the only ones which haven't been implemented either have no pictures available on the internet whatsoever and no collector base that I've been able to find or they have a different playfield layout. Some of the games from Western and Keeney used eight selections instead of seven. Finding a playfield that has eight selections is, I don't want to say impossible, but it's certainly very difficult and I've never come across one. So I'm not going to hold my breath for a playfield with eight selections. If one appears, then I'll certainly be able to wire it up to play in Multi-Races, but I don't think that's going to happen anytime soon. So with all the games which are implemented now, there are five different manufacturers available, and as I said, 36 different games, and the games range from very simplistic, like the games from 1936, to extremely complex, like Sunshine Park, the only one-ball where you can actually buy extra balls. You can play up to five balls, which is just unheard of in a one-ball. So many chances. So for the rest of today, what I'm going to do is try to set up the games from York. They're still in pieces in the game room, and I haven't put them together. So I'm going to do that and check the totals and post those online. I'm also going to look into open sourcing Multi-Races now that I have all the games available that I can make. I can push the code out there for others if they want to follow in my footsteps a bit and implement their own Multi-Races. That will be out there and if somebody wanted to integrate the Multi-Races games into the MultiBingo, if they wanted to cut their own playfield and use it within the framework of the MultiBingo, it is compatible and it'll work that way. You just add the games as you would any other game into the MultiBingo's menu and you've got them there. So pretty cool and it expands, you know, obviously the number of games that you can play by 36 in that. I wanted to go for authenticity in the playing experience, so I wanted to make sure that the playfield was the same size and laid out exactly the same way as the one-ball playfields were so that you got the right feel and look to the game. But, of course, if you're making your own, you can do whatever you want. So, that's all for today. Thank you very much for listening. My name again is Nick Baldridge. You can reach me at 4amusementonlypodcast at gmail.com, or you can call me on the bingo line. That's 724-BINGOS1, 724-246-4671. You can listen to me on iTunes, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, VRSs, on Facebook, on Twitter, at Bingo Podcast. You can follow me on Instagram, also at Bingo Podcast, or you can listen to me on my website, which is foramusementonly.libsyn.com. Thank you very much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time.