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Episode 421 - Allentown Recap, Planned Changes, 1946 United Sea Breeze

For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·30m 47s·analyzed·May 10, 2018
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Allentown recap, Multi-Bingo updates, and 1946 United Sea Breeze deep dive.

Summary

Nick Baldridge recaps the Allentown Pin Fest, discussing his Multi-Bingo machine's performance, code improvements and bugs discovered, and plans for York. He also sells his Nightclub bingo machine and receives a United ABC roulette playfield. The episode concludes with a detailed breakdown of the 1946 United Sea Breeze game's mechanics and artwork.

Key Claims

  • The Multi-Bingo had 70+ games total available for play at Allentown, with Miss America series and Six Cards being most popular

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge discussing show performance; mentioned '142 games total in the machine' and popularity of specific titles

  • Nick introduced a bug in Red Letter Games code before Allentown that broke extra ball lifting for all games with the OK feature

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge detailed technical explanation of the bug and its fix

  • No attendees chose United games to play on the Multi-Bingo; every selected game was Bally

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge observed during show: 'it was interesting to me that nobody chose a United game to play'

  • The United ABC roulette playfield received from Bingo Butch and Mike Lauda has 1 and 1/16-inch balls and a motorized shutter mechanism unlike Bally playfields

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge technical analysis of the newly acquired playfield

  • Nick's work schedule has increased significantly this year, limiting his Multi-Bingo development time for the next 1-2 months

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge: 'my work...has picked up an insane amount this year...prevents me from working on the multi at night'

  • Phil Hooper recently documented Spotlights, Mixers, and Spotting Disk mechanics for bingo games

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge thanking Phil Hooper for documentation work

  • The 1946 United Sea Breeze has 12 bumpers in a sequence-based game design with multiple mini-sequences and special awards

    high confidence · Nick Baldridge's detailed playfield and rules breakdown

  • Bull Market is rumored to have been made only for export with few domestic back glass photos available

    medium confidence · Nick Baldridge: 'This is the game which is rumored to have only been made for export'

Notable Quotes

  • “It's always a challenge getting games into a show and especially one with an awkwardly sized head like a bingo”

    Nick Baldridge @ early in episode — Highlights logistical challenges of transporting and setting up bingo machines at shows

  • “The most popular games by far were the Miss America series, especially the later ones, and Six Cards. There are a lot of Six Card players up in Pennsylvania, a lot of people that are familiar with the Six Cards, because that's what was out on location.”

    Nick Baldridge @ mid-episode — Reveals regional preferences in bingo game popularity based on historical location distribution

  • “So it was great to show people the games and then get their reaction when they learned that there were 142 games total in the machine.”

    Nick Baldridge @ mid-episode — Demonstrates the Multi-Bingo's scope and audience surprise at game library size

  • “That is one of the roulette playfields for the multi. So I'm going to get that fitted and wired up...It's considerably shorter than a standard bingo playfield, and it's got a pop bumper in the center.”

    Nick Baldridge @ early-mid episode — Describes significant technical acquisition and integration challenge for Multi-Bingo project

  • “Unfortunately, I did not do that before the show because I didn't know that was a problem. but it's on my to-do list now and I'll make sure that gets done before York”

    Nick Baldridge @ mid-episode — Shows iterative debugging process and commitment to fixes before next major show

  • “It's a man and a woman standing on a dock or a pier and a man is smoking a pipe and the woman is standing there holding his arm and they're just looking out into the ocean or the bay or the river I guess the sea, right? It's sea breeze.”

    Nick Baldridge @ late episode — Detailed artwork appreciation showing deep engagement with game design history

Entities

Nick BaldridgepersonPhil HooperpersonJim HolderpersonBingo ButchpersonMike LaudapersonNick SchellpersonTaylor ReesepersonChadpersonLenpersonEdpersonRodperson

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Multi-Bingo generated significant new player interest at Allentown with first-time bingo players and positive reception; high engagement from regional community

    high · Nick: 'I had lots of new folks come up and try their first bingo I had a lot of compliments on the game that's always extremely flattering' and note about meeting Canadian contributor and multiple community members bringing documentation materials

  • ?

