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Episode 145 – Sling Power

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·May 13, 2020
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Slam Tilt discusses event cancellations, restoration projects, and pinball code modding with industry guests Zach Sharpe and Scott Denise.

Summary

In this Slam Tilt Podcast episode recorded during COVID-19 lockdowns, hosts Ron Halliburton and Bruce Nightingale interview Zach Sharpe and Scott Denise about pinball repairs, restoration projects, and game design. The conversation covers recent event cancellations (Pintastic, Replay FX/Pinburgh rescheduled to August 2021), a new Pinball Promoters Database on This Week in Pinball, industry interviews with designers like Keith P. Johnson and the Sharp family, and Scott's ongoing work reverse-engineering Flight 2000 code for custom ROM modifications.

Key Claims

  • Keith P. Johnson stated that Spooky Pinball stopped making Pirates because they weren't selling well

    high confidence · Ron/Bruce discussing Keith P. Johnson interview by Buffalo guys; direct quote attribution

  • Steve Ritchie insisted his games be released under the Williams name, not Bally, when Williams purchased Bally

    medium confidence · Ron discussing criteria the Sharp family mentioned in Loser Kid podcast interviews; noted as rumor previously heard

  • Pinburgh (Replay FX) rescheduled to August 10-15, 2021, and Bruce cannot attend due to August vacation blackout with seniority-based scheduling

    high confidence · Direct statements from Ron and Bruce about hotel reservations and work scheduling

  • The original Flight 2000 stock code has only 5 bytes of free space in the entire codebase

    high confidence · Scott Denise directly stating this technical constraint when discussing ROM modifications

  • Mirko's playfield supplier claims to use the same production process for Jersey Jack Pinball and other manufacturers

    medium confidence · Ron noting website claims; Zach questions accuracy of this claim based on Attack from Mars playfield quality

  • Zach Sharpe received the most suggestions accepted for Scott's Flight 2000 code modifications project

    high confidence · Scott directly stating Zach 'wins the award' for most implemented suggestions

  • Roger Sharpe secured Pirates license for Jersey Jack Pinball and Hot Wheels license for American Pinball

    high confidence · Ron discussing licensing achievements mentioned in Loser Kid podcast interviews

  • New Willy Wonka topper by Jersey Jack is a static $300 piece, not an interactive mechanical device like Black Knight topper

    high confidence · Zach and Ron discussing topper announcement; price and design details

Notable Quotes

  • “The transformer blew... it sounded like 10 pallets dropped on the floor. You hear boom, and then all of a sudden, we all turn around. We're like, what the hell was that?”

    Zach Sharpe @ ~8:00 — Personal anecdote about Amazon facility fire evacuation; humanizes guest and provides context for his availability

  • “I don't trust anybody. Their clear sucks. And it has been proven by repeated evidence.”

    Ron Halliburton @ ~15:00 — Strong opinion on playfield restoration practices; reflects restoration culture and quality concerns

  • “We weren't selling them.”

    Keith P. Johnson @ ~42:00 — Direct explanation for why Spooky discontinued Pirates pinball; demonstrates designer/manufacturer candor

  • “If the game has like a female central character, let's say Black Rose or something like that, it's going to be a Bally. You know, if Steve Ritchie makes it, it's going to be Williams always because he doesn't want to do a Bally ever.”

    Ron Halliburton @ ~45:00 — Explains Williams/Bally branding criteria; sheds light on designer preferences and industry practices

  • “You can tell what era of games people like based on their suggestions... There are a couple people that said... you have to do this in sequence and then you have to do that in sequence.”

    Scott Denise @ ~65:00 — Designer insight about player preferences and code complexity; reflects generational design philosophy differences

  • “The original stock code on Flight 2000, there's only five bytes free in the entire code base.”

    Scott Denise @ ~68:00 — Technical constraint explaining difficulty of ROM modifications; highlights engineering challenges in classic game code

  • “They auto moved my reservation up twice... I got an email like right when Ron did saying hey we've moved your reservation and then I got an email the next day saying hey we've moved your reservation with a different reservation number and I'm like I don't think I have two of those so that's concerning”

    Zach Sharpe — Hotel booking chaos during event rescheduling; illustrates operational disruptions from COVID cancellations

Entities

Ron HalliburtonpersonBruce NightingalepersonZach SharpepersonScott DenisepersonKeith P. JohnsonpersonSteve Ritchieperson

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Multiple major pinball events canceled or rescheduled due to COVID-19: Pintastic canceled, Pinburgh (Replay FX) moved from May 2020 to August 2021, Allentown expected to be canceled, York possibly happening with restrictions, Pinball Expo uncertain. Community vacation plans restocked through October.

    high · Ron: 'Pintastic canceled... Replay FX. Pinbird is canceled.' Zach: 'they auto moved my reservation up twice.' Bruce: 'not with the restrictions that we have down here'

  • ?

    community_signal: Scott Denise migrating from inactive Rec Games Pinball forum (posts from 15-20 years ago) to active Pinside community for current marketplace and discussion

    high · Scott: 'Rec Games Pinball is basically John Ed Robertson and somebody that found it by mistake... I figured I needed to do something more current, and it is nice being able to have pictures posted to the threads.'

  • ?

    product_concern: Bruce experiencing repeated GI connector burnout on new aftermarket pinball control boards despite LED upgrade intended to reduce heat; brand new board and connector burning up, suggesting design or code flaw

    high · Bruce: 'Brand new connector, brand new board at the same time. And it's still burning... Even with LEDs in it... the connector was already starting to burn before that.'

  • ?

    design_innovation: Scott Denise undertaking extensive reverse-engineering and modification of original Flight 2000 code to create custom ROM versions; working within extreme constraints (5 bytes free space) to add new features and rule improvements

    high · Scott: 'for the past four months or so, I've been ripping apart certain slight 2000 code... The original stock code on Flight 2000, there's only five bytes free in the entire code base.'

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.436

0:00
Underwear for chicks. Yeah. But when chicks put that stuff on, they're like, they're naked. Yeah. Oh, yes.
0:30
Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Silk Podcast, a show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. It's a Stern-orama weekend.
0:47
Okay, and this is episode 145. How's it going, Bruce? All righty. How are you doing? We're waiting for New York State to open, which will be probably never when it gets down to phase three or four.
1:03
Well, what is it, May 15th it starts or something? May 15th it starts, and then they have to make seven criterias. Each section of the state has been divided up, so seven sections. And each section must meet seven criterias. and the criteria has to go down for 15 days, each criteria, before you can engage the next phase.
1:26
Sounds complicated. Oh, my God. You need a freaking... I think that the hard part of it was the whole, like, you need 30 tracers for every so many people, and I had to look up what that even meant. I know. A tracer is, like, someone who keeps track of, like, someone who's infected, and, like, what are the other people they have contact with and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I swear to God. All right. But we're not alone this week. We have guests.
@ ~28:00
Roger Sharpe
person
Josh Sharpperson
Slam Tilt Podcastorganization
Spooky Pinballcompany
Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
American Pinballcompany
Stern Pinballcompany
Quicksilvergame
Flight 2000game
Dragonfistgame
Pirates of the Caribbeangame
[name withheld pending review]event
Pintasticevent
[name withheld pending review]organization
This Week in Pinballorganization
Loser Kid Podcastorganization
Vanceperson
Mirkoperson
?

design_philosophy: Designer observations that community rule suggestions reflect generational gaming preferences; older players prefer sequential objective structures while modern players expect different complexity models

medium · Scott: 'You can tell what era of games people like based on their suggestions... There are a couple people that said... you have to do this in sequence and then you have to do that in sequence.'

  • ?

    product_strategy: Jersey Jack Willy Wonka static topper ($300) received significant community criticism as cash grab; industry expectation raising to interactive/mechanical toppers like Stern's Black Knight model

    high · Zach: 'Cash grab! Yeah, but it's a static thing. It's terrible.' Ron: 'if it's not, like, an interactive thing that moves, then why do you want it?'

  • ?

    content_signal: Increased industry interview activity: Loser Kid Podcast interviewed Sharp family (Roger in 2 episodes due to verbosity), Buffalo podcast interviewed Keith P. Johnson, generating content about designer decision-making and game discontinuation

    high · Ron: 'Roger took two shows because Roger talks a lot... The Loser Kid guys... interviewed all the Sharps.'

  • $

    market_signal: Quicksilver aftermarket pricing: York 2019 show unit sold for ~$7,000, current market asking $7,500; strong demand for aftermarket/restored classic games in secondary market

    high · Ron: 'the one that was at York last year that somebody built out of parts, I think sold for almost $7,000 at the show.'

  • ?

    business_signal: Spooky Pinball discontinued Pirates machine due to poor sales despite high production effort (triple disc mechanism, chest mechanics); indicates design/market fit issues and inventory management challenges

    high · Ron: 'Keith P. Johnson was interviewed by the Buffalo guys... why are you still making Pirates? And he basically said, we weren't selling them.'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Roger Sharp successfully securing multiple significant IP licenses (Pirates for Jersey Jack, Hot Wheels for American Pinball) indicates continued designer influence and industry access despite Bally acquisition era

    high · Ron: 'Roger was still getting like he got the Pirates license for Jersey Jack. He got the Hot Wheels license for American Pinball. So he's still getting licenses.'

  • ?

    technology_signal: LED adoption for heat reduction in pinball backboxes to prevent backglass replacement (Zach and Bruce both implementing); practical aftermarket solution to maintenance costs on commercial machines

    medium · Zach: 'I actually have LEDs in the heads of many of my machines now, mainly for the heat aspect, so that I'm not having to replace back glasses.'

