What's that sound? It's 4 Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Welcome back to 4 Amusement Only, this is Nicholas Baldridge. So, what's been happening? In the past two weeks, I've continued to work on and improve my multi-bingo game. I'm up to eight games, fully emulated, and a ninth in progress. As of this moment, I have United's Zingo, which has no extra balls, Leader, which was the first game United produced with extra balls, Bally's Bright Lights, the first six-card bingo, Broadway 51, which is a real rarity, emulated, Coney Island three card bingo and the first with extra balls for Bally Spotlight the first bingo with advancing odds Atlantic City Palm Beach and currently I'm working on United's Stars followed by United's Circus now each of these games is unique some of them have guaranteed features which are given to you, and some of them have really complex portioning. So let's talk about Leader, for example. Dennis O'Dell was amazingly helpful. This game, there's not a whole lot of information about it online, and I've really struggled with some of these really early games trying to figure out exactly how certain things worked, especially with United, where Linda Ront was doing things which were completely different from Don Hooker. You know, they had circuits which would do the same thing, but they would do it in a completely different way. So I really wanted to know how these machines functioned in order to emulate them appropriately. In Leader's case, the assumption could be made that for each coin that you put in above the first three, which gave you your first three bingo cards, you would be guaranteed an extra ball. But as it turned out, with the documentation shown by Dennis and also the score and instruction card, which he was able to photograph, I now know that the extra balls are awarded based on a Jones plug adjustment. So your first extra ball is awarded for an additional three coins on top of your first three. The next one's awarded at seven coins extra. And then the final one's awarded at 17 extra. And this is adjustable up to 19 extra. So you can see, making assumptions is very difficult to do correctly in one of these early bingos, especially because I just don't have experience with bingos that are that old. A more modern bingo, I could make assumptions, I could guess at portioning now that I understand how the portioning works very well, and probably be okay-ish. But something like that with a guaranteed advance that only happens at certain intervals is something that I couldn't have guessed, and it's much more advanced than I would have imagined actually. So the way that they did it is they had a coin unit, and this coin unit would count each coin that was dropped, and once it hit the appropriate intervals, it would light up the next extra ball. Well, I had to switch my programming to make that happen because I was giving a guaranteed one per coin, and I've done so, and it works very well. On top of that, leader, I actually had to draw the back glass myself because there were just no photos that were good enough online that I could actually use them in whole. I could use one to kind of give me a rough idea of what I needed to do, but thankfully the image was fairly simple by bingo artwork standards, because the later bingo artwork I have no hope of being able to recreate on my own. so again Dennis came through and he sent me a really nice photo of the leader back glass and I was able to recreate that there was a ton of detail which I didn't have because I wasn't able to see it in the really low res picture that I had before and of course my drawing that I did was not very good I'm not what you'd call good at drawing. Let's just put it that way. But it's a skill that I need to cultivate because I need to be able to recreate some artwork. There are some glasses which are prone to flaking, especially very early Uniteds appear to be pretty prone to flaking and Art Boss. So that's just an aside, but basically something I need to work on. So let's talk about Spotlight. I believe that's what I was working on last time that I broadcast, and that's the first game that Bally produced with advancing odds. Now Spotlight is pretty interesting because it had multiple different ways to score, Depending on if you were horizontal, vertical, or diagonal with your three in a row, you would win a different amount of credits. Four in a row and five in a row would give you a different still. So the odds unit is actually much more complicated than it was in later games, where basically you had the same award for any three in a line, any four in a line, any five in a line. The portioning for Spotlight is also pretty interesting This game went from the really basic single mixer on Coney Island and Reflex to Reflex and five mixers. And depending on what was advancing, be it odds, features, or extra vols, different portions of that circuitry were active. Also, this game had pick-a-play, which also changes the portioning. So if you're playing just for extra balls purely, then certain portions of the circuit are cut out that wouldn't be if you were playing for, say, spotted numbers or what have you. And then moving on to Atlantic City, Valley went a little less complex. There were no advancing odds. However, they kept all the portioning the same. And that's because Atlantic City offers so many different spotted numbers. It offers six different spotted number choices. On top of that, you've got your three bingo cards and a random award of double scoring and corners, which we're also on spotlight. So there's a whole lot going on and a whole lot that it needs to portion on top of extra balls. So it's pretty amazing to me just how quickly the difficulty ramped up as far as how the portioning functions in each of these games. Don Hooker, I've said it before everywhere, but I'll say it again, was an absolute genius designing the circuitry, especially to portion something like a spotted number. and he knew statistically that if, say, the center number spots on one of the bingo cards, it's going to make it a whole lot easier for you to put together a win. And so the portioning actually changes based on what