    product_concern: Red Letter Games extra ball lifting bug introduced before Allentown that broke extra ball lifting for all OK feature games; fix requires minor code adjustment

    high · Nick detailed explanation: bug caused ball count reset to happen before lifter check, breaking extra ball logic; only discovered at show during play

  • ?

    design_innovation: United ABC roulette playfield uses motorized shutter with three single-switch banks instead of multi-cam design like Bally; presents novel integration challenge for Multi-Bingo

    high · Nick: 'it's motorized...instead of having multiple cams that change the state of multiple switches, there's three different banks of a single switch each...ingenious little mechanism'

  • ?

    product_launch: Multi-Bingo project receives significant hardware donation: United ABC roulette playfield from Bingo Butch and Mike Lauda after 2+ year search

    high · Nick: 'Bingo Butch and Mike Lauda came down and brought me a playfield for United ABC, which I've been looking for for the past couple of years'

  • ?

    historical_signal: Pennsylvania bingo community shows strong preference for Six Cards games due to historical location distribution; no attendees selected United games on Multi-Bingo despite availability

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.092

0:00
What's that sound? It's 4 Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Welcome back to 4 Amusement Only. This is Nick Baldridge. Just back from the Allentown Pin Fest this past weekend. Had a great time. Took the multi-bingo up there as well as my beloved nightclub. I sold the nightclub to a first-time bingo owner. Very excited that that is in new hands and being played and enjoyed. It actually made the trip up to Canada from Richmond, and it traveled pretty well. It did develop a small problem, which was diagnosed and fixed relatively quickly, so that was good. and other than that let's talk about the Multi Bingo so the Multi made the trip up with me and my friend Joe came as well he helped me load and unload and Rod who bought the nightclub helped me to set up the Multi and bring it into Pinfest for which I am eternally grateful it's always a challenge getting games into a show and especially one with an awkwardly sized head like a bingo so set the game up and one of the leg plates stripped out inside the bolt must have been cross threaded or something or it was just that plate's time to go So it didn't completely disintegrate, but a couple of threads got broken off of the leg plate. So that was a little exciting at first. Got that sorted out and got the machine set up.
2:07
And people came up and started playing it. It held up very well. I did introduce a bug in Red Letter Games, which we'll get into in a moment. But I made a lot of code improvements over the past couple of months, and those worked very well indeed. The most popular games by far were the Miss America series, especially the later ones, and Six Cards. There are a lot of Six Card players up in Pennsylvania, a lot of people that are familiar with the Six Cards, because that's what was out on location.
2:47
It was interesting to me that nobody chose a United game to play. Every game that was chosen was Bally. That said, lots of new folks playing the bingo. Some familiar faces from York. Jim Holder made the trip, and he brought me a big old bag of Jones plugs.
Joe
person
Multi-Bingoproduct
Nightclubproduct
United ABCproduct
1946 United Sea Breezeproduct
Allentown Pin Festevent
York Showevent
Roanoke Pinball Museumvenue
Rage Tilt Pinballorganization
For Amusement Onlyorganization
Bull Marketproduct
Beach Clubproduct

high · Nick: 'There are a lot of Six Card players up in Pennsylvania, a lot of people that are familiar with the Six Cards, because that's what was out on location' and 'nobody chose a United game to play. Every game that was chosen was Bally'

  • ?

    personnel_signal: Nick Schell transitioned from traveling Nick's North American Pinball Tour to staff position at Roanoke Pinball Museum

    high · Nick: 'He was the guy who traveled around the country in Canada, actually, fixing people's EMs and showing people how to fix them...And now he works at the Roanoke Pinball Museum'

  • ?

    content_signal: Rage Tilt Pinball streamed Allentown tournament coverage; Taylor Reese documented event photography for potential community media

    high · Nick: 'I got to meet the folks from Rage Tilt Pinball. they were there streaming the tournament' and 'my friend Taylor Reese came up he took one of my favorite pictures from the show'

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Jim Holder provided bag of Jones plugs at Allentown; community members contributing back glass photos and video documentation for historical accuracy (Beach Club, Bull Market)

    high · Nick: 'Jim Holder made the trip, and he brought me a big old bag of Jones plugs' and 'another fellow named John just sent me a back glass photo for Bull Market'

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Nick Baldridge's personal workload increased significantly in 2024, creating development bottleneck for Multi-Bingo project expected to last 1-2+ months

    high · Nick: 'my work...has picked up an insane amount this year. That's a good problem to have, but unfortunately, it prevents me from working on the multi at night...for the next month or two I believe Maybe slightly longer'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Nick pursues pixel-perfect accuracy in Multi-Bingo by documenting original game mechanics via video (coin flash animations, spotting disk behaviors) and artwork via high-res photography

    high · Nick seeking video of Beach Club coin flash to verify spotting disk layout; asking for higher-res glass photos; working from Phil Hooper's Spotlight/Mixer documentation; analyzing United Havana video

  • ?

    historical_signal: Bull Market rumored export-only production with scarce domestic back glass documentation; first high-quality domestic glass photo obtained from community member John

    medium · Nick: 'This is the game which is rumored to have only been made for export and I know there's a couple of glasses floating around. But this is the first domestic glass that I got a nice photo of'

  • ?

    community_signal: Canadian contributor to Multi-Bingo (Super Wall Street glass provider) met Nick at Allentown; agreed to provide higher-resolution glass artwork images for project accuracy

    high · Nick: 'at Allentown I got to meet a Canadian contributor to the Multi. That was extremely exciting...He contributed the Super Wall Street glass to the multi...I asked if he would mind providing some higher-res pictures for me, and he plans to do just that'

    • 3:10
    Thank you, Jim, for that. and Bingo Butch and Mike Lauda came down and brought me a playfield for United ABC, which I've been looking for for the past couple of years here. So that's very exciting. That is one of the roulette playfields for the multi. So I'm going to get that fitted and wired up and all that good stuff. It's considerably shorter than a standard bingo playfield, and it's got a pop bumper in the center. which of course has a bracket that extends down quite a bit further than other play fields, which are similar.
    3:51
    So it's going to take a little bit of tweaking to get that into the game, but we'll see what I can do. I'm hopeful that it will fit with little modification, and I'll just add an extension bracket or something on the back of it so that it can fit in place. But we shall see. It may end up that it needs to hover a little bit higher than the ballet playfield just because of the coil bracket that hangs down.
    4:24
    But again, we'll see what happens. The shutter mechanism on that is really interesting. it's motorized, just like, I guess you'd say, just like the Valleys, except instead of having multiple cams that change the state of multiple switches, there's three different banks of a single switch each, and depending on the state of the shutter, it will open or close those. ingenious little mechanism it is just a single shaft which drives movement of this bottom platter to open or close the pathway for the balls to fall and of course the balls that are used are 1 and 1 16th so I've got to figure out a way to make that work as well that shouldn't be the end of the world especially with five balls only that should be doable if there were more than five it might be trouble during the show as I mentioned I had lots of new folks come up and try their first bingo I had a lot of compliments on the game that's always extremely flattering and I got to meet Nick Schell from Nick's North American Pinball Tour He was the guy who traveled around the country in Canada, actually, fixing people's EMs and showing people how to fix them. Noble Enterprise. And now he works at the Roanoke Pinball Museum, which is just several hours away from me.
    6:11
    So I'm looking forward to stopping in there at some point. I hear they have a Ballydixieland, so get that rolling and see how that does. So Dixieland's a great game, and that was one of the most popular games at Allentown that people wanted to play.
    6:33
    It was always very fun to show people the games and then get their reaction when they learned that there were 142 games total in the machine.
    6:44
    So let's talk about red letter games. shortly before you work I figured out a problem with red letter lifting so the lifting worked fine previously but there was a problem if you had actually won a red letter game with the game awarding you extra balls the extra balls wouldn't lift and that's because the lifter check happened before a ball count reset. And so the ball count would reset after the first ball was lifted, which caused a problem, like an order of operations type thing. And that was causing the ball count to increment one extra time rather than one fewer And that was a little tricky to track down but I got it and fixed that in all the OK games Unfortunately it broke extra ball lifting for every single game with the OK feature
    7:53
    And when it happened the first time, I realized exactly what I had done. and stupidly I only tested the lifting on red letter extra balls, which of course works perfectly, but not regular extra balls. So I've got a little tweaking to do. I just have to insert one more check lifter status. That's the name of the method. And then everything will be just fine.
    8:22
    Unfortunately, I did not do that before the show because I didn't know that was a problem. but it's on my to-do list now and I'll make sure that gets done before York speaking of things before York I've got several other tweaks and fixes that I'd love to make foremost among them is finishing the coin flash animations for all the games I am tantalizingly close with only a few left to do and then the United games almost all of them utilize the same pattern, so it'll just be figuring out the undocumented portions of those patterns. Thankfully, somebody has taken some video of a United Havana recently, and that coin flash animation is going to tell me exactly what I need to know about how those games are animated. Havana is one of the Series 2 or the mid-series United games, and that same flash pattern applies to all of those mid-series United games. So thankfully, I should be able to use that and figure out what I'm doing.
    9:40
    Other things I'd like to fix. Phil Hooper just documented Spotlights, Mixers, and Spotting Disk, and most importantly the spotting disc. Right now, in the multi, I have funky approximations of what exactly that will do.
    9:59
    It's very funky, in fact. So I'm looking forward to getting that accurate, both from a feature award perspective as well as lamp flash. And a big thanks to Phil Hooper for doing that. and other improvements I've got a list of open bugs on the GitHub project for the bingos and there's not a whole heck of a lot there are a few bugs that were documented at Allentown another one has to do with lifters on the six cards, and this is again for some stupid reason because, well, let me back up.
    10:48
    Last year before York, I realized there was a problem with the lifter methods that I had. And each game's lifter method is subtly and slightly different. Different trough switches need to be checked at different intervals depending on how many balls there are within the game. so essentially the six cards have a particular pattern unless it's Frolics with extra balls and the rest of the games tend to have another pattern unless they're very early games in which case it's just slightly different but you get the picture there's essentially two ways of doing it and I fixed the non-six card games to work in one particular way, which was a lot more accurate. Check the trough switches as well as the ball count, but I did not do the same for the six cards. This is a bit of a fatal flaw because as the balls are returned to you, the thing that I have that decrements the ball count is actually the leftmost trough switch, trough number 8. And all the balls roll over trough number 8, but it's a very important switch. If all the other trough switches are closed and trough number 8 is hit, then the lifter starts lifting.
    12:24
    Well, that's all well and good. The ball count increments when the ball leaves the gate. that's totally fine but if a ball is returning back to the trough and you don't notice then there's a problem because the ball count will decrement as it's being incremented and so you wind up with one extra ball that's an annoying problem and one that is only cured by waiting for all the balls to settle before shooting the first ball Now you might ask, why is that a problem? You should have eight trough switches, right? Well, that's not exactly the way the trough is laid out. There are only a handful of switches in there, and some of them it just doesn't care about. Most of the ones that actually have any importance are much further into the trough, positions one, two, and three specifically, because those tell you the positions of your extra balls. in a game with extra balls.
    13:32
    Some of the later games have different trough design. For example, the double-up that I had had an extra trough switch, and that helped with various features that had to do with selecting which score was doubled before shooting your second ball. Because of that, they needed to add an extra trough switch right beside trough number 8, But normally that's not the case.
    14:02
    So, at any rate, an annoying bug. But if I port over the method from the rest of the games and just modify it slightly so that it only allows five to lift, then we should be golden. Why I didn't do that before, I really have no clue. I thought I had done that for all the games, but apparently not. Frolics I know received a lot of attention but I left games like Dixieland for example to languish so I'll get that fixed up before York as well so that's my plans for the multi before York now for the bad news I have a lot of projects that I'm working on here and I love working on them unfortunately my work which is normally the impediment to me getting to Allentown at all, has picked up an insane amount this year.
    15:05
    That's a good problem to have, but unfortunately, it prevents me from working on the multi at night because I'm working on work at night. So that is going to be the situation for the next month or two I believe Maybe slightly longer just because I got a rather large workload at the moment But I will see what can be done.
    15:32
    In other positive news, at Allentown I got to meet a Canadian contributor to the Multi. That was extremely exciting. I wasn't expecting to meet him.
    15:44
    Super nice guy. We got to talk shop for a couple minutes. And I look forward to speaking with him some more. He contributed the Super Wall Street glass to the multi. And as it turned out, he paged through the list of games and picked out a couple of his other glasses, which I had cribbed from bingo.cyn.com and didn't realize they were his. So the upshot of that is that I asked if he would mind providing some higher-res pictures for me, and he plans to do just that. That would be fantastic, as the pictures that I had in there are upscaled and a little blurry. So that should make all the difference, and it was great to meet him.
    16:33
    Other Allentown news, I saw Chad and Len and Ed there. It was great to see those guys. Always wonderful to see them at York, and it was great to see the mid-island town as well.
    16:48
    Len gave a great tutorial on the machine at one point to a friend of his, and Chad spoke with him briefly about getting a video of the coin flash animation for Beach Club. That's going to be extremely helpful for me to verify my thought about Beach Club, which is that the spotting disk layout for CoinFlash is going to be very similar to HiFi. Maybe not exactly the same, but it's almost got to be very similar, because the actual feature spotting layout on the spotting disk is very similar to HiFi, and the features that the game has are very similar. The only difference is that bump feature that HiFi has, And the bump feature might displace some of the other features in the spotting disk for coin flash. That said, I don't remember if bump even flashes at all during the coin flash. It may not. And if that's the case, I'm probably pretty safe to implement as HiFi has. But we'll see. little video will make all the difference.
    18:08
    So I'm looking forward to all those contributions and another fellow named John just sent me a back glass photo for Bull Market.
    18:23
    This is the game which is rumored to have only been made for export and I know there's a couple of glasses floating around. But this is the first domestic glass that I got a nice photo of, so I'll be able to replace kind of the rough title header on Bull Market with this nice one that John sent me a photo of. So thank you, John. And thank you to everybody who came and played the game and gave me those wonderful head-swelling compliments. You know, all that is extremely appreciated. But of course, the whole idea is just to get this out and get the word out about these games they are fantastic, fantastic games and there is much more to them than being a simple gambling device there's skill involved with playing the games they're beautiful and they're just a lot of fun to play I think a game with constantly shifting goals and different abilities to change what you're shooting for dynamically, it's just all very impressive to me. And that's some of what I love about the games. But I also love sharing the games. And I got to meet the folks from Rage Tilt Pinball. they were there streaming the tournament but there's some great supporters from New York as well so I'm looking forward to seeing them there just tons of great folks my friend Taylor Reese came up he took one of my favorite pictures from the show of a young boy playing the game and learning how to win and he did a great job so thank you again to everybody who helped everybody who came and played everybody who wished they could have been there you know all that stuff makes a big difference to me so I very much appreciate it thank you and with that let's transition to the year of Flipperless Today's game is United's 1946 Sea Breeze.
    20:56
    Sea Breeze has a multi-sequence game in that there are 12 bumpers, which you're trying to unlight by hitting them.
    21:09
    And these bumpers, when you complete various parts of the sequence, will light special at various lanes. So, to describe how that works, we've got to describe the playfield. So, bumpers number 1 and 2 are aligned vertically, right at the top of the playfield, underneath where the ball arch is, where the ball travels as it's shot out of the lane. Number 3 and 4 are on the extreme left and right side of the playfield, right underneath that.
    21:48
    Below and to the center of those are two green bumpers, which score 5,000 points when lit. Below and to the center again, we have bumper number 5.
    22:04
    And fanned out a little bit from the extreme edges, you have 6 and 7 below that. Now, below 5 by about an inch and a half or maybe two inches is a post.
    22:21
    And flanking that post is an open space about the width of a ball. And to the left and right of that are a post that is the shape of a flipper bat, a two-inch flipper bat. So that will guide the ball or bounce the ball away from this area. There a rollover switch in there which will award 5 points as well as unlight numbers 5 through 8 or 9 through 12 depending on if you on the left or right side If those sequences are already complete then it awards a special
    23:09
    And to the left and right of number 6 and 7, you also have rollovers, which award 5,000 points. Or, if you've completed the entire sequence, 1 through 12 will light for special. down below those little flippers that guide the ball through the lanes on the left and right side of that post in the center are eight and nine and below that in the center is number 10 11 and 12 are on the far left and right side of the play field down by the drain but below number 10 there is a special insert and it lights when bumpers 1 through 12 are hit and it lights for super special if super special is not lit then you get 5000 points for landing in a kick out hole down near the bottom otherwise if you hit super special you're going to win a certain number of replays what that number is is unspecified on the IPDB. However, that's going to be adjustable by the operator. It's usually something like five replays or more, depending. So I'd be interested to see what people who own this game have their super special replays set at. But let's talk about the artwork. The work on this game is very intriguing. It's a mixture of colors, which is pretty interesting, I think. Very colorful backless rainbow pattern, and the rainbow, instead of being in a circle or a semi-circle, as one might expect, it's in this weird trapezoid-type arrangement. And within the trapezoid, there is an inset image of a man and a woman riding in a boat.
    25:22
    And the title, United Sea Breeze, is featured prominently in there. Arrayed around this little inset image are the numbers 1 through 12 in circles. Each of these numbers has a corresponding color. so 1 is red for example and 12 is red 2 is orange and 11 is orange and so on those colors have absolutely nothing to do with the sequence they're just eye candy basically and then outside of this trapezoid and these circles is the same image of two people but looking at it closely it's not quite the same there are subtle differences this is intriguing to me because somebody took the time to actually reproduce the artwork in a way which is extremely similar it's a man and a woman standing on a dock or a pier and a man is smoking a pipe and the woman is standing there holding his arm and they're just looking out into the ocean or the bay or the river I guess the sea, right? It's sea breeze.
    26:44
    And they're looking at the sailboats which are sailing on by. It's a really cool scene. The colors on the back glass are really eye-catching. It's quite appealing to look at.
    26:59
    Let's talk about the cabinet. The cabinet has a paint scheme which is very reminiscent of Bally's bikini, Bingo. You've got a sailboat, which is sailing on the ocean on the front of the game, and on the sides you've got seagulls and a steering wheel as well as another rendition of a sailboat.
    27:27
    Just a very attractive stencil. Looking at the play field, as is typical for the time, you've got kind of these solid fields of color, in this case blue, beautiful red artwork which ties into the blue and draws your eye to the rollover switches which award special or the 5,000 points.
    27:55
    One thing that I didn't mention, looking at this picture here, is that there is a rollover switch at the top center above those green 5,000 point bumpers. And that rollover switch, when you, or should I say when you peer to, unlike numbers 1 through 4, that rollover will light for special. Otherwise, it scores 5,000 points. So the other artwork on this is surrounding that area up near the top. You have some waves that are coming out from that rollover switch. and there are sailboats and seagulls flying above along with the sun in the background. Very attractive. Around those green 5,000-point bumpers, you have this purple kind of curly queue, which is coming out and feeds into a red and yellow circle at the end. Very neat. Down at the bottom, you have an awful lot of artwork. Of course, that's where your eyes are going to be drawn when you're standing there. You have these flags which would fly on a sailboat, which arrayed themselves beside number 11 and 12 down at the extreme corners at the bottom. And you have the super special hull, which has a red, white, and blue kind of stars and stripes motif. Very appealing game. Looks very attractive. I'm very interested to play. The bumper layout for the sequence looks pretty challenging, and I really like these games that have multiple sequences within. So you've got an overarching goal, unlike 1 through 12. But if you only accomplish a fraction of it, you can still manage to squeak out a replay or two.
    29:53
    That is pretty exciting to me. So, that's all for tonight. Thank you very much for joining me. And again, if you made it to Allentown, I know it was whirlwind. I was only there Saturday. but I appreciate it very much and I look forward to seeing you all at York my name again is Nick Baldridge you can reach me at 4amusementonlypodcast at gmail.com or you can call me on the bingos line which is 724-BINGOS1 724-246-4671 you can listen to me on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music Pocket Casts via RSS on Facebook you can follow me on Twitter at bingopodcast also on Instagram also at bingo podcast or you can listen to me on my website which is for amusement only dot libsyn dot com thank you very much for listening and I'll talk to you next time