    • 1:55
    Yay. And I know it's a popular guest duo. Duo. Yes. So which one's Batman and which one's Robin? Ooh.
    2:05
    I have to say Zach is definitely Batman. Wow. Hey. Wow. Do we have the wine? The reason why, he is very analytical, just like Batman would be like, you know, well, Robin, you know, this is the way it's going to be. And Zack is like that. You have the comedy side, and that would definitely not be Batman. Hey.
    2:28
    Only rectifiers, Batman. I mean, is that what you're saying? So, how about Flash and Green Lantern instead?
    2:38
    Okay. What's the Green Lantern? that can be Green Lantern because you have a power ring you get the power ring we're going to be talking everything about pinball and repairs and all this other fun stuff but first things first it's Zach and Scott by the way it wasn't clear I can say that go ahead first things first have you seen Pluto TV Ron Pluto TV I know there's a dog named Pluto at Disney, but other than that, I've never heard of Pluto TV. It's an Internet channel. Oh, okay. No. Picked up on Amazon TV or other things, you know, providers. Guess what they have as a dedicated channel? Porn. No, no, no. That's Pornhub. Oh. Is it pinball? Oh. No. What is Ron's other most liked thing besides pinball? Most liked thing besides pinball. I don't know. What is my most liked thing besides pinball? Mystery Science Theater 3000. Oh, Mystery Science Theater. Okay. Are they going to be on Pluto? It's on Pluto TV, and it's a 24-hour channel. Oh, just old episodes. Old episodes. Oh, okay. But you get to see every single one, you know, if you stay up. I already have all those. What? I already have all those. Yeah, I already have all those. I know, but I'm trying to get people so they come back eventually. Who knows? They have a couple other channels. They have a Baywatch channel, so that's pinball related.
    4:12
    I guess so. That's right. It is. Hey, Zach owned a Baywatch. He did. Double E's. Yeah. And it wasn't too bad. That's pretty accurate. It wasn't too bad. Was it the best Joe Balser game ever? The ones I've played, yeah. There you go. You've heard it here. Yeah, it probably is. Yeah, probably for shooting-wise it is. I would say that. So you think they both have better rules than Bruce?
    4:41
    Definitely. Balzer is for Simpsons. It's the deepest game. You know, that should be Keith Johnson's, like, trademark. I take the shittiest play field, I take the shittiest play fields, and make them playable with code. I like the play field better than the code. Yeah. I can make your shitty play field an actual good game. The only thing that I like about the Simpsons is the pretzel multi-ball because my arms are so damn long I can actually do it properly. No, pretzels.
    5:12
    That's Alien Invasion. Mystery Spot. Not Alien Invasion. Sorry, Mystery Spot, yes. We already go backwards, yes.
    5:20
    Whatever it's called. I played the game about four times in my life, so. That's for... Too many. I think those quick times for me were too many I love it where you have all the Simpsons hate where were you people before? the last episode where I had to listen to how great Simpsons pinball party was round after round after round love the game I got a package boys in the mail today or last week and it's big too oh my well we already heard about the Quicksilver so it can't be that. It can't be that, but it's parts for the Quicksilver. I have a new play field for Mirko and the new unbreakable plastics.
    6:08
    So is it like a wave pool, or is it more like the ocean? I haven't actually taken it out of the packaging yet.
    6:15
    Does the unbreakable plastics come with extra plastics? It doesn't look like it. Yeah, well, why would it? It's unbreakable. Exactly.
    6:25
    Ta-da. Is it unspatchable, too? Yeah, I don't know about Unscratchable, but they are out. So I'm going to send the play field right to my guy, Vance, and he's going to sand it down and re-clear, and we'll go from there. What is the point of buying a play field? That makes somebody re-clear it right away. Because I don't trust anybody. Their clear sucks. And it has been proven by repeated evidence. This is the guy who does JJP's play field. Yeah.
    6:55
    Mirko claims that he doesn't do JJP's play field. Well, unfortunately, JJP does, I think. So I think there's a miscue. No, he does. I was on his site, and he specifically says in one of the quicksand. This is the same process we use for the, and then he named like the three or four different companies he just played for. He did. He must have changed something because I bought my Attack from Mars play field from him, and I don't have any of the cracking around the post. I mean, there's ball dimples everywhere, but, I mean, it's Attack from Mars. You expect that. Yeah, it depends. These are all done there. Is it pre-gimbled? It's pre-gimbled.
    7:30
    He just plays the crap out of it. So hopefully we'll be taking pictures of these soon enough, and we'll show everyone the goodness.
    7:40
    And today is going to be set up the game day. So if I get Quicksilver Playfield, I should just send it to your house? Yes. So fans could clear it? Because I might as well do that. You could do two for one. Two for one. And I ordered a back glass from BG Resto. Ah, nice. I will have a nice, pretty quicksilver. So now we have to make the discussion talk. We have to make the discussion talk. Okay, I like it. Whatever that meant. You know what I like? With the background noise, because I think it's because Zach's on his laptop, it sounds like you're at the bar almost. Almost. It does. It almost sounds like you're walking around the bar. I wish I was.
    8:26
    We had a fire at our Amazon building on Friday night. What? The transformer blew. Did you start it? No, the transformer blew. We were all working about 2.30 in the morning, 3 o'clock in the morning. All of a sudden, you hear, like, it sounded like 10 pallets dropped on the floor. You hear, boom, and then all of a sudden, we all turn around. We're like, what the hell was that? And the problem is you can't see the other side of the building because there's stacks of racks where you put all the packages that are going to be going on the trucks when we're doing our job. All of a sudden, I hear one person go, there's a fire going on. I'm like, what? And then all of a sudden, we get over to recording like 10 seconds later. Everyone evacuates to the front of the building. I'm like, oh, great. But unfortunately, we have to go upstairs and downstairs to go over the conveyor belts in the building. So once we got above the height of the boxes and everything like that, there you could see a humongous fire caught up. The transformer was just burning up and going up the wall. So were you yelling, fire, fire, fire? No, I was actually freezing my ass off because it was 32 degrees outside, snowing in Rochester Friday night, and I had a short-sleeved shirt on because we were all evacuated before we could get our jackets. And we had to sit outside for an hour. Did you get paid for that? Yes, we did. And we got an extra hour's pay because they gave us all the pay that we couldn't finish because the shift ended early. We were supposed to be there until 5 in the morning, and we got finally done around 4. They finally had a head count and checked us all, made sure everyone was out of the building. And they're like, okay, everyone here, we're signing you out. We're logging you out at 4 o'clock. Go home. Keep in touch with us. You know, there's a program, we have an app for when we're going to be reopened again, and it came up the next day that we were reopened. And the next day, we got an email also stating, we're going to pay you until 5 o'clock, the normal work time. Oh. Woo! An extra hour.
    10:31
    Wow. What were you saying, Bruce? We need to talk about your trade, the trade of quicksilver half to dragonfist half. So Ron does not own a one and a half.
    10:47
    Yes, to review, somehow I own half of the Quicksilver that is at my house now. Yes. But I own half of a Dragon Fist that is with Bruce. Yes. And we paid more for the Quicksilver than I got from Ron for the... So we have to figure this all out, but now Ron will have his full-fledged Quicksilver. Oh, so nice. It will be so, so nice. So pretty. Oh, so pretty. I'll keep the Silver Ball Saloon pricing card on it. Good. That's good. It'll be a collector's edition. It'll be worth more. It will be.
    11:26
    So, we got some news in the month. We got more news. We got our biweekly cancellation news. This was, we knew it was coming, but this was a week. So, we have Pintastic canceled. Yep. And going to be back for 2021.
    11:48
    Yes. And I already got the room. So, I already have the 2021 room. So, I'm all set there. I have to cancel one soon. We're going to have a few seconds. Then Replay FX. Pinbird is canceled.
    12:05
    However. There's great news on that. Yeah, there was good news. There's a silver lining within the cloud, and that is if you got PINBURG tickets,
    12:15
    if you don't ask for a refund by May whatever it was. You have them on 31st. So that stress will not occur next year. Yes.
    12:26
    And if, well, at least in my case, I had the Westin hotel block. I got a notification that my reservation had been changed the next year. Oh, wow. That's nice. For the same days. I have to change. But it's going to be later now. It's going to be August 10th or 12th, I think it was. Something like that. But we get to have a cool thing next year. We get to have a cool thing? What's the cool thing? The week before is my birthday. So we're going to be celebrating my 50th birthday at Pimberg. Oh. Oh, my.
    13:02
    Yeah, it's August 12th to the 15th. My birthday is the 7th, so it's not even the 24th. So we're going to be celebrating in style. Damn, you're old. I am. Big five? Oh. Yeah. The only thing that's bad about those dates is that I can't go, so I had to ask for a refund. Oh. What happened?
    13:24
    August is a really tough date. People with more seniority always fill up the vacation list, so I can't guarantee that I would be able to get off even a day. So we just decided to go ahead and cancel it. Bum, bum, bum, bum. well that sucks Zach you're going to be going now right yep they auto moved my reservation up twice so I'm about that at the west of two I got an email like right when Ron did saying hey we've moved your reservation and then I got an email the next day saying hey we've moved your reservation with a different reservation number and I'm like I don't think I have two of those so that's concerning Yeah, I would. And also, they still both say single or twin bed. Yeah. I have to cancel my jewelry one. Yeah. You might want to call them on that one. Because you can't even look at the reservations that far in the future on their site. It only goes to April. The future. We knew it was coming. We all knew it. You know, we didn't want to see it. And it's very depressing. All my vacation for this year is restocked. Canceled, yeah. It's pretty much restocked until October. We'll see what happens there, if Expo ever happens. Yeah. Or York. Yeah, or York along there. I think York might happen, but maybe with restrictions. Yeah. I don't know about Expo. Yeah.
    14:54
    It all depends on if there's a resurgence or not. If there is, then God knows what's going to happen. But if there isn't, I think some things will probably come back. Yeah, let's give a suck. Yeah, I can't, even if I go, I almost can't see Bray and Dad. Yeah. I just, I don't know. If I was going to go, I'd probably go alone, and I wouldn't play any machines. I'd just hang out. So, like, normal. Yeah, exactly. Oh, hey, I play some machines. Like, last year, I played all those weird foreign ones I'd never seen before. Ah, well, yeah, of course. That's about all I played, but, yes, I did play some games. Oh, and I played more Deadpool to see if I wanted one or not. I was very surprised Ron you guys teased that Ron got a new game a couple episodes ago and I was betting that it was going to be Radical and then I'm like Iron Man what's this crap oh wow I would love to see Radical do you still have your Star Trek Mr. Ron there's a deposit down on it congratulations to you I'm not a big Quicksilver fan I'm tempted to build one just to sell it. No, $7,500. I mean, the one that was at York last year that somebody built out of parts, I think sold for almost $7,000 at the show.
    16:18
    And it actually sold, too. And I know why I re-imported one. He gets his from Australia. I got mine from Australia.
    16:29
    Too bad I couldn't do a two-in-one. That would have been better. you could have gotten another Quicksilver delivered with it or Pinball, like the princess one, the Cosmic Princess it's okay it's not a great game, but it's a rare game well, rare here not as much in Australia no why couldn't you find one?
    16:52
    Ryan only had one that he knew of, and the guy didn't want to give it up so I know like almost every Australian I've talked to at shows, like, have you ever played that? Like, oh, yeah, I've played that. Like, they've all played Cosmic Princess. Yeah. How about Empire Strikes Back? I've just played that. I have not played that. Okay. I think SpaceX used to bring one to Expo when he was allowed in there. Yeah. Long time ago. And then what else? Yeah.
    17:23
    We are waiting on Allentown, I think, and seeing what's going on with that, but I don't see that happening. That will be canceled. I never scheduled a hotel.
    17:34
    I never booked a hotel, and I don't think there's going to be any reason to. As the PA resident on this call, I can tell you that there's no way it's happening, not with the restrictions that we have down here. And Lehigh County is still red, so there are no public gatherings.
    17:53
    It has to go. You were talking about your restrictions in New York before. I mean, that sounds a little harder to understand than what they have in PA because I wasn't able to follow it. It's terrible.
    18:05
    It's terrible. Yeah, there has to be less than 50 cases a day for a two-week period before you can move from red to yellow to green.
    18:15
    They're opening, like, phases. Like, the first phase is going to be construction. Then the second phase is going to be, like, hair salons. And then the third phase is going to be some bars. And then the fourth phase is going to be other bars and, like, baseball and hockey and all that kind of stuff. And some of the restaurants, like, you can open a restaurant in phase two if it's outdoor seating, but you have to wait for phase three if it's indoor seating. It's like, oh, my God. Until the restaurants come back, I don't think we're going to be out of the woods on any of this. That's, I think, the marker. Yeah.
    18:49
    Back to pinball. Did you know there's a pinball promoters database that launched this week? There is on Twip. Yes, and we're in there. Yes, we are. No stars yet. No stars. So you know how we keep telling everyone, you'll rate us even if it's bad on Apple Podcasts? Well, here you go. The pinball promoters database.
    19:11
    Check it out. No stars means no one rated you and not that they all rated you zero. Exactly. I'm going to double check. I haven't checked today, so let's check right now. So everybody rate them a half a star. Oh, that's fine. That's fine. I checked right before we went live, and we had no. It's sorted by ratings. So whoever has the most ratings is number one, and you can guess who that was.
    19:34
    Sorry. You guys were the inverse number one then. Yes, we are. Actually, only the first five or six even have ratings, and everyone else is at zero. So it's new. That tells me that pinball podcasts, people get them from places other than where the ratings are posted. Yeah. Not really worried about it. It's a nice thing to have. So rate us, please. Rate us. Even if it's terrible, it'd be great. Yeah, well, I expect that. I totally expect that. I have to type things, too. I can't just click a star. No. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, you can give a reason why you gave the star? Yes, you can do a review. Zach's fingers cramping. Oh, I can't. Too much typing. Typing too fast.
    20:23
    Zach, what do you do for a living? Code, right? I just save my hands to use them for work. Oh, there you go. And to fix all his, like, 50 machines he owns. You know, his hands need to be in tip-top shape.
    20:37
    I might be calling Zach and Ron this week. I'm putting that EM together this week. Oh, boy. What EM? Grand Prix. That's a great game. Oh, it's a great game, I know. And it worked when I put it away, but it was four months ago, so who knows what will happen in four months of sitting.
    20:54
    Is that the same one that Zach had, or is that a different one? Different one. So three out of four of the people on the call have Grand Prix.
    21:02
    Or had. Had. You sold yours? Yeah. Yeah, Grand Prix sucks, so I got rid of it pretty quick. And why does it suck? You just hit the spinner all day.
    21:14
    Okay. strategy, nothing. Have you noticed that most people play most games, especially tournament players, they find out whatever the strategy is, and that's all they do? Yeah, most tournament players, you've got other people playing against you at that point to keep it interesting, but for home use, a good tournament game is not usually a good personal playing game. True. I agree with that statement. I wouldn't say Grand Prix is a bad tournament game at all. So, by that criteria, Alien Star is a bad game.
    21:47
    It beats both criteria. That's good. Okay. Let's see. And it's begun. Oh, yeah. Keith Johnson was interviewed by the Buffalo guys.
    22:00
    And I like that they asked, because they asked the Pirates question. You know, why are you still making Pirates? And he basically said, we weren't selling them. Yeah. There you go. Well, and that's what everyone who is a brain has said. I mean, I remember when this thing came out, and it had the triple disc, and then they had to pull it, and then they had to pull the, what was the other thing in the back they had to? The chest. It doesn't open anymore. Well, it's now default just open, and there was just so much baggage, it came out, and they didn't sell a lot of them. I played the game again, and it's not fun. It's better than Hobbit. Oh, anything's better than Hobbit. Wow. It's right with Bugs Bunny there. Wow.
    22:43
    Zach, didn't you want to get a Hobbit? I figure for like a month you can probably flip it pretty easily if you sell it cheap. Yeah. You know, at least like in the home when you have no other pinball to play on location or anything, you know, maybe it's like a month I could stay in a Hobbit and it would be sort of interesting to at least like learn all the modes one by one. I thought it was an interesting choice on the Hobbit that the skill shot makes the drop targets go up and down. I'm like, boy, that seems like that might be a high wear item. It's almost like I've seen multiple broken drop target banks already around. Oh, yeah.
    23:18
    Well, that was a new mech, right? That hadn't been done before in that way. It's pretty similar to the one that they use on, like, Alien Poker or Jungle Lore, the Williams games. Okay. Which, coincidentally, I have a spare one of those mechs and it has the same exact broken spot that the JGP ones do.
    23:36
    What's the broken spot on them? Where the coil stops that hold all the individual plungers to pull up each individual target, they snap off of the... Oh, okay. That's actually just regular Williams drop targets or like that, too. I guess it's just accelerated wear on Alien Poker. Yeah, it actually is the same mech. It's just instead of having one pull-up target or, like, two pull-up targets. In the case of, like, Slash with Spidemank, it's just one per target. Yeah.
    24:02
    Let's see. Then we had the Loser Kid guys. They interviewed all the Sharps. And, of course, Roger took two shows because Roger talks a lot. Wait, so Josh couldn't be on the second show then?
    24:17
    Well, yes, he always could be on the second show. Well, he was the second Sharp they interviewed, so it only makes sense. one of the more interesting things I thought was the criteria they would use for the Bally, like what makes when Williams bought Bally and they're releasing games with the Bally name what determines whether it's Bally or Williams and originally it was basically all the people who were with Bally when they got bought, their games were Bally and then as time went by they started using other criteria they said like if the game has like a female central character, let's say Black Rose or something like that, it's going to be a Bally.
    24:56
    You know, if Steve Ritchie makes it, it's going to be Williams always because he doesn't want to do a Bally ever. So I thought that was interesting, the criteria. Yeah, I'd already heard that rumor about Steve Ritchie and that his games were all going to be Williams. All going to be Williams always. Now that Bally's hit here. Yeah, pretty much.
    25:14
    And the fact that he was, Roger was still getting like he got the Pirates license for Jersey Jack. He got the Hot Wheels license for American Pinball. So he's still getting licenses.
    25:26
    Mm-hmm. Let's see. What else we got here? And we got the cancel stuff. Oh, yeah. It looks like Willy Wonka Topper.
    25:36
    Oh, I saw that. Oh, my God. Oh, boy. Cash grab! Yeah, but it's a static thing. It's terrible. It's a thing. You got, you know, Stern with the Black Knight one. They've, like, up the bar now. So if it's not, like, an interactive thing that moves, then why do you want it?
    25:57
    This is just, like, a piece of whatever. It's just lit up. How much was it? It's a static. It was $300.
    26:05
    Exactly. Yeah. That's the price of a whole plastic set for, like, three pieces of plastic on top of each other. Yes. Terrible. I remember when I had a basement that I could have toppers on my game.
    26:16
    I don't remember when I had a basement. That's the only thing I never got about Jersey Jack. We do all the high-end stuff and have these super expensive games, but our toppers are always, like, the plainest thing. Do you think if anyone's going to innovate in seeing toppers, it would be them? Yeah, you think they're like a whirlwind with two fans in it at once or something? Yeah. You would think, like, Wizard of Oz would have a tornado on the top of it that moves or something. Yeah, like spins across the whole top. Spins across the whole, yeah. It's an idea. With a house counter-rotating inside of it. I like that. Modders, there you go. I can see it in my head, too. It's along a track. Like, it's got a stick, but it just goes back and forth as it spins. Aw. Yep. There you go. We want residuals on that. Only during certain modes. Yeah, you've got to have that theme integration. It's a Keith Johnson game. Yep. Exactly. And it should be folded down and only pop up when it's actually active. Ooh. No, the Aries turn wouldn't like that. It ain't showing all the time.
    27:19
    Best game showing is... Best game selling is the one that's on the line. Why doesn't Wizard of Oz have a fan blower topper? Like, that would have been perfect. It would have been. Don't give them any ideas for more editions of Wizard of Oz, please. Yeah, I know. Probably because if they did, they would have just been, oh, they're just... Whirlwind already did that. Lame. Because we suck as pinheads. That's just... If it occurred back in, like, 2011 or something, people still had hope back then. Yeah.
    27:47
    All right. So that's all I got. And, yeah, this week in pinball, hi, Jeff, news. Hi, Jeff. Scott, what have you been working on? You're actually on pin side now, I hear. That's, like, unconscionable. How did this happen? Well, I'm mainly on pin side because Zach is on pin side. So I figured, eh, you know, Zach's helpful on pin side. Rec Games Pinball is basically John Robertson and somebody that found it by mistake asking or responding to questions from 15 to 20 years ago with people posting, I have an Addams Family for sale, needs to be shopped for $2,200. And people saying, is this still available? I'll take it. So I figured I needed to do something more current, and it is nice being able to have pictures posted to the threads. And as long as you stay out of the drama threads, it's actually not that bad. And then I'll have to correct something that Bruce said a couple of episodes ago as well, when he said that I would never put LEDs in my machines. I actually have LEDs in the heads of many of my machines now, mainly for the heat aspect, so that I'm not having to replace back glasses. Do you hear that, Bruce? I think it would make sense, Bruce, to do that, because, I mean, you're running machines in a commercial environment, and then when you go to turn the machines over, just take the LEDs out, because I know they're expensive, and you're a cheap bastard, so. I am a cheap original bastard. But I have, actually, Starz has LEDs in it. And guess what connector burned up on me before we closed? The GI connector again, and that's a brand new board. Brand new connector, too? Brand new connector, brand new board at the same time. And it's still burning. What brand boards was it?
    29:35
    It was, I can't remember which one it was. It wasn't the Rotten Dog one. It was the beefier one with the heat sinks on each voltage regulator for the three. Which manufacturer? I can't remember. But it's one of the newer, the nicer ones I actually like. It's actually the one that actually has two drill holes for the two lines for the transformer. Some actually come with one big one now instead of two small ones for when you're re-soldering it. But it burned up again. I was like, what the heck? Even with LEDs in it, or that's why you LED'd it? No, with LEDs in it, because I had it in the back box. Oh, come on. When I got, you know, when originally I had the stars, I had it with LEDs. Remember when they were flickering, and we complained about it.
    30:19
    But didn't you then replace the long-term distance, and you said it looked better? It looked better, but the connector was already starting to burn before that. Oh. Yeah, okay. Okay. Something needs to be fixed properly. Yeah, right. Like code, right?
    30:34
    It's got to be a code problem. Yeah, it's the code. Have you tried downloading more current capacity? Exactly.
    30:45
    Yeah, so, but the Catacomb also had LEDs when I had it at the bar, so I didn't, you know. And you sold it. And I sold it. Gone. It went bye-bye last week. I was actually going to attempt to buy it from you, but you said, I know what this is worth. No low ballers. Yep, I did. So you saw my FinSide ad. Well, I had people asking me, like, $2,200? Will you take $2,200? And I was like, oh, my fucking God, are you people stupid? And I got what I wanted. I got it right out of the money. Well, if you post $3,400 firm, I mean, somebody wants a catacomb, there they go. And they did. That was a nice one.
    31:25
    Other than that, other than, you know, the corrections from the previous week, my current project is, for the past four months or so, I've been ripping apart certain slight 2000 code to and I took suggestions and Zach actually wins the award which is probably why he's on this call with me. He wins the award for the most suggestions that I actually implemented.
    31:49
    Most of them made sense. I don't think I rejected any of his suggestions other than he wanted to cut the right spinner down in half every ball and I think that's too confusing for people. Oh God, that would be really confusing for people. Yeah, they'd be like, my game, my spinner was lit for 4,500, and then I started the next ball, and now it's only 2,000. This game is broken. It's almost like, Scott, like I've also written rule sets for games before. I have an idea how this works sometimes. Yeah, and you've actually played the game and didn't make a – I won't say they're silly suggestions, but you can tell what era of games people like based on their suggestions. There are a couple people that said, well, you should have it so that, you know, you get jackpots and you do this and then you have to, you know, do this in sequence and then you have to do that in sequence. And as we know from Ron's appearance on his other podcast, he thinks that Flight 2000 stock is a little complex just to get the multiball on because there are several things that you have to do in a row in order for it to work. Yep.
    32:53
    Will that work in GammaTron if you have the right e-prom? That will be tested as soon as I nail down. I'm having some issues with getting the code to work properly.
    33:07
    I mean, just as a, for example, Zach will appreciate this, the original stock code on Flight 2000, there's only five bytes free in the entire code base. And, yeah, how can you add anything to a code base that only has five bytes free? Well, you have to employ a lot of techniques that I knew from the 80s when I programmed in assembly language all the time to cut routines down, rewrite things, cut out unnecessary code, and things like that. But, you know, of course, every time you do that, you break something. So you have to figure out what you broke and then fix it, and there's no real-time debuggers for Valley Stern games, so you have to kind of do it in your head. Very frustrating. In parallel, because I do things in parallel, the times when I get stuck on one project, I move to another, I sent Ron some test Nineball code based on suggestions and behavior that was occurring with Nineball, where I guess the main bug that everybody has in Nineball is that when you go into the lock shot, and whether or not it's written for lock, it drops every memory drop. And if it doesn't see one of the memory drops, the game just sits there, and it doesn't do anything. So I believe that part's fixed. The other part that a lot of people complain about is the ball will end early. That one is the locking one. It gets lost. Yeah, it gets lost. If you have the switches adjusted properly, just looking through the code, I can see that the programmer, I think there were two programmers that were actually involved with it because there's a different style between the two codes. And the one guy is basically the shooter lane switch is extremely important and a nine ball. And you could actually get two balls to launch into the shooter lane if you hold the plunger up so that the first ball doesn't hit the switch, and then you manage to shoot it onto the play field without it hitting the switch. It'll shoot another ball out. It's basically a dumb timing loop. It says, okay, I fired the out hole to put the ball in the shooter lane. I don't see the, yeah, yeah, it's like 10 seconds later, it doesn't, it says, huh, I didn't see that shooter lane switch. So it just puts another one out. Doesn't bother to check the trough switches that are, you know, perfectly there, you know, holding the status of the ball that are still on the trough. So the problem is that this is all reverse-engineered stuff. So, you know, I had to recreate the source code from it, figure out what every variable does and how many times it does it and where it does it and what mode it does it in. You have to document all that, and then you have to decide, do I want to try to fix what's there, which is basically what the programmers did back in 1980, and they just kind of tacked things on. I think that's how they ended up with the shooter lane switch being so important. But I've managed to borrow a nine ball play field from a friend. I figured, you know, I don't have a nine ball anymore, but I need to test this live because sending ROMs to beta testers could be challenging at moments. Right, Ron?
    36:13
    Well the act of sending it to me is not challenging When I put it in and things lock up then it becomes challenging Yeah exactly But that brings me to my third project that I working on now A couple months ago, somebody emailed me through Pinside and said, hey, can you look at DragonFist code and see if you can fix – sometimes drop banks are missed or they'll have a phantom score, like when your ball starts and it's resetting the drop bank. So I added some code to handle that, but we're all using the new Weebly board, which has extra RAM available in it. And I would send the code to Ron, and he would burn it and then try it out. Yeah, put it in, and it has some neat new features, or some features that were originally supposed to be in Dragon Fist that were taken out, re-implemented. So I play, like, one ball, and it's, like, right when I start getting a lot of shit going on on the game, Like, a lot of stuff, a lot of switch, a lot of stuff hitting it once, the entire game just locked up hard. Like, just stopped. Like, at a time machine. Like, everything just stopped where it was, the ball drained, and it's dead. Yep. And for once, it wasn't actually Ron not burning the EEPROM correctly. I burned the EEPROM correctly. Yeah, Scott sends me EEPROMs, I burn them, and it doesn't work. And then eventually he's like, send me what you burned. And I send him, and it's like, oh, these are totally corrupt. It's like, well, that's what you sent me, though. You sent me them in a zip file.
    37:45
    Yeah, but I'm curious as to how they got corrupted. Yeah, how did they get corrupted? I don't know. It's a mystery. It's always my fault. Of course it's always your fault. It's always the user's fault, folks. And in this case, it's my fault. Continue with DragonFist. In this case, it's actually bad programming on whoever programmed DragonFist's fault. I mean, coupled with me adding things to it. I mean, adding things to it is not going to help. Before this call started, I was actually, you know, ripping through the code on that. And the culprit looks to be there's a master background thread in DragonFest, and it can start itself many, many times. And it shouldn't do that. Any kind of background thread that kind of checks for things that it should do. In this case, it's the animation of the bonus lamps. So I'll have a – well, actually, I'm not going to bother to send you test versions, Ron, because I know you're busy and you'd rather play games that work. So I have an MPU200 original in my DragonFist now, which I'll be testing all the code in. And I think I can figure it out probably before too long. It works flawlessly in the Weebly board because there's extra RAM, and what's happening is the stack is underflowing, and it's going into RAM that doesn't exist on your board. So I'm not surprised that it was freezing up. Don't forget big game. oh yeah that's that's uh well that's older that's industrial bugs in that i don't think anybody has spotted bugs in that i know you uh it's stream that i think zach was at your house for that wasn't he uh yeah the first time yeah and then you guys played i think uh well and going back even further you know meteor was there as well with change code yeah i think you found a bug watching it on stream with the with the 5 000 sweep bonus it was like giving it yeah you got a sweep bonus on the 2 bank, which does happen on mine as well. And I mean, I won't lie and say that I came up with the sweep code. I basically pulled the Sammy's X sweep code out of Flight 2000's sweep bank, and I applied it to Meteor. Each bank has a separate sweep timer. I'll have to review that because I think I clipped it, or I saved the time to try to determine what was going on there. But basically, it's probably a variable that doesn't get reset. And it's just saying, hey, the sweep's still okay, go ahead and do it. It doesn't happen too often. I appreciate some of the other changes, though, in the code. Simple things like I don't – on these old games, usually they would pulse the drop banks at the beginning of every ball, even if the drop banks were already up, which is stupid. You're pulsing the mech for no reason, and especially on some of these games with beefier mechs where they're not the easiest things to get, why do you want to keep cycling the thing over and over? So I noticed on Scott's new code, if I'm playing nine ball and all the three banks are up, it doesn't try to reset them again.
    40:37
    Meteor threw me, because the one thing about Meteor, and I almost kind of miss it, one of the cool things about Meteor was it would, like, if you're playing a one-player game and, say, you have all the Meteor targets down except one, then the second ball, it would reset the bank and then drop all the targets except the one. And it was a cool little, it was one of the cool things about Meteor. Eight Ball Deluxe actually does that. If you're playing a one-player game, it doesn't bother to reset the memory drops for Eight Ball Deluxe, and I always thought that was smart. It does take getting used to, because I'm used to starting a game on Meteor, and you hear a chunk, chunk, chunk, chunk, and then you're like, okay, the four banks are reset, and then you hear the ball launch into the lane. And then as you're playing, I mean, you get used to it, but especially if you happen to have the original chiclet targets on your game, which are unavailable anywhere, although I think people are 3D printing them now. But you don't really want to break those. Yeah, I guess I did that on big game as well. I guess the most popular feature that I added, I was going to add as a one-off for one person requested it on big game. They said, can you make the spinners count? And I said, yeah, I could do that. And I said, I don't think anybody's going to like that. That turns out to be the most popular feature that I've added to any of the games that have it, especially Meteor. I mean, Dragon Fist obviously has its stock, which is where I got the idea from anyway. But Meteor is really fun to get the spinner. You just rip the spinner and say, gee, I wonder how many I got. And I find that I'm always looking up and saying, oh, look at that. I got 99 spins. I think the best I've gotten so far is I got 85 spins on Flight 2000's right spinner. But you can also tell if your spinner needs attention. Like, I think you were getting between 20 and 30, Ron, on the big game when you were playing?
    42:25
    Yeah, I have some weird geometry in my big game. It's either every once in a while you'll crush the leftmost spinner, but most of the time it will not crush. It's something with the flipper alignment or some way I have something that is a little different. I actually don't mind it because it becomes less of a spinner fest in a way. Yeah. I don't mind it. Like on my Meteor, the spinner, it has a very, very small sweet spot. And it's a little right of center. And if you hit it there, it'll spin forever. If you hit it anywhere except in that exact spot, it will not. And I've had people play it who are used to, like, the pop of one where the spinner just, like, no matter where you hit it, the thing spins forever. It's like, oh, run. You know, your spinner isn't spinning that well. It's like, no, you just didn't hit it in the right spot. Yeah. Mine, I actually have really fat rubber leading up to it so that it's not just a gimme shot every single time. I did that on purpose because I want you to play the game. I don't want this to be Papa where you just hit, what, the four or five meteor targets down and then just hit the spinner. I even set all the spot meteor targets to the most liberal so you'll keep getting them spotted. Yeah, I actually have mine set the same way for the same exact reason. Yeah, and it plays way better that way, in my opinion. You actually hit all those drop targets that are on the play field. You actually hit them. What a concept. Yeah, but I think that's everything that I'm kind of working on right now. I mean, there's always other things that are being looked on and worked at. I made a list. I had some free time at work in the last couple weeks, and I actually made a list of every single ROM mod I'd ever done since 2008 or so. And, you know, totally different versions because there's like four different versions of Meteor where I just kind of started fresh on every one of them. But I counted that as a separate one because it's a separate hack. And there were almost 300 different hacks that I've been involved with in some way. And most of them work. So that's always good. Any other complaints, Ron? Ron is attempting to get – well, Ron will send me – this is why Ron has the title of world's crankiest beta tester. Oh, come on.
    44:41
    because he'll... Because it took two years to get a firepower I could play. Well, okay. Okay, come on, you've got to give me that one. It's like, Ron, you need to convert this. We're going to do a seven-digit mod, and get this, get these scores. Yeah, I did. I got Ron to spend probably about $400 on EEPROM burning equipment. X-Pin or whatever displays. I cut the insert panel to fit all this shit on and align it. That's right. And some of that was a pain in the ass. So I'm making, like, these are permanent changes. This isn't like, oh, just easily go back to the old way. Like, no. I'm all in. I get these ROMs, and it's like I'll play a four-player game, and I can't get through a four-player game without it locking up. And it would do the – originally it would do the thing where it would break slowly, and more and more shit would, like, not work until it just became unplayable, which was pretty cool. I have to admit that was interesting. So we had two – At the beginning, yeah. We had two consecutive stomps where we couldn't play the game because it was broke. One, you actually came in and it locked up on you. Well, we had a disconnect on what was being described. Like one of Ron's biggest complaints was something with the bonus countdown. And I'd be like, it's flawless. What are you talking about? I mean, the bonus ladder goes up to 39K instead of 29K. So you have to adjust the sound. And I thought Ron was talking about the sound wasn't working. and he was actually talking about the lights weren't coming back. But we got Ron to start, you know, he's doing streaming now, so I just said, Ron, just run a stream when you're testing code. Just stream it and then send me a link to the file, and that way I can see it actually breaking or not breaking. And so that worked out a lot better. But the early bug reports were something broke, I don't know what, I don't know what I was doing, fix it. No, no. I still don't know what happened with your resetting on the high score to date. Every time the last bug that Ron had was a firepower. Oh, that was funny. But that one I didn't even notice at first because that's been a while since I got over a million. I had a version of the code in there that seemed to be working fine. And I just got the seven digits in there. So I get, like, a high score over a million. And I get the full, like, you know, mission accomplished. And the knocker goes off. And cool. And then after the game is over, it starts flashing the, you know, it would normally flash the new high score to date, which would be the one I just got. Instead, it would flash 9,999,990. Like, what the fuck? Actually, it would put the last nine in there, too. Okay. Yeah, that's Doc Williams' behavior when you turn over the game. But you didn't turn over the game. No. You just got over a million. And that was a hard, that was a very difficult bug to reproduce because I have the same MPU board in my Firepower that Ron does, and it wasn't doing it on mine. And the only difference is, I guess, yours is a very, very early revision of it, but I still can't imagine what would be different about it. But I guess the latest revision works, so I'm going to mark that bug completed. Yeah, I was trying to get that fixed, because when he sent me the ROMs that made it do even crazier shit, then I sent them back to him, oh, these are corrupt. Like, okay. So then I got another set, and that finally worked.
    48:00
    So it seems to be working. Not my only complaints are about the pop bumper lights. Well, I'll look into that when I'm done with the Dragon Sys Code, because pop bumper lights not moving or moving when they're not supposed to is a little lower on the priority list. Uh-huh.
    48:17
    Proctize. I'm only one person. You need to hire a couple more programmers. A couple more programmers. well the thing is with there is actually a lot of uh of people that are very interested in changing rules on other games but i don't know a lot of people that are doing it with the original hardware like the the latest one is somebody has a hybrid of an arduino versus a um a stern mpu 100 board which is kind of reinventing things that have happened in the past i know i had been in contact with two people that had done that in the past, and I finally found one of the links thanks to the Internet Wayback Machine because it sounded familiar. I mean, it's a totally different person, totally different microcontroller, but similar idea, you know, just change the rules with a new operating environment. There's a bunch of people that replace the original board sets with new stuff like Mission Pinball. Zach, what do you use? Do you use the P3 stuff? For what?
    49:16
    Your homebrew game, you're building that on one of those platforms, aren't you? One of the new ones? So I'm doing my own custom boards for the homebrew stuff.
    49:25
    Okay, but what kind of framework are you basing it on? Is it something you came up with yourself? All custom. Okay. I tried to use one of the LISY boards. Yeah. And that has Mission Pinball framework support. Yeah. But Mission Pinball framework was so slow that it couldn't run on the Raspberry Pi I had plugged in there. Okay. So I had to give up on that, although apparently the Raspberry Pi 4 that came out now supports it. But I ended up just going back to my original, I fixed up my System 1 Gottlieb original MPU board and put it in my Genie now. Okay.
    50:00
    What, I mean, are you going like basically bare metal programming on it? Because I read a lot of these threads, and I'm like, well, the reason why it's probably not working on a Raspberry Pi is that you've got all that overhead of running whatever Linux variants on it. Oh, yeah, they've got the whole Linux variant, and then they're running a Python interpreter for other configuration files, you know, like doing, like, four layers of interpreters on there. So that's definitely, like, that's what caused it to be so slow. I bypassed their programming framework, and I figured out the command structure that the board itself uses to communicate with Linux. and I just wrote it just in C to do that and that one, you know, no speed problems at all. I could just manually code it all from scratch like that and run it just fine. So it's purely just software system was not designed to be run on a board that was that low powered.
    50:54
    Yeah. But yeah, we have, you know, one megahertz processors from the late 70s that can run, you know, a simple game, no problem. But that's because they're as close to the hardware as you can get. But that's interesting. Any original hacks that you've done on the original hardware lately? I don't think I've done any mods lately except since the Black Knight ROM or the Dracula custom ROM.
    51:20
    I started working on a blackout rule rewrite, but I need to fix my blackout first. Currently, I'm trying to clean mold off the playfield, which is not going so well.
    51:31
    That'll be a very long-term project. Yeah. That'll be the same as my hot tip ROM, where I just coded a new... Yeah, the new OS, yeah.
    51:42
    But I'm going to make sure to put in a spin count this time, you know, to make Ron happy. Got to have a spin counter. And Zach got his genius, sounds like, fixed. Yeah, finally, after many, many layers of time tribulation, I think I'm on my third different board in there now. Was it, like, the wrong ROM or a corrupt ROM or something like that? I can't tell because they use their own custom 4-bit ROMs, which can't be read or made anymore, as far as I know.
    52:12
    Not easily. Yeah, not easily. So I ended up with Siegecraft. The same people who make the 2764 ROM adapters for Williams, which can be found in Valley. They also make a 2716 ROM adapter for System Ones. So I ordered that and burned a new copy of the Genie ROM to that, and that worked just fine. at that point, so there's something wrong with my original ROM, but it still actually played a game. It would start the game, it would play the star sounds, kick out the ball, reset the drops, and then as soon as you hit anything on the playfield, everything went crazy after that. It's a really unique way for a ROM to fail if it was a bad ROM. Yeah, I've only had that happen once where I had something that was an actual ROM issue, and that was in No Fear. Although, speaking of ROM failures...
    52:59
    Actually, the reason why that would fail is that all of the background code is in the spider chips on the System 1 boards. So anything that's like add a credit, start a game, shoot the ball out, that's all in the background, those spider chips that you can't reprogram anyway. And then as soon as you do something that a switch reacts on the play field, then it goes to that prom, and then that's when it's ending up. So the problem is probably just corrupt. It's actually all incorporated through a virtual machine, even on System 1, right?
    53:32
    The what? All the game code for System 1 is through a virtual machine, bytecode. Yeah. You know, like, Williams eventually got there in System 7, you know, with, like, oh, let's just do a big virtual machine for all. And Gottlieb was like, we're way ahead of you guys, except our virtual machine sucks and we can't do anything. Well, it was almost completely written by Rockwell as far as I know. And, I mean, it's sort of a virtual machine on the Stern games as well. But Williams definitely did fix that in System 7 and above. I mean, and that's all Larry DeMar. I mean, Larry DeMar really came in with a new approach and said, okay, I'm going to make it. And he built kind of like, I don't know if I'd call it bumpers, but, you know, kind of a safety net into most of the code. So it's really hard to break something, although, of course, you can. but yeah there's a whole website you've probably seen it Zach but there's a website in France where somebody has all the code for System 1 games I think they have Cleopatra just a sample yeah they explain how to and since they have the Aramadapter now I might try something to like tweak Genie to instead of extra balls or something you know like that simple since the bytecode seems to be documented, you know? Yeah. It'd be a fun thing to try at some point. Yeah. Unfortunately, the same website did not decode the System 80 games. The people that run it have custom System 80 ROMs that they don't share anything about, and the bytecode is quite different.
    55:10
    We all know how much Bruce and Ron love System 80 games. I love AliaStar. It's great. I don't mind Alien Star I don't mind Black Hole is okay Timeline I like Timeline I like Counterforce I haven't played Timeline in a while Counterforce is good Counterforce is okay I wish some of those games I wish they had not put so many flippers on them and it seems like okay there's a lot of real estate here but let's just stick a flipper there. Maybe put an extra popper there. Penis game is good. The penis game. Force 2? Never played that one. Eh.
    55:57
    Okay, it's not bad. It's better than a lot of others that they had out. That's not hard. I fixed my original MPU for my blackout because my repro MPU for that was having issues too.
    56:08
    So I finally busted out an old MPU I had and fixed up the Switch Matrix chips and stuff and got that working.
    56:15
    So my black hole is playing again, but now I've got, it's saying the wrong sound coils, so I probably got a bad connector somewhere in the sound data line I need to fix. So which, I thought, Zach, you were the one that made the disgusted sound for black hole when Ron said he liked it, but I'm guessing that must have been Bruce then. It was. Okay, Bruce. I really like black hole. Yeah, I like black hole too. That's the only system 80 that I have, and it took me a long time. it's sort of working now. The problem I have, I think, is related to the replacement motor that you get for the spinning desk. It seems like it's throwing a lot of RF and frequency stuff back. It's feeding it back into the board, and it was causing it to freeze up. So I disabled the motor, and now it seems to play fine. So I'm like, oh, okay, now I have to figure out some filtering for this motor. I feel like mine has a filter on the motor, so I have to go check. But, yeah, I've replaced it with the one they link on PinWiki. I did that replacement for mine, too, because mine was missing the motor completely. Yeah. Yeah, my gearbox was bad in my original motor, so I probably still have it. I don't really throw anything out.
    57:26
    Yeah, black hole's fun. My timeline is that a cabin in the Adirondacks right now is broken down, so I've got to go and get that back down from there so I can go diagnose it and figure out what's going on with that. because I haven't played in like two years at this point.
    57:45
    You played mine more. Maybe. I did get your ROM from that, though. Yeah. Because I had a prototype ROM in mind, which was missing some of the rules.
    57:57
    That was the revision two? I don't know. I can't find any reference to it online at all because Gottlieb has locked down all the ROM stuff, so there's like nothing. Yeah.
    58:08
    Well, there's definitely, there's a revision two and then a revision four. I don't know what the difference is between them because, you know, nobody knows.
    58:18
    I know some differences between whatever versions I have, but mine are labeled original and Bruce. Okay. So the main thing I would say is when you go in the left kicker, like future spots, left kicker over there, So it'll trigger the tilt relay on and off to flash the GI as an effect, and the code doesn't do that.
    58:39
    Okay. That's a really obvious way to tell if you're ever playing one. Okay. But it's a pretty cool effect, so I got Bruce's ROM copied to mine so that I could put that in there. As long as you archive all these things, even though you can't distribute Godly ROMs, at least there's a copy of it somewhere in case somebody needs it or if anybody ever decompiles it and you actually want to look into the code just to see what the difference is. Periodically, people will ask, I have this ROM that's marked this. What's the difference between this and that? And it's like, well, the latest one that somebody asked me to look at was Catacombs, and it seems to me like there's just an extra block of code in the middle of it, but really you have to figure out what everything does. And honestly, motivation to look at code for games I don't own anymore is kind of low at this point. So I just said it looks like they got some extra code in there that's been shifted about 24 bytes higher. And other than that, the ROM looks exactly the same. Yeah, you've done some Black Knight stuff, right? Yeah. There's someone just posted on Pinside this morning. On their Black Knight, when they hit an upper drop target, it also lights the same light on the lower drop target, you know, towards completing the banks. Okay. And I'm like, something I know of, I'm wondering, like, is that, like, some weird ROM version or something? Because I know there are multiple versions, but I don't know any differences between the versions.
    60:06
    Yeah, there's version 3 and then version 4. I actually had version 3 in my game when I bought it in 1989, and I only recently upgraded to what I call version 5, which is... Actually, I think it's only in Ron's game right now. I don't even think I have it in my game because I went back to 4 for some reason, the original 4. I think it's just some background stuff, but I haven't seen that thread yet, but that almost sounds like a wiring problem versus it actually doing it on its own. It does to me. It just sounds really weird. They even mentioned, like, after you get your first extra ball, then they're not linked anymore or something it sounded like. I just think that sounds, like, very code-specific at this point. That sounds like almost a difficulty setting or, like, it's not to the bottom and the top.
    60:59
    It's weird. Yeah, that sounds weird. I mean, so the bug is that there – or the behavior is, it's not a bug, but the behavior is you're on the upper play field. So if you shoot the ball there, you start, you know, either of those drop banks and then the lower drop banks light as well. That's – what would even be the point of that? I mean, so on digital code, there's a difficulty setting for – Yeah. Yeah, for a number of banks that you have to get down three times to get the extra ball. I can see that being like a clarity thing, like, oh, you know, the banks are linked. You know, we only need one of the others, like the extra ball. It's like it could make sense, but it's just I've never heard of it at all. Are you saying when it's complete that it lights or that when you just hit one of the targets down, it lights, you know, it flashes the blue light? Does it flash the blue lights or when you actually complete the bank on the top, it also completes the one on the bottom? So, quote, hitting any target lights two hurry-up jewels, one upper, one lower play field. Clearing any colored bank lights the arrow on both the upper and lower of that bank.
    62:05
    Yeah, maybe that's really early code then. That sounds like code. Yeah, I could say that, putting it in there. Yeah, I mean, the lamps probably are all parallel between them, just because it makes coding easier. But maybe it's earlier than revision three. That I don't know. I'll have to read that thread later on. The map arrangement is something I always cool and never really thought about. When I first started coding Hot Tip, I was like, oh, you know, they placed the one-up through four-up and the one-player through four-player lights, next to each other in rows, so you can easily lock between them or stuff. They actually laid out their map matrix and switch matrix to make the coding easier. Yeah. Which is really cool. Yeah, now that's smart. I think they did that actually all the way back in the beginning, even with really early Valley games that show the player up number rather than flashing the display. So, Bruce. Hi, Ron. How are you doing? You have a code thing. Gammatron. You have a new little Gammatron enhancement?
    63:13
    Well, one of the guys I know comes in the bar, actually, and has one of the games at the bar, emails me like a week ago and says, hey, by the way, here's this new code I have. So you're playing this Gammatron sound, speech sound. It actually is the Orbiter 1, but instead of, and Flight 2000, but instead of saying, what is it? It's saying Gametron instead. So hold on. Well, Flight 2000 doesn't actually say Flight 2000 in the game. I know.
    63:47
    One, two, three, four, five, prepare. Mission. Stand by all systems. Go first. Stage seven. Gametron player commence countdown.
    64:00
    There you go. So I heard it say GammaTron in there, and I know you were curious if the Flight 2000 software is going to work on GammaTron. It's going to require a completely separate build of it, so I'm hoping that Zach can get his machine out of storage or wherever he's got it so that he can try it out. Those GammaTrons are at my house. Yeah, Bruce and I are both next to each other right now. Right next to each other. We're both at the utility. Well, Bruce, do you have the ability to burn EPROMs? I do. It's called Zach. Yes, exactly.
    64:33
    I don't have my burner anymore. I used to have it when I worked, where I used to work. You used to have it when you worked. Yeah, when I worked, actually. When I worked at a job, not my bar.
    64:45
    Oh, your bar's not a job. It's a life. The main problem is that the way they were able to kind of program GammaTron is that they move some of the switches around the play field. So things that I added to Flight 2000, like the skill shot for the top lanes, the lanes are, some of them aren't at the top on Gammatron. So all of that has to be recoded from scratch. And now you're telling me that there's a voice ROM available for it. So that's going to make it even more difficult because, as I said before, there were five bytes free. And for the Gammatron changes, I was excited because I could cut out all the speech. But now you're telling me I've got to leave the speech in. Fuck yeah. You just crippled my workload, Bruce. Do either of our Gametrons have a speech board in them, or are they both original? They're both. Well, here's the funny thing. Yours is not at all. You have the newer board from Pinstar. You have the CPU. You have the driver board and the rectifier board and the light board. On mine, I have the original Bally soundboard still in the wiring in the machine.
    66:03
    They never took it out. That doesn't actually do anything. Exactly. Free soundboard. Yeah. That's what I was thinking, free soundboard. Yeah. But, you know, it works perfectly. I was really surprised when we bought mine and Zach's together. That CPU had a couple issues, didn't it, if I remember correctly? Well, the CPU wasn't actually from GammaTron. It was just some random CPU they threw in, I think. Yeah. Mods done to it that needed to have done. I hear you. But this one worked perfect.
    66:33
    Yeah, this one worked perfect. I was really happy. It had some flaky displays. Somebody had a hack job of a display. I might have to take a picture of it. This display is the worst solder job and mod job I've ever seen just to get this display to work. And so I just ripped it out of the master. One thing that I did fix already in GammaTron, and I think this was another Zach's suggestion, is that the switch and the solenoid test don't show on any of the displays because it's expecting a seven-digit display, so the right digit was always cut off. And I did move that over. It's not in the rightmost display. It's the next digits over because it was just easy to change one location. Yeah. So, Pinstar sold a product that you couldn't use in the platform they told you to use it in? Unless you put it on a seven-digit game, because they don't use a seven-digit game if you want it. Okay. So, if you're using a six-digit, you're in trouble. Yeah. Yeah, so as two GammaTron owners on the phone, I'll ask for suggestions on the Gamitron itself as to whether or not you think they're good changes. But one thing that might make a lot of sense is, you know how Gamitron is, it's a good game in single ball play, I think. I used to have a Gamitron. I had it right next to my Flight 2000. But as soon as you get multi-ball, the play field is just way too tight for even, you know, two balls on the field. What do you think about making a ROM that takes away the multi-ball entirely? It's just a single ball game? No. Nobody likes that idea. I don't think I'd rather it all. On ours, it's pretty easy to control the balls. So I find it, like, do L1 on it and start shooting for stuff. What I'd rather see is if you have the three-ball multi-ball, it's a three-times play field and two-times play field for two balls. And then when you drain, it goes back two.
    68:33
    Well, that's one of the things that I have in the Flight 2000 code, but it only starts the multiply play field scoring. Originally, I was testing it with, like you just described, three balls in play, 3X scoring, but the scores were insanely high. It changed the game from being a, I don't know what the prevailing tournament strategy would be on Flight 2000, probably shoot the right spinner and get that up in a high value.
    69:01
    It certainly wasn't get the multiball, but it changed the game to, yeah, get the multiball, because you can get the 15X multiplier.
    69:12
    It changed the game too much to be, okay, you got the multiball, just catch two balls on whichever flipper you prefer and then shoot whichever spinner the single ball is on, and the scores were just astronomical. So I made it a timed multi-ball where if you shoot the ball walker during multi-ball, it'll give you 2X scoring the first time, and then it gives you about 15 seconds now, so it's similar to Flash Gordon in the time that it's lit. And then if you shoot it up again during the 15 seconds, it'll make it 3X scoring for the play field for that time period, and then it'll decay down to 2x, and it'll actually stay active even if you drain the multiball. So, I mean, it could be some variant on that. It's just the code is all there. It's all in the back end, and you just have to change the parameters to what starts it and advances it. So that could be something that could be pretty easily added to it. And obviously the biggest complaint everybody has about Flight 2000 and all those multiball games is that you lock the ball during multiball and your multiball is over. any other GammaTron suggestions can be sent to slamtoolpodcast.gmail.com and then I might be trading my half a cheetah away how many cheetahs do you own? one and a half? well I actually own two but the head was so wasted still waterlogged that I just threw it out it was falling when I grabbed it and I actually bought it was actually falling apart in the car every bump you would actually hear the thing going And by the time we got back, it actually collapsed on the inner light panel. That's how bad this cabinet, the head was. So I threw that out. I only have a half of one. And Jim from the Sanctum might be grabbing it for me. If he grabs me something, it's going to be like a couple different person trade.
    70:58
    So you live for the trade. I do. I live for the trade. I think Jim is trying to get, like, every certain game. He is. And he goes, I have a heads, I have everything else. All I don't have is the playfield. I showed him my playfield, and he's like, it's better than nothing. Okay. I wish I would have kept the bare cheetah playfield. I actually had a populated cheetah playfield when I owned one many years ago, and I stripped all the parts off it. I have all the parts, including the plastics, but I sold the playfield at a pin fest, you know, 10 years ago. I have an NOS playfield.
    71:34
    Yeah, you got it from Brazil? Yeah. No, no. That one I got from, where was that? That was from. That was, yeah, somebody because they heard you on the podcast. Yeah.
    71:45
    Yeah. And, yeah, I got the Meteor one from Brazil. Speaking of Cheetah, which, of course, is a game. You know, I sold all these classic Sterns before they were nice and valuable, thanks to you guys. Yeah, thank you. You're welcome. Yeah. but I mean Cheetah what do you play for on Cheetah I'm like everybody seems to shoot the right drop bank and then you just shoot the spinner and it's like well what about the rest of the play field if you have the mod ROMs in there you have to time it so you get the collect bonus at the right time there should be more to do on it that play field is so huge you can go for multipliers if you're good get up top that's another key The absolute best way the best way I used to score on it is nobody ever shoots for the middle drop bank where it got the scrolling letters or the scrolling stars Oh I do I do Yeah, if you can get that center spinner lit for 3,000, that's like the shot in the game. I totally agree.
    72:52
    That's my go-to cheetah strategy is just go for that bank. Yeah, because nobody else goes for it. And once you have it, it sticks throughout the whole game. So if you can get that on ball one, you're tripling your spin. That's a setting.
    73:04
    Okay, Scott, can you move that setting, please? Sure. Why have mine where it holds over? Because it's so hard to get the damn lines half the time. And that's the other thing, the other difference between the blue cheetah code, I call it with the different sounds. The proto versus regular. And the regular cheetah code is on the regular cheetah code, But if you hit the three bank and you don't get the grid, like you screw up, you don't get the line, it plugs this for a second, almost like it's saying, hey, you didn't get this, and then it resets. The blue cheater ROM, it resets it immediately, like a normal bank. I noticed that little difference. Okay, that's actually a pretty huge difference because then you're going to get the chance to shoot for it again. What I was going to teach you was doing it in a pod. It literally just, it's just a little pause, like before it resets. It's like a millisecond or two. Just to do a little display effect and say, hey, you blew this. Where it doesn't do that on the blue one. It just resets like any other target bank. Yeah. I think that it might be good because the things off that center target bank can be valuable and nobody shoots for it because it's timed and it is a really difficult shot being at the top of the play field, is maybe there could be a mode where you just stack everything where, okay, the first line's lit. Complete it. Maybe even make it timed. and then if you didn't complete it, it'll just reset, but if you complete it, it'll go to the next line, and then you would just build up to what probably would be the most valuable award on it would be to light the spinner, I would guess, unless there's an extra ball or special lighting from it or something, you know, something that nobody cares about in tournament play. Maybe if you get a line, that line just stays lit, then it kind of goes over it.
    74:50
    Yeah, that's how I thought it would work, is, like, you just continue filling in the grid, you know, in the right order. That would be interesting. Yeah, that actually could be an interesting mod. I mean, somebody should give me a cheetah back so that I could develop the code on it. I could test it for you. It's kind of like some of the later RPG modes in T3, which are cool, which people don't give it as new, but, like, you'll hit one, and it'll stay lit, and then it'll scroll past it, and you have to time your shot to hit one of the other ones. Or, like, when it rotates, it'll lock the one in place that you hit, and then it'll skip over it with the lights. So, yeah, like, fill up the grid instead of – because technically, if you get a line, you can get the same line again, and it's worthless. Yeah, exactly. Have the light just stay on, and then it skips over it. I mean, the grid's big enough. It's like four by three. Yep. The only thing is, when you get to the last line, what's it going to do? just... It's just going to let you collect it. That's the only problem when you do something like that. One million points. Ooh!
    75:59
    A million! Oh my, I like that. Okay, I have a tech thing. It's more of a question. I have the answer, but I need more specific instructions. And maybe someone out there has done this.
    76:15
    So, I get my Iron Man. Right? And it occurs to me when I'm playing it, it's like, oh, yeah, this is the era of Stern where they didn't know what slingshots were. And they're just weak as fuck. They're terrible.
    76:30
    And their earlier games are like that. None of their new games are like that. And for once, I decided, like, I wonder why that is. And I started doing some research. And it turns out that at some point, I'm trying to remember what game, Tron, Transformers, somewhere in there, They went from 20-volt slings to 50-volt slings, and they changed the coil. It's like actually a different coil. The one in Iron Man is like a 23-800, and then the ones they're using now are like a 16-1000-something.
    77:05
    Are they still numbering the coils the way they always used to where the 23-800 meant 23-gauge wire? I believe so, yeah. Yeah. I think it's the same. So, technically, the newer coils they're using actually have more windings, actually more resistance, but they're running them at 50 volts. So, I was like, has anyone ever tried to convert this? Because the problem I have with Iron Man is, you know, I have my sling set up, hair trigger tilt. Yeah. Hair trigger where it goes off. But instead of on a game with real slings where, you know, a ball will come down and you might get pop, pop, boom, and out it goes. Yeah, pop, pop, drain. Pop-pop drain or pop-pop up or pop-pop something. These are more like you're watching tennis. One, left, right, left, right, left, right. And I fucking hate it. And you'll start multiball, and the whole first 10 seconds of multiball, you're watching the thing go back and forth, just waiting to get the ball. Or if you start double scoring, it's probably going to hit the sling after you start double scoring. And you're like, ooh, look, you doubled your scoring on your sling. It's like either drain or give me the ball. But just don't, like, so. So is the mech exactly the same between them, Ron? Yes, the mech is the same. The only difference is the coil. So at first I thought it was just maybe, oh, I just, but when I saw the coil, like I said, the coil had more resistance. So why would it be stronger? And then I did some reading and found out they changed, you know, it used to be on a 20-volt bus. Can you get the 50 volts?
    78:36
    Is the 50 volts available anywhere? Yeah, yeah. I know the flipper is right next to it. Well, what someone did on pin side, and it sounded like it should work, but it didn't. And they had the explanation, but I just wanted some clarification exactly what I would need to do if I wanted to do this. What this person did is they took the 50 volts from the pop-upers, because they're 50 volts, and they ran that over. Because that makes no sense at all to have the pop-upers be 50 and the slings be 20. Well, so they took that over, and they disconnected the 20 volt, and they probably left the wires together. so the bus is still there, whatever. And they wired this in, and they changed the coils to the right coils, the coils that it is now. And they figured this would just work. They turned the game on, and the coil would just energize. They turned the game off. Like, what the hell? So eventually the person gave up, and they put everything back, and a discussion came about because the diode is not on the coil, it's on the board.
    79:36
    So there was this situation where there's like 20 volts on one side of the diode and 50 volts on the other side. So that's why it would, because it was uneven, it would just lock the coil on. And it was stated if you wanted it to actually work, what you'd have to do is take the diode off of the board and put it on the coil. It depends on how they're triggered. I don't have any new Stern games, but it probably,
    79:58
    if they're just grounding it like they do on all the older games, it shouldn't matter. I mean, this is what I would do to do that. First of all, I wouldn't even change the coils to the new ones. The 2300s would be fine with 50 volts. Well, it'd be crazy strong. It'd be crazy strong. I think that's why they switched them. Fun fact is that's the TNA pop bumper. That's how it's so strong is they use a 20-volt rated coil at 50 volts.
    80:23
    Well, I don't think the coils are actually what's rated at different voltages. I mean, it's 23800. It's 23-gauge wire. It's not 50-volt, 23-gauge wire. It has to be the power at that voltage. Yeah. It has a certain amount of power at, you know, voltages. And if you increase the voltage, obviously, you're going to – I think the reason probably why it didn't work is – now, Ron, you measure the resistance on the coils? That's what you're saying? Well, I'm just going by the windings of the coil. I know it's different gauge wire, but one is like 800 windings. The other one's 1,000. So I'm thinking 1,000 is going to have more resistance, and it's going to have – you know, I'm assuming they upped that because they went to 50 volts. Because the thicker the wire is, 16-gauge wire is thicker, it has less resistance per foot. So the 16-1000 might actually have less resistance than a 23-800.
    81:17
    Yeah, I'm looking it up right now, actually. Slingshot. I mean, personally, what I would do is I would isolate the circuit and possibly, I mean, if you're just feeding 50 volts into it and it's just switching the ground on the other end, it shouldn't matter what that circuit's on, but I don't know 100% about it. So what's the actual volt resistance between the two? I found the post. Stern high power slingshot conversion.
    81:42
    So he said I have a 20, okay, he has a 24, and the slingshot's stuck because they're, you know, they're 20 volts. Yeah, I'm sure that's everything that's wrong with 24. Hey, I like 24. I was going to move the sling coils to the 50 volt. He calls them rails. Is that the proper term? I always call them, like, the power bus. Okay, the 50 volt rails. Either is correct. Sure is correct. So I installed the, it's actually a 26-1200 coils. That's what Stern is using now. I ran the power wire from the pops, disconnected the 20-volt power wire, and left the transistor wire that was there on the coil. The result was that the coil locked on as soon as the high power was engaged. I reverted the change, and all's fine. So they were asking, you know, why that happened. Let's see. You didn't mix up. So the diodes on board who are now conducting, or yeah, the diodes on board, I guess on the board, are now conducting instead of blocking. A solution is given in this picture. The diodes are removed from the board and put on the swing coils themselves.
    82:43
    So yeah, in the original design, there was 20 volts on each side of the diode. Therefore, no current flow. After changing the voltage to the coil, you now have 50 volts on one side of the diode and 20 on the other. The diode passes current in that direction, so the coil energizes. um it's it the original coil is a you said it was a 26 1200 is a 23 800 23 800 oh the one in 24 is a 26 1200 oh no that's what he whatever that person posted that's what he changed it to it would have been a 23 800 originally okay yeah um so my questions are more like so if it says take the diode off of the board does that mean you just cut it or do you have to jumper it or What does that mean? I'd have to look at the actual schematics to the spike system. That's a SAM system. SAM. I'd have to look at the SAM system schematics. I could put it in chat, but, you know, since you don't believe in computers. I'm sitting in front of a computer right now. Yeah.
    83:43
    Okay. I'm trying to find it myself, and I'm having trouble even finding the schematics online for it. Yeah. But it's like, basically, I'm asking because I want to do this. I want to get it on the 50-volt, and I want 50-volt slings on my Iron Man.
    83:58
    So whatever I have to do to get this to work. And this basically says if you do it this way, it'll work, but I want to make sure I'm reading it correctly. And, like, when you say take the diodes off the board, do you just cut it? Do you have to jumper something on the board so the diode is not oil? I would think you'd have to jumper it back. because otherwise you don't have a complete circuit. I think you don't jump around the board. You just cut off the board and you add it out to the coil. I think that should do it, looking at the schematics. Okay, yeah, because you have the schematics around it. Hold on. All that I'm doing is connecting the coil's pin to 20 volts. You know, you don't want to jumper that because then you just... Okay, so the diode is actually on the rail side then, the plus side. Yeah, it's the same as like a WPC. They move their diodes off to the driver board. Yeah, then Ron, what Zach just said is correct. So, and I would use the same diode, whatever it was, that was on the board? Yeah, you can get anything, like a 1N4004 up to, like, a 7. Okay. Because I want to try this, because it just, I have everything else perfect on that game right now, and that's, like, the only thing that just bugs the shit out of me. It's, like, I'd rather have it just sling-cling drain than to do tennis back and forth for 10 seconds. Yeah, that's pretty boring. Give me the ball. Yeah. Okay. That was my tech question. I'll check that off. Yeah. And, I mean, I don't even really think you need to change the coil. Try it with the new coil first and just see how it does. Or try it with the original. Original. I would be wary of that because you're going to be drawing a lot more amps. The board might not be rated for it on the transistor.
    85:40
    Yeah, I was figuring I would just – I'm just trying to make it like their current games. And it's the same mech, so I figure I can use the same coil running at 50 volts, and it should be the same result. I should have the same power.
    85:52
    And this is the SAM games, too. They have the ridiculous, like, you know, you can set the coil power at weak, normal, or strong, and you change it, and it literally does nothing. I have never noticed a difference in any way changing those settings, ever. It's probably the pulse that it's supplying. Do they switch with MOSFETs, or do they use actual, like, transistors? so Stern is using MOSFETs for the 50 volts and transistors for the 20 volts which is also what concerns me yeah I don't think I'm going to have rated for 50 volts at that level that means that Ron that the coil strength setting they probably refer only to the ones that you're using the MOSFETs on because they're probably driving it with the PVM to control the voltage so I can change the power of my pop-upers wow that's great some people care about that some people don't I mean I don't want them to be weak but yeah I remember back in the day and you remember this people be like I want to make my flippers stronger it's like I went into the coil strength and upped it to max and my flippers are still the same they don't seem to be any different I mean there's only so much you can do for the pulse changes I mean, it depends on what the transistor is that's driving it. I mean, WPC games all use normal transistors to drive their coils at, you know, nominally 60 volts. So I think you're okay with the slings on that circuit. They use tip 36Cs for the 50 volts, though, not tip 102s, don't they? Don't they reserve the tip 102s for the 25-volt low power? Probably. so you might have to add on a little board run that uh has some tip 36c's on it so you don't blow your uh 122s or 120s whatever's on there it might work with the 120s but you're risking possibly blowing the 120 depending well the 102 is stronger though so if it has a 102 it'll it'll be okay uh i don't know how many amps the 102 can sink so i mean we're talking a really short pulse So, again, if anyone listening has done this mod already and had success, please let us know at slamtillpodcast.gmail.com. Ron, this is what you do. If you want to try it and not blow anything up, put a fuse holder in line with it when you move over the 50 volt, and then if your transistor does blow so that you don't, you know, blow other components on the board, at least it'll just blow the fuse for the slings. and then just put a, like a one and a half amp slow blow in it. And it shouldn't blow for normal use, but if it does take out one of your transistors, at least you'll kill the 50 volts down to your slings. Okay. Good. And if you blow it up, Zach will be happy to fix your board for you. Free of charge. Okay.
    88:53
    Okay. I have something I want to talk about. Yeah. Before we go into anything else, I want to put the names out to all the people who bought gift certificates from the Silver Ball Saloon.
    89:05
    I'm not going to put last names. I'm just going to put your first name and initial at the back side. But I wanted to thank these people and say, you know, we're very appreciative, me and Kathy, for helping us out a little bit with bills and everything else. Everyone thinks, like, this is so easy, and it's not. Unfortunately, it isn't.
    89:23
    So we have actually five from the one person. It's Missy. She didn't give a last name because she actually owns a company, so she's giving it to her employees.
    89:34
    Deb B., Jeff S., Ben B., Justin D., Chuck L., Jeff T., Eric R., Rob S., Jim P., Brian G., Tiana, and Andy. I know those, that's why there's no last name for them. Steve P., Tom Andre A., Judy D., and Dan D., Matt M., Jen K., P.I., Ryan B., Ryan C., Brad L., and Dennis from your podcast.
    90:13
    Those are the people who have gotten gift certificates from us, and me and Kathy are very grateful, and I wanted to give a personal thank you to all you guys.
    90:20
    It's helping out when we finally do open. And if you do want to buy one, we are still offering them up. You can email us at slimtiltpodcast.gmail.com, or you can email the bar at the Silver Ball Saloon. I think it's the Silver Ball. I've got to check myself. Yeah, you've got to check because everyone keeps telling me the Silver Ball Saloon doesn't work. It's the Silver Ball Saloon. It's not the. So what he's been telling you the last three episodes are wrong. That's the website. So it's silverballsaloon at gmail.com. That's got it. Yes. But the website is the silverballsaloon. Mm-hmm. So thank you, guys.
    91:02
    So did anyone see my character's debut this past Monday? Your character? I thought you had a person over. Yeah, Stu. Oh, well, you said character. Yeah, he is a character. Did you see him? He's a real character. He is a real character. Yes. He played my Iron Man. He blew up the Iron Man. He took the GC, blew away my score. You suck. You put in your initials. He put my initials in and pissed me off. I have to talk to him about that.
    91:29
    Scott has no idea what we're talking about. I think he should have sang the whole song. The students should have sang the whole song. No, I'm not going to get in trouble. I don't want to get blew off the list. He would get in trouble, but he's still going to get in trouble. Yeah, but it's my channel. It's our channel. I let him be on the channel. We can't get banned. But his cock is community property.
    91:52
    So appropriate that he started with a Steel Panther song. He was quite upset when I told him he couldn't sing that. I know. But Stu will be back this Monday. Well, by the time this airs, it'll be this past Monday.
    92:06
    Yeah. So he will be doing three songs, he tells me, this time. Okay. And what game is he going to be playing since we... We don't know. It's always a mystery. The game's a mystery. until, yeah. I mean, I know what it is, but I can't tell you. Well, you can tell us, because guess what? Oh, it's going to air afterwards, so yes. Exactly. Yeah, you're right. It's Demoman. Okay. He'll be playing some Demoman. People asked some questions on there. Is he related to Python? I don't know. He is from Romania. Okay, okay. And he's a 1978 Playboy Launch Party champion. Yes. Which he tells me he was like 10 years old when he did that. So he's not impressed with all these young kids who were really good at pinball because he won when he was 10.
    92:53
    Wow. I'd like to know how he got into the Playboy launch party when he was 10 years old. Good personal friend of, what's his name, the owner of Playboy. Hugh Hefner. Hugh Hefner, yeah. Yeah, the guy in the back last. Yes. So, yeah, I got good feedback. Yep. So, Stu will continue to do his thing. Maybe you'll have to get some other people to come on eventually. Eventually. One day. One day in the future. Yeah, in the future.
    93:25
    So, do we have any mail in the mail ball bag? We do. Mail ball bag. It's full? Yes, it's full.
    93:37
    Let's drain that thing. Drain that thing. Let's drain it big boy. We got an email from Eric T. You may be aware of this. It appears he is the owner of our Black Knight 2000. I know. This is crazy.
    93:54
    So I think Vance is responsible for both sales at this point. Okay. Because if I remember, you know, Bruce had Black Knight 2000. He sold it to me. Then when I was going to sell it, I remember, I think Vance came up to me at Allentown. He said, I have someone here that's actually from Albany who wants a Black Knight 2000. So he ended up buying it. But then he eventually got tired of it and wanted to sell it. Understandable. Yeah. So then he threw Vance again. Vance was like, I know someone in Rochester who was looking for a Black Knight 2000. So it went back to Rochester, which is hilarious to me. So it went from Rochester to Albany back to Rochester.
    94:34
    And he sent some pics of it, and I did confirm 100%. It is definitely that last night. Yeah, it's definite. Which I thought the funniest part was it had some newbie moments from Bruce. Huh? Yeah, I thought this was awesome. I got to read this. What does it say? Oh, here we go. Hi, everyone. This is Bruce posting to probably news group. Hi, everyone. I have a problem with, oh, your spelling is just awesome, man. Problem with Black Knight 2000. The lower play field light just go out. They don't come back on for a while, but the attract lights are on fine. What could it be? Any help? Just yell out, thanks, Bruce.
    95:25
    Burn connector, probably. Yes, that's what they suggested. Connector is broken or burnt. See? That's a newbie moment. Yeah, well. See, everyone's got to start somewhere, folks. Yeah. That'd be a good statement. Just find, like, someone's earliest tech post online. Oh, God. Oh, yeah. Dream. Yeah, that would be fun. What would my first one is? I can tell you mine. Let's go. Wreck that game. Stop pinball. So that was... 2001, you said? 2001. Yeah, but I know I got it earlier.
    95:58
    We have a clarification here. This is from Chris C, who was the one who sent my, what he wanted my streaming stage name to be.
    96:09
    And it was, remember we were saying you jazz coquet and all this stuff. We were trying to figure out how we were supposed to pronounce it.
    96:17
    Yeah, it was supposed to be you jazz cock. So, you jazz cock. Get it? There you go. And then we had a suggestion from Ryan, Ryan K. who thought we should do a stern bracket using stern electronics games.
    96:38
    Now, see, while I think that's a good idea, I think, unfortunately, me and Bruce's views on this are too close, and we would probably pick the same game for, like, every matchup. Would you say that's a fair assessment? Yeah, probably. So maybe for a future episode we'll do this, but don't be surprised if we both come up with the same game. That's the top. You know what? in the back of my head, and I'm sure one of our long time listeners could answer this, I thought we did that once. Yes, I think we did. I think we did a it was either a bracket or we may have done a, one of our head-to-heads where we used all the Stern Electronics games. Mm-hmm. I thought we did something like that. Yeah, I think you did, and I think something like Quicksilver 1. Yeah, I think something like Quicksilver 1. I think you are correct.
    97:28
    All right. That was the mailbag. Mm-hmm. You're still looking up posts? Yep, I am. I found one from 1994. Wow. Yeah. That's old I am. Wow.
    97:45
    Zach was probably not even alive yet, possibly. He might have been a gleam. A gleam. A gleam in Dad's eyes.
    97:55
    Oh, God, I'm fucking old. Yes, you are. Let's see. I'm trying to find the oldest one. That definitely predates anybody that I know personally that was on RGP then. So Bruce has been out of the record holder. Yeah, great. Yeah, 1994. My space ace at Skylands.net. Wow. That's like 10 years before I even had a game. Yeah. I wasn't even on the Internet in 1994. Really? I think my father was because of work. That's how I was able to get on the computers. Williams was still there making games. Yeah, yeah, still in business. Yeah. Wow. They were. So was Gottlieb. So was Gootloob. Oh, Gootloob. Yeah. Capcom wasn't even around yet. Oh, it was so bad. I was using, I remember exactly what we were using. We were using Netscape. Netscape Navigator, baby. Woo! Yeah, it was bad. I mean, and we had dial-up. At least it wasn't Mosaic. Oh, no. We were past Mosaic, thank God. We were on Netscape. We were doing dial-up. And any time you went on any website that even had, like, a graphic on it, it would take, like, a minute just to download one picture. It was like, oh, my God. And what kind of graphical websites were you going on?
    99:15
    There's a couple. Here's the funny thing. In 89 and 90, my father worked for, at the time, Bell Atlantic, which became Verizon. My dad had at the house and at his work a video phone from 1989, which used phone lines. So very Star Trek there. It was very Star Trek back in 89. But wouldn't that require the other person to also have said same phone? He had one at work, and he had one for, because they would do, they would actually do almost like a one person, you know, one person to another person. Early Zoom. Exactly. Early Zoom.
    99:54
    So, yeah. Wow. It was just called Zip instead of Zoom. Zip. Or Zilch. No, Zilch was the video phone from the World's Fair from 1960. There you go. It felt like it. It was pretty choppy. It was only a screen like two inch by two inch. Oh, my. It was really small. Is it like postage stamp videos back in the day, like RealPlayer? I don't remember those. Oh, God. Remember RealPlayer?
    100:22
    Yes. Are you ready, Bruce, for the System 11 matchup? Yes, we are. The System 11 matchup. And we have two other players with us today. So I already have. This was a suggestion from one of our listeners, too. So we do listen to you. Yes, we do. So if you want to give us more, come along for the ride. We have four people who are going to be doing the draft with us today, of course. Our guests are going to be included on picking their best. First, they're going to try their best game, and then whatever's available left. Basically, we're doing a draft for System 11 games, and one thing we forgot is we need team names.
    101:03
    I'm going to be Seymour Butts. So your team name is Seymour Butts. Because we have Scott Seymour. Nice.
    101:14
    Very good, Bruce. I don't think I have an inventive team name. I'll be Inventive Team Name. Oh, God. You took mine. I was going to be Team 2.
    101:26
    You can still be Team 2. You can be Team 1, Zach, because you are the first player to pick. He could be Batman. No, I still want to be Team 2 if I'm first. Okay, Team 2. I'm going to be Force 2. So you can be a dickhead. Yeah.
    101:42
    I'm literally the penis game. And Scott, what was yours? Uninventive team name. Remember the name of your tournament? What was it? Tournament without an interesting name. P. Twain. Pinball tournament without an interesting name. Yeah. And it's up to revision, I think, nine. P. Twain nine. You should just be P. Twain then. So here I'll be P. Twain then. He's P. Twain. Okay, hold on. Let me scratch that out again. P. Twain. he's a pinball tournament without an interesting name I'm a penis game Zach is you're a skim more butts and Zach is team 2 ok so Zach you are the first person to pick so you get the choice of system 11 11A, B or C games which is your pick and what am I picking based on you think is the best game what I think will be chosen as the best game Well, okay We're putting this on Facebook And asking the listeners Who got the best five games? So you want to get Because we know Zach's tastes tend to be a little different Yes, they are I'll take high speed then High speed original Which he hates, so he's playing it well Okay Okay, I am the second person to pick. This is all random.
    103:14
    And Seymour Butts will be picking Whirlwind. The next pick is Scott. F14. Wow. You are last. I get the last pick here. That sucks. Don't I get two picks in a row, though? You get two picks in a row. It goes zigzag. All right, so I will take... Hold on. I'm checking these off as people pick them. Yeah, you should. I have it all writing them down right now as we speak. All right.
    103:46
    I will take, yeah, I'll take taxi. Taxi, taxi, taxi. And mousing around. That was coming. Okay. Scott, you are the next pick.
    104:00
    I will take for my second pick roller games. Roller Games. I am the next pick, and I am picking Radical.
    104:13
    Zach, you get to pick two in a row. All right, I'll take Banzai Run. Okay. And Swords of Fury.
    104:26
    That's right. A lot of people like that game for some reason. Yes. For some reason. Yes. Do you mean Banzai Run or Swords of Fury? Swords of Fury. Well, everyone likes Banzai Ron, right? For some reason. I hate Banzai Ron. Me too.
    104:44
    Okay, my pick, and I am picking Space Station. Good choice. Okay, Scott. Diner. That wasn't going to last too long.
    105:01
    Ron, you get to pick two in a row. I'll do Earthshaker. Okay. And Elvira and the Party Monsters. Scott.
    105:14
    Dr. Dude. Okay, and it's back to me now. Bugs Bunny. Grand Lizard. All right, I'll take Cyclone. Rosak, your last tip. And Pinbot.
    105:36
    Pinbot. Back to me. Oh, boy. My last pick. It's a heads up. I don't know which one I want to do. Hell, you're there.
    105:51
    You're not swaying me. Trust me. It's only one of two. Pugspy. No. Couch Sharks. Bull Sharks. Go, Prince.
    106:02
    If you tell me police force, I'm going to really back off. Police force! I'm going with the most popular one I think on here, Black Knight 2000.
    106:20
    Scott, you get the pick. This is my text-to-list pick, right? This is your last pick. We're only doing five. You got four already of F-14, Roller Games, Diner, and Dr. Dude. Okay, I'm going to say Bad Cats.
    106:40
    Zach. I'm sorry, Ron, your last pick and the last draft pick. Ah. Yay, not much. No, but there's ones I do like, but I don't know if that's what our listeners will like. You know, like, I like Road Kings, but I don't know if listeners who like Road Kings. You like Road Kings? I like Road Kings. See, I told you, Scott. Wait a minute. If Scott doesn't like it, and usually, yeah, people are the opposite of Scott. Maybe I should pick Road Kings. Millionaire. No.
    107:14
    There's one I'm surprised nobody picked yet. Cyclone? No. Pinbot. Cyclone. No, Pinbot was picked. I picked Pinbot. Oh, that's right. Sorry. That's right. That was one, so sorry. So Cyclone is the one that I'm surprised nobody's picked. Yeah.
    107:31
    No, someone picked Cyclone. No, they have not. Yeah, they did. Oh, yeah, sorry. They did. Oh, he did? Okay. Yeah. What do I have so far, Bruce? What are my games? Okay, your picks right now. Let's go over. If you want, I'll go over everyone's. I just want yours right now. This is fine for now. Axie, Mousing Around, Earthshaker, Elvira, and the Party Monsters. All right. That's a complimentary.
    107:55
    You know, I'm going to go for the weird. I'm going to take Transport or the Rescue. That's actually the best one I think so far out of the rest. Yeah, it's a good game. Yeah, but most people, I don't know if they played it, so I might have hurt myself there.
    108:08
    Okay, so here we go. Here's going to be your lineups to show off. Zach, Team 2 is High Speed, Banzai Run, Swords of Fury, Cyclone, and Pinbot. For Seymour Butts, it's Whirlwind, Radical, Space Station, Grand Lizard, and Black Knight 2000.
    108:27
    Scott, F-14s, Roller Games, Diner, Dr. Dude, and Batcats. And for Ron, for Force 2, sorry, Scott's team was P-Twayne. And Ron, for Force 2, it's Taxi, Mousin' Around, Earthshaker, Elvira and the Party Monsters, and Transporter to the Rescue. Just guaranteed victory. For me? Yeah, thanks. For me yeah No one close to that Now if you want we can talk this over for a few seconds of what you think is your good points and bad points or you just want to Or we can see if we want to do any trades
    109:02
    Yeah. Like Bruce is going to trade away Whirlwind. Obviously that's going to win. Of course. No, I don't want to trade. I'm very happy with my game. Oh, see. Okay. Are you? You don't sound like you're happy. I just thought it would be a cool little. I'm just thinking of an actual draft. I don't know if Ron ever, if you actually picked any of the System 11 games you actually own. Ah, Mousin. Mousin, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's true. One. That's one, yeah. He's never owned any of the others. I think I picked all his other picks. Yeah. All his other games. Yep, I think you did. It's going to be tight. It's going to be really tight, boys. And you're going to actually put it up on the... Yes, I am going to put it up probably tomorrow.
    109:51
    Come listen in. Here's the teams, but not who chose who wasn't. Exactly. The team and really good at it. There you go. That would be even better. Here are the four groups of games. Who picked what? And you can put the names. We can try that first. Yeah, that's all right. That works. I like that for the beginning, and then we can post it afterwards. I guess I like. Or you don't even have to post the team names. Just post these are the groups of four. Yeah. You know, each of these people pick. Yeah, they're not going to. Yeah. And then who has the best games? And then nobody will know who it is until, well, they'll know after we listen. But I'll post that tonight. Yeah, you can put the team names. No one's going to know. Well, other than Seymour Buss, they'll probably figure that's you. Or Scott. It could be. See, that actually could thrill them. Unless they know what P-Tway means, which probably hardly anyone is going to know what that means. Yeah, only a couple of old PA guys in Jersey and New York guys know that. Oh, if Zach was around in those days, it would have been more fun. It was Scott's collection. Yeah, P20 isn't even, it's not even on the first page of Google results. What? Oh. Fail. Oh, wait a second. Hold on, hold on.
    111:03
    Actually, it's the third page, but it's the ISPA link to it. And, Ron, next time we'll do system three through, with three through seven, Williams? Okay.
    111:16
    You can do that again. I mean, you're 145 episodes in. Obviously, there's going to be some repeats. Oh, of course. And probably some different opinions. Like, some people might like Hot Tip better now than they used to. And some people might just completely change their opinion. Like, I don't know. Bruce might have. I think Dennis did. Yeah. I think Dennis did. No, I think you did. It went from, like, shit game to, oh, I like it. I said it was an okay game because of the multiball. Stop. The look is still terrible. Admit it. I am pretty. What game are you referring to? Bad Girls. Yeah, he said that was complete shit. And then, what, two years later? It's one of their better Gottlieb games.
    112:01
    Well, I think the key is that you badmouth the games that you want to own, but you don't own yet, so the value goes down. It's the opposite of the classic Stern. I think it's all wrong. the issue is all wrong but Bruce doesn't own bad girls so he's failed yeah I've proven that I can make more money on some of our games right Ron this is what I want next people I want a fucking Ali I want a CERN Ali that's one of the MPU 200s that I was never able to actually acquire but you know I missed your cheapy my standard offer is $200 so really not surprised I wasn't able to get one Come on, it's not $250 now?
    112:42
    You know, if it has like an Alltech board in it, then I'll be like, okay, I'll give you $50 for that because I can sell it for $150. God, oh, boy. But I would definitely, if anyone wants, if they're selling or trading, I'm interested in an Ali because I'm getting down to where I'm happy with my certain collection. I'm pretty much already happy, I have to say. Someone asked me that recently, and it's like, you know, I think I have just about all the ones I want at this point. As I said, the trade I have coming with the cheetah definitely will help towards my list and goals.
    113:18
    Yeah, I don't think I'm chasing any classic turns. I mean, I've owned almost all of them anyway at one point. There's many that I wouldn't rebuy. Hurry, hurry, hurry. Yeah, split second is not the greatest game in the world. It's not terrible. There's one on eBay for $3,000. That's all.
    113:38
    That's ridiculous, but yes. Yes, it is. I forgot how much speech, and it actually did the circus thing.
    113:45
    No, that's all it did. There's no background sound in the game at all. And cycles and cycles, you want to shoot yourself. Hurry, hurry, hurry, hurry.
    113:56
    So I have a couple buy it now. I have a couple would you buy that or would you not buy that. Okay, so we'll finish up with that. What we do is we go on eBay. I search for games that would we buy or would we not buy? So if everyone's on their computers in front of you, I have a couple of numbers.
    114:17
    Go. eBay number 283-862-246-868. Oh, okay. One of these. Well, no, this is for Stu. it could be the game that he won on. It could be the game he won on.
    114:43
    That's true. You know, obviously, that's probably why it costs so much. I just have to say something about this. I know. It's a couple of things. You know what I'm thinking. The first, of course, is everybody's like, well, they didn't take the glass off, but they didn't even clean the dust off. And why the fuck did they put a picture of the back of the machine? No, the best is actually, I think it was a well-endowed girl that maybe was reaching over the machine because there's two circles in the dust.
    115:17
    Oh, God, yes, you're right. They're a little too much, too perfect to be circles, so. Okay, okay. Maybe she was trying to reach for the back glass. Either that or maybe they weren't natural, and that's why they're perfectly round. All right, well, there's many red flags here. This guy has less than 95% positive feedback. Did we say what the game was, by the way? It's probably Playboy. It's a Playboy. 1978 Playboy. Put it this way. When I bought my Playboy, which is the project, I paid, you know, much less than the buy it now $3,000. And it's in better shape than this one.
    115:56
    That's too bad cosmetically. No, well, you know, the problem is the front panel and the side. They usually fade, and you can't tell because it's two great pictures that you got from there. Oh, no, it's faded. You can tell from the front. Yeah, the front is faded, but I don't know about the sides. You can tell. It's supposed to be a really deep, hot pink. Strangely, the apron isn't faded. Usually that's faded. The extra dust that's on the glass probably saved that. The back glass isn't peeling at all on the bottom either, which they started to. You can't really tell that from the front picture, but it probably is not. Yeah. Okay, added challenge here Who can name the other four games In these pictures? Oh, um Well, Street Fighter 2 Monopoly Yep And the fourth Well, I think he wants the four other games Because there's part of a There's a corner Is that Playboy? That's the other Playboy, Stern Uh, yes Yes You are correct What about the game that's behind the Street Fighter? That one's tough. Yeah, that one's tough.
    117:05
    You are godlike if you can get that. Literally, there's just a picture of a plunger and a lockdown bar corner.
    117:13
    No art, no nothing. Hold on. It's valley. So you know it's valley by the shape of the lockdown bar. Yeah, lockdown. The shape of the lockdown bar and the side railings.
    117:25
    Is it freedom? Yeah. Are the colors red, white, and blue almost? How can you even see the colors? I don't even see this.
    117:32
    There's like a streak of red that you can see. Yeah. And like wear. Now, the white is part of the lockdown bar of the next game over, I think. Is it? Or it's wear. I don't know. But it's definitely a valley, but I can't tell you what it is. Let's see if he's selling another game. Let's see if he has a sell. Oh, it's like detective work. I love it. That's smart. The other item.
    117:57
    Yes. We were right partially. It is a $6 million man. Oh, there it is. Ron's favorite. Yeah, yeah, my favorite. All these games are awesome pricing. We have a Street Fighter II for $3,000, a Stern Playboy for $5,000, a Monopoly for $4,000, and a $6 million man for $3,000. Wow. All of them actually are shown working, and only two pictures per.
    118:34
    Wow. And great description, too. Yeah, what description? Exactly. The Monopoly is working. Are you sure that Monopoly is in a stock photo from somewhere? It looks like a different background. It does look like a different background, but yeah. Yeah, he's got one of it working with a red background, and then if you look at the other pictures, and he took a picture of the back of the box again. Interesting sales technique.
    119:00
    The back half and the front half. So anyway, getting back to the core question, no, I would not buy that. No, I would not buy this either. Of course not. I would not buy any of those games. He took two pictures per and a Monopoly for some reason. He put a stock picture in addition to the other one.
    119:18
    Probably that bad. Okay. Yeah, it's scary. There's been nothing great pricing, but here we go. Here's another one I had a chuckle about. Ticket number 143504-984-573.
    119:39
    Ugh. Cybernaut. Well, this guy has 100% positive feedback. It's located in California, so it's possible that the California market is generally a little more expensive. But to buy it now, $3,000 for a Cybernaut. He's got more than one picture. The game has just been serviced. It plays 100%. It has been thoroughly cleaned and waxed with normal wear from use and age. New rubbers installed and all light bulbs replaced. The cabin is in good original condition with minor marks and imperfections. See pictures.
    120:16
    Okay, he's got a lot of pictures. didn't take the glass off. He didn't take the glass off. It looks like this one he did. He pulled the glass down. Actually, yeah, he took a lot of pictures.
    120:30
    Which is nice. How's the description? What does the description say? Are the flippers supposed to not be aligned like that? Are they offset?
    120:37
    No. Is this the one with the bent playfield? Yes. I always liked that. What was the other one? The Phantom of the Opera? Yeah. In the same spot, actually.
    120:51
    Yeah, it's just a mech. Yeah. Yeah, it's a mech that opens. But it's in the same spot. Yeah, pretty much the same spot. I would not buy that, only because Cybernaut is a flaming turd.
    121:06
    Zach? Do you think they took the parts for Xenon off the rack? Because, literally, that is the same ramp and tube from Xenon, just the other way. Just reverse. Yes. even like the same block area type thing. Not quite the same ramp. Well, it doesn't. It's not a saw. But it looks the same. I would not buy this either.
    121:29
    One more. 133-404-209-335. Not for that price. Bruce, what are you doing with these games? I thought we were in a bad market. We are in a bad market. These people are just on crack and cocaine.
    121:50
    It actually is not a bad one because the Harlem Globetrotters, $5,500. It's in nice shape, but Harlem Globetrotters is not a $5,500 game. No, no. And it's still got the play field that has the cupping. The cabinet's beautiful. I will say that. And the back glass is nice. It looks like they redid it. Yeah, it does look like it redid. in the background, what do you see? That's what I was going towards. Is it a Galaga machine?
    122:23
    A pinbot? Is it a pinbot? Oh, no, wait. That's a... Scorpion? Scorpion. SpaceTime? Well, it's got some games back there in its back of a shop. I have a question. What's that? Look at the Harlem, where the two spinners are. The white post that's sitting right in the center, is that supposed to be there? What the hell? What is that? Let's see. That looks like an extra-headed post. Yeah, it's an extra post. That's an extra post. But why? It's not very straight, though. And it's not drill-centered, either. No, it's not. But why is it there? And, I mean, he did all this work to the machine, and the coin door, the center slot just has a piece of masking tape over it. Well, no, no, here's the funny thing. If you look at that picture, there should be two posts blocking the center. There should be two mini posts. The spinner. And they probably, you know what happened? The mini posts broke off. Yes. So the idea for replacing it was just put a big post in front of where the two posts are, because the holes are still there. Yeah, exactly. But put the post in half to make it a mini post. That's how that works, right? Yeah.
    123:27
    And the drop targets are... Not right. Yeah. They also, the center pop bumper cap is on backwards. Oh, good catch. That always works. Yeah, the leg doesn't even work on it either. Oh, yeah. And I like how they used all nylon lock nuts on top of the plastics to hold them down instead of anything from the air at all.
    123:49
    Oh, yeah. I prefer the rubber nuts. That way you pop a rubber net off rather than actually break your plastics. And they're also way easier to remove. Yes, they are.
    123:59
    Hey, you guys missed, I got another, I got one for you that's a similar sponsored item. Oh, okay. Go ahead. Item number 22399. 991960782.
    124:18
    Yeah, that's the one I saw also. That was going to be my next one. Thanks, Scott. Holy shit. Okay. Now, this one needs to go into what's called the Rainbow Puke Club. Oh, my God. This is clowny. This is a clowny. This is a Superman arcade pinball machine, which when they have a title like arcade pinball machine, you know that's a problem immediately. $7,500. and it says custom LED.
    124:42
    It's custom, all right. I think this is called you ordered the LED sample pack and then you use it all. Yeah, and it's... On the fun side, it looks like they didn't put too many of the colored LEDs in the back box. That usually really looks like shit. They're just all over the play field. And it highlights that he has it all blackened except for just the game lit up. So it really just makes it look like a... Yeah, they did it in a dark room with nothing else on and took all these pictures. They're very proud of their work. Yes. It looks like ass. Well, the colors. Terrible. If you look at the pictures where it's not lit, it actually looks pretty nice. It looks pretty good. It's got insert wear. It does have a little insert wear around the super. Not much. Oh, that's actually really good for a Superman. But it probably wasn't working for Superman. The center plastic isn't busted like they usually are. Yep. But don't forget, after the first year, they never worked. So what the hell, you know. Yeah. Well, they have black rubber on it instead of white rubber. Oh, well. But obviously for the price of $7,459, I would not buy that. No, I would not.
    125:54
    Not. They even did custom LEDs in the coin door. So I'd love to see all that. Oh. Yeah. There's another. There's another item. If you want to look at another Rainbow Puke one, there's a black hole on the similar sponsored items right below it. If you want to look at that. There's a number.
    126:13
    You're going to make me put that number in? Hold on. Yes, because we have to tell people this. So they're going to have to. Let me do that. I've got to promote this, though. Superman Arcade Pinball Machine by Atari. Superman Arcade Pinball Machine. Atari 1979 machine is in excellent condition inside and out with full custom LED kit, play field, and even the coin door. Cleaned and waxed, ready for a new good home. Machine is beautiful. It plays very smooth. Certainly one to add to your collection or game room. Tons of fun for the entire family and all ages.
    126:46
    All right, here's the number for the other one. It turns out to be the same seller. The seller's name is Pinbolbs and Arcades, which probably explains where he got the LEDs. But the number is 373-013-604-554.
    127:07
    Oh, my gosh. Wow. Obviously, when I think black hole, I think green. Green. Yes, green. Oh, my God. Wow.
    127:21
    I mean, honestly, who, who, I know there are some people that think that this looks good, but. Hi, Pennside.
    127:29
    It looks so much better when he turns the lights on, though, to get the play field fixed. Then all of a sudden it looks way better. It looks better. The play field is actually decent. Here you go. If the machine looks better off than on, that's a problem. Don't do it.
    127:46
    Do you see the underneath play field, though? It's all LED underneath also. $4,900. Yeah, or best offer. Make an offer.
    127:57
    I love when people call me up and are like, hey, I'm going to trade. I got this game with LEDs, and I see some victim like, let's take off money for that. Look at all this money in LEDs. Yeah, no. Black hole pinball machine produced by Gutlieb, 1981. Machine is excellent condition inside and out. Blade field is clean and waxed. Full custom LED kit. plate field, back box, and coin door. Machine has been completely shopped out. New black rubbers and correct clean and wax ready for a good home. Cabinet and graphics are in excellent condition with new silver balls as opposed to non-silver balls. Board is checked over and machine is clean and started up. You need to put the black balls in it because they go real well with the LED. Oh, wait a second, wait a second. Oh, I might have another one, guys. I might have another one. Oh, man, you open up a... Hold on there. Anybody that actually is tempted to buy these, this guy is offering free shipping, which is obviously rolled into the price. Make sure he insures it if he does. No, no, this was a fail. Only two pictures. Terrible.
    129:00
    Oh, boy, there's some winners out there, though. No returns or cancellations. 25% restocking fee supply.
    129:08
    The markup is just holy crap on some of these games. Holy crap. This game, if you were going to pick it up in person, it's in Michigan, so you want to make sure you don't have a mask on because you may get shot. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I have an interesting new game that maybe we could play. Since we're talking about would you buy that. If you had to sell one of your games, which one would you sell?
    129:37
    Game I like or, I mean, just any one of my games? Well, any, well, the games that you think. Well, presumably, presumably you own all the games that you own you like, or, you know, you wouldn't own them, right? No, because I have some games that I own because I know they make money at the bar. Well, is it the COVID funds needed game? Yeah, I would say it that way. Like, if I need to sell one game. Yeah, okay, yeah, like, well, yeah, because then you're probably going to pick one of your more valuable games that you're like, well, I can replace that later. Yeah, I already have it. It's easy. Okay, what? FM.
    130:12
    You have the remake, right? No, I have the original. Original. He's going to sell it to me. I have original. You've got a line, buddy. God damn it. How am I not first in line? You honestly wouldn't sell your game to Ron first? No, because it's actually, Eric's been busting my chops for five years. Oh. As soon as he found out I had one, he is. No, we've got to do Star Trek. You both get knives and you start fighting it out to the death. No, we both play Star Trek and whoever wins gets the game. Well, I know who that I can offer when I do my targeted marketing. I could offer AFM to Ron then. You know, he's good for money. Is it original?
    130:50
    Yeah, I would buy the remake. Okay. But that would be my sell. What would you sell, Ron? T&A. T&A, there you go.
    131:00
    Zach? Yeah, if I need cash, I'd probably sell Alice Cooper. Okay. That's the most money and probably not that hard to find another one of sometime. Yeah, I agree. I would sell Star Trek Next Gen.
    131:13
    Yeah. Wow. How about a game that you consider like a keeper that will never leave your house, and you're like, okay, I'm going to sell that. Okay.
    131:26
    Wait, which one is it then? Yeah, that's two different things. I don't know. Well, it's a keeper. You know, it's like you said. Well, you know how you buy a game, and you're like, oh, this is my favorite game ever, and you keep it for years. Like, Ron, your first game was Black Knight, and you love it, but, you know, would you sell it? I mean, you have games in your collection that are like Stars, Meteor, Quicksilver. A lot better games than Black Knight, sorry. He's saying, you know, some whichever.
    131:54
    Yeah, it's a game that you say, like, oh, I can't sell this game. I love this game, you know, and then which one of those games would you sell if you had to?
    132:04
    Because that just means that you like some other game more. Whitewater. Firepower or Roller Games? I don't know. Okay.
    132:15
    We probably should have done the contest as, which game of the other persons would you sell? I know. Okay. What game would you never sell?
    132:25
    Never. Me? Yeah. Meteor. Okay. How about you, Bruce? It's my favoritest game of all time. Favoritest? Favoritest. So do I go by rarity?
    132:42
    No, this is you. Like, I just, I love this game. I would never sell this game. Well, I'm saying, don't forget, you also got to go by rarity, too. Like, am I going to sell my Dragon Fist? Because if I sell my Dragon Fist, am I ever going to find one again?
    132:55
    I have to look at it, like, multiple ways. Okay, you're in a weird position where you only have room for one pinball machine for the next ten years.
    133:02
    There. See, that's a very different question. That is a totally different question. Okay, I only could have one Tim O'Macine.
    133:12
    Batman 66. It's pretty deep. It's my deepest game, so I know I can do a lot of things with it. How about you, Zach?
    133:23
    It's tough for Zach because he sells everything. I know, but Alex Gouler is... I've sold less than half my games.
    133:30
    If I had one game, it'd probably end up being just like an EM or something that just never gets old. like... Far Out or Old Chicago, maybe. Okay. Interesting choices. Any new game that's going to get old eventually, like... Sure. You know, no matter how deep the code is, eventually it'll get tired of me, if it's all you're playing, so... I know what mine is. What's that? Demoman.
    133:56
    God, really? Yep. That is one of the most shallow WP CDs of my life. I don't care. I always come back to that game. I'm pretty sure that Ron and I we tend to like the more shallow games it never goes out of rotation shallow house it never goes out of rotation too long because it's I might not play it for a while but as soon as I go back to play oh yeah, it's fucking Demoman I mean even for me who likes all the really complicated games what is one of the three WPC games I own?
    134:29
    Demoman Scott, what is yours? we said it Meteor well that was the other question but I would probably still stick with Meteor I mean I really do like Meteor I always did since I was you know 10 okay that's fine and I think I've owned 8 different ones so Zach what's your game number my game is on Pinside oh my are we allowed to go there might be wrong we're going to Pinside All right. I clicked into that window, into that tab. Market. I've also sent the link in the Skype chat. Okay. Which I don't have. So you want me to look in the marketplace? Yeah, marketplace. What are you looking for? I can tell you the ad number.
    135:17
    Does it go by that? Just click on it and edit your URL. Oh, okay. You ready? What's the ad number? 94028. I must not have searched for it right what's the name of the game Jumping Jack this is Cherry Hill New Jersey this is a project bought it to help someone out and probably shouldn't have, a little of the honesty there cabinet has some wood issues as is it doesn't work open to offers, has four legs lock bar and the play field isn't too bad I do have the back glass but it has flaking issues $450 or best offer. Did they remake the backless on this? I think they did, didn't they? I've got to assume BG Vesto has it at worst. Yeah, I think they do.
    136:09
    Got broken drop targets in there. Flippers are whacked out on the bottom. But for all I know. I actually would have a chance to go buy this. Cherry Hill is not that far from me. No, it's not.
    136:20
    I wouldn't buy it for $450. No. But I would actually consider buying this. See, now, I considered buying this until, first of all, I noticed the Jones plugs.
    136:33
    Have they been cut? They've been cut. Oof. And then I was like, okay, the back glass has some flicking issues.
    136:42
    Where is the back glass? It's on the side. No, that's a wild place back glass there. There's no photo of the back glass in the ad anywhere. There's a photo in another picture. Yeah, it's on the side. It's a feeding against something else. Yeah, it's a wildlife back glass. It's not a jumping jack back glass. It's really?
    137:02
    You can tell from the... Wait. Oh, no, maybe it is. Okay, I look closer. I was just looking at the legs. It's a jumping jack back glass. Okay. All right. All right, he does have it.
    137:12
    So I think he has it. You can't see it at all. I would consider buying this. There's two pictures of the back glass. If it was cheap enough, I would, but not for $4.50. Not for $4.50. Now, this is getting closer to the standard Scott offer of $200. Yeah, this is definitely a $200. I mean, I already have a Kingpin. Obviously, you're going to buy a Jumping Jack because you like the 10 bank at the top, and I already have a Kingpin, so I already have a similar. I'm going to buy a Charlie Capopom first.
    137:46
    Yeah, the bottom. Well, you like Old Chicago, so it's similar there. Exactly. The Jumping Jack is a good game, though. So, I mean, there's something more. I actually don't mind it at Papa. Papa, I enjoyed this game. Yeah. I mean, I have a friend that has one, and somebody repainted the play field with rollers, believe it or not, and it actually looks decent. Wow. It looks decent. They masked it off and everything. It's just that all the pink paint has, like, a really weird texture on it. And he had me working on it, and I was like, what's wrong with the play field on this? It feels like laminate or something. Yikes. And they didn't bother to clear-code it after that. Okay, I got one more. One more. I got one more from eBay. Is that on eBay or somewhere else? It's on eBay. Okay, go ahead. 1-3-3-3-2-8-200-858.
    138:39
    Okay, this is that same seller, Pinsider Trading. It's a Dungeons & Dragons machine. It actually has the topper, which most of them do not. Yeah. Very rare topper. Let's look at some more pictures. $4,300.
    138:54
    The displays are all working. Yeah, which is right, too. No cards in the aprons. Interesting detail to leave out. You've got the flipper bats in there, proper ones, too. The bat alley. Segmented. Not aligned properly at all. Play feels pretty good. Yeah, the play feels pretty good. One side's faded compared to the other side. But actually, not a bad looking game if it was $2,200 or $2,000. Yeah, I mean Dungeons & Dragons is like a $2,000 or less game, and honestly it's more of a $1,200 game. Yeah, but the topper makes it more like, wow. But the music is incredible. It used to be the theme music to a popular pinball podcast. Yeah, it did. Yeah. The music is incredible in this game. That is kind of the best part of the game is the music. Like, the game itself is... Sucks. You know, the upper play field, parts of it remind me of Millionaire. Yeah. Ooh.
    139:55
    And actually, the shot across the play field and that whole shot, it's a very similar era to Millionaire as well, so I wonder if somebody, you know, spotted in another factory, ooh, look at that, we're going to steal that play field design.
    140:09
    And then regret it right after they did it. I like the ramp that goes to the inlines. Was that ever done again? There's probably a reason why it hasn't been. Yeah, I think so, too. Are there any inlines that are on an incline? That'd be cool.
    140:22
    Oh, yeah, mount the mech. That's a good idea. I might use that for something. Is that an orbiter, too? They were like... He got it. I thought that was good. Orbiter, too. Yeah. Wait a minute. You have an orbiter one, don't you? Who? You. I used to have two of them. I sold both of them a long time ago. Oh, okay. Oh, man. I had an extra playfield for it, too. I sold that to somebody a couple years ago at Pinfest. He was making a funnel out of it for a bar in New York. Yikes. Yeah, it's kind of scary considering, you know, the shape that it was in.
    140:57
    Yeah, other than that, I don't see much on the old pin side except for way overpriced stuff. All right. Man, we kind of went to that. Like, we're at one last segment and an hour later.
    141:09
    Well, Ron has a lot of editing to do. No, we're just going to put this one up dry. No one said anything really offensive. Oh, I shouldn't have said that. Lube. Yeah.
    141:22
    He said dry. All right. Well, I think that's it. You got an idea to spiel. Thanks to Scott. Thanks to Zach being on the show this week. Hi, Zach. Hi. Fun with bonus. all the other podcasts, three zillion of them that are out there. Our numbers are holding steady for some reason. Wow, what the fuck? Yeah, there really has been no dip that I've noticed since the whole COVID thing happened, which is weird because I would think less people are listening because less people are driving, which is probably where most people listen to podcasts. Yeah, I'm three behind right now because I haven't been driving at all. Yeah, I think what's happening is just our podcasters are just downloading it, and they're just building up. so it appears that people are listening when, in fact, their podcast is just downloading it, but they're not actually listening yet. Did you like my picture that I posted on the page? What, the Bob Ross butthead picture? Yes. It was awesome, yes. Yes, it was. You combined two of the greatest things ever, Beavis and Butthead, and Bob Ross in the same picture. Mm-hmm. That's cool. I like the Deadpool promo as Bob Ross. Oh, that was awesome. Yes. Yes, it was. Yeah, that was great. so this has been episode 145 we are the Slam Tilt Podcast we can be reached at slamtiltpodcast at gmail.com also go to our website slamtiltpodcast.com upper right hand corner all our links are there I just tested them the other day and they actually all still work so that's good check out our YouTube channel our Twitch channel streaming with Stu well would have been this previous Monday but will be this upcoming Monday and thanks again to Scott and Zach for joining us this week. Thank you, everybody. We'll see you next time. Say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Pete Maino. Oh my, my, oh my, my Can you move it? Can you fly? Oh my, my, oh my, my You can move it if you fly Oh, my, my. Can't I take you and make you alive?
    143:46
    Oh, my. Boom. Ah. Yeah, it's sorted by System 11, you know. It's got the bowlers. Yeah, well, if anybody picks one of those, actually, Tic Tac Strike is better than Millionaire. Whoever picks Millionaire is going to lose.
    144:39
    The bowler is better than Millionaire. Yeah, I can't. That's why I don't like newbies. I'm not newbie-friendly. Oh, I don't like that. So I think they're going to leave that for the end piece, right? You know, I don't like newbies. That says Scott to a T right there. I don't like newbies. I'm not newbie-friendly. Boom. I'm not. I've admitted it to people they just grits my teeth you know well everyone was a newbie once yeah I wasn't as annoying back then oh of course at least you didn't think you were nah