you've got spotted. So, so amazingly clever, and that's pretty exciting. another huge thanks has to go out to Chris Dade without whose help I would still be struggling with some of the early games so thank you Chris very much and then on these United machines there are not many high quality photos which exist especially for the early ones, I mentioned that earlier but games like Stars and Circus don't have many high-quality photos. And so I reached out on the Internet and got in touch with Bingo Butch, who is referenced in the Bally vs. United bingo book from Jeffrey Lawton. Now, Butch's son, Mike, has been gracious enough to take photos of their games and provide me images of those back glasses, and I'm very much appreciative of everybody's efforts to get me the information that I'm asking for. I know it's a big pain to take these photos. I try to make it easy, but I mean, it's an extra chore that I'm asking you to do. So I really appreciate it. Now, Butch's son, Mike, is actually making service calls to people's homes again. And he's based out of Pennsylvania. so if you have a bingo in several parts of the east coast as well as a little further west I believe he is able to travel and we'll be able to help you so you can get in touch with him on Pinside he's on there as Bingo Butch or if you'd like you can contact him through me and I'll pass your message on to him and get you all in touch but he has been working on bingos for a very very long time and really understands the machines inside and out so I'm very excited to be working on some of these early Uniteds which are after they began implementing portioning the first of which I mentioned is Stars and Stars has three bingo cards and doubling of the scoring on any of the three cards. And you know what? That sounds awfully familiar. I wonder, oh, it's Atlantic City. In fact, all the spotted numbers that you can get in stars are exactly the same as Atlantic City. And further than that, the bingo card number orientation is exactly the same between stars and Atlantic City. Now, I'm not sure which came out first. I believe Atlantic City came out first but I don't know that for sure but whichever way it was somebody obviously was talking to somebody else there because these games are almost exactly the same except for their portioning the portioning on Stars is actually a whole lot different than it is on Atlantic City or any other ballet game the reflex units and yes, I said units plural in the United games are actually 50 position steppers, which will fully reset if you knock off credits, which I think is kind of odd, at least if I read the schematic correctly. And the schematics are laid out very differently than Bally, which, of course, I'm used to, you know, from working on different manufacturers' games throughout the eras. but United Schematics for their bingos are kind of special because essentially portions of the portioning are in different spots physically on the schematic and so you've got to kind of jump around to follow the logic. It's all there but it's a little more difficult to follow I think than the ballet schematics but that's probably because I've been working on ballys since day one of my bingo tutelage. So that's been going well, and I am still kind of gathering parts. I got the P3 rock, which was the final board that I needed, and right now I'm collecting wire and connectors and pins and those kind of things. getting ready for my cabinet build And that the other exciting news If Carl Weathers and health and so on hold out then over Memorial Day weekend I'll be picking up the donor bingo cab, which I'll be using to build this machine. And at that point, I'll be in hardware mode until I have the game up and running, at which point I'll switch back to programming. now likely this cabinet will be kind of a Franken cabinet two different machines cobbled together so a different head and a different lower cab and so what I'll probably do is get it stenciled I'll make a stencil and then make it appear consistent visually I'm very excited to plug this hardware in and see if my code actually functions on real hardware right now of course I've been testing it on my desktop computer and that's not giving me an accurate picture of what the game is actually going to do what happens when I trigger the relay to run the motor and I'm not triggering it for long enough well then what's going to happen is that the balls won't drop or the ball won't lift or whatever the case may be so I've got to build in some extra logic and I fully anticipate that I'm going to have to do quite a bit of troubleshooting for each of these games and so I'm not trying to get super far ahead try and get into say the magic screen era at this point. What I want to do is get my hardware in place and see what happens. And from there, you know, I'll be able to build up because my code is relatively simple. I mean, it's not very difficult code. It's not very smart code. It's just code. And it runs and it does basically what it's supposed to do, at least without the physical hardware in place. So, you know, I fully anticipate that I'm going to have a whole lot of work ahead of me once I've got this cabinet built. But, aside from that, what else have I been working on? Well, not a whole lot. I have a lot of repair work that's stacking up here around town that I have not had a chance to go out and address. I've been working with some folks to help them get their bingos operational and talking people through EM problems, you know, the usual, but nothing particularly fancy at the moment. You know, really I've been devoting a lot of energy to this project. So, I did shuffle some stuff around in my game room and I moved the 1937 pinball machine into my bedroom, which was a big coup here in my house. And that's the tabletop Genco Jr. And with that, I was able to slide the slot machine that I have sitting on my tool cart, which has all my rubber rings and pinball fixing supplies in it. And now I've got a gap where I can fit this new bingo cab. So I'm pretty excited about it, as I've mentioned about 17 times so far. I've talked before about how the code is open source. The only thing to note about my publicly accessible code is that it's not constantly up to date. I'm actually working from a separate repository for my day-to-day coding, and when I finish huge milestones, basically I'm going to make a big drop of new code into that repository. At the moment, I think it's only got Coney Island, and that Coney Island is several versions behind the version that I'm working on right now. And there have been many changes and improvements. So I'll be making another code drop here at some point soon. But of course, everything in time. So let's move on to today's featured game, shall we? Last time we talked about Bally's 2-in-1, and this time I wanted to talk about another Bally 2 player. It's Bally's 1965 50-50. 50-50 is an interesting game. It didn't have an extremely high production. There were only 580 units produced, according to IPDB. and the playfield mechanics are interesting. There are nine different mushroom bumpers, three white, three red, and three blue. Now, your goal in 50-50 is to light up three different numbers on flags at the bottom of the playfield on inserts in these flags. And to do that, you have to hit the appropriate colored mushroom bumpers. When you plunge your ball, it comes through four different lanes, one of four different lanes. The two on the left are red, and the two on the right are blue. Whichever one it comes down, if it's red or blue, will determine which color you are associated with. At the top, under these lanes, there's a cluster of three pop bumpers. The center one is pointed up, and then the left and right are below that center one. On the left and right-hand sides of the lanes, there are white mushroom bumpers, and those alternate with whichever color you currently have selected. So you earn 50 points for hitting those mushroom bumpers if you have red or blue selected depending The red point award is on the left side and the blue point award is on the right side Down below that, on the left-hand side, you have blue now, and you have a cluster of three different mushroom bumpers. And your goal is to hit all three of them, and at that point, special will be lit in the left out lane. on the right hand side you have three red mushroom bumpers and if you have red selected you want to hit all three of them and again that'll light special in the left out lane in the very center of the play field there's a mushroom bumper and when you hit it it will change your color be it red or blue if you get two out of three of either color, it will open the ball return gate in the right out lane. And this will just return the ball to the shooter lane, at which point you can launch it back into play and change your color. I think this playfield layout is pretty interesting. It's a neat idea. In practice, I'm not sure how well it would work. Of course, if you were playing with another person, I think it would be very good because you could challenge each other to do better than the other. That's pretty neat. But we haven't talked about the artwork yet, so let's hold our horses, shall we? The artwork on the playfield plastics is actually very good. The whole theme of this game is that you're at a carnival. And there's a roller coaster in the background, on the back glass, and you've got a couple different carnival games in front. And then in the foreground, you've got a man and a woman that are at a milkshake counter or a malt counter, wherever they are, and the waitresses just handed them their drink. Now, it may just be the low resolution of this picture, but in the artwork that I see, the people appear to have no pupils, and that's a little odd. but this particular glass that I'm looking at is very faded and so it's possible that some of the color has leached out of their eyes. It's just kind of creepy to look at. Otherwise, pretty cool. And looking at the Playfield Plastics again is very neat. You've got that carnival theme repeated. Merry-go-round, Ferris wheel, roller coaster. and lots of people. I think that's pretty great. And then the playfield artwork is not very distracting. You've got a couple of sunbursts in the center of those clusters of mushroom bumpers, and then the left and right-hand sides of the playfield are colored yellow and green. And you've got some explanatory text on either side. But again, nothing that really jumps out in your face. You've got your flags on the left and right hand side, which are what you're trying to light up. And that's pretty much it. Your pop bumpers score one point each, but when you light them up, which I'm assuming happens when you hit certain targets, I'm not sure if you have to hit all three mushroom bumpers in order to light them or exactly what needs to happen. But when they're lit, they score 10 points. You can also light your slings for 10 points as well, and by default, they award a single point. Now, when you hit the mushroom bumpers, when you've got that side lit, you earn 50 points. which is the same as the award on the alternating mushroom bumper up at the top, which is pretty cool. This game has four-digit scoring and four actual reels, so that means that you can score a maximum of 9,999 points before the machine rolls over. The cabinet graphics continue the theme of 50-50, and they divide between red, white, and blue. On the lower cab, the red and blue intermingle as arrows pointing towards the front legs and those arrows have 50 and 50 written on them. It's pretty cool. I've never played this game. If you have, I'd certainly love to hear about it. What did you think? I tend to prefer mushroom bumpers as kind of an added thing that you have to hit, and not necessarily the main thing. For example, if I'm using them to trigger zipper flippers or something of that nature, then I do happen to like them quite a bit. The little playfield animation that they provide is whimsical and interesting, but if they're the only target really to hit, I'm less enthused about them. And this game, that's pretty much what you're shooting at, is only mushroom bumpers. Now, they do change it up by having different colors, but I'm not sure how great of a player it is just based on looks alone. So, again, if anybody has experience, I'd love to hear it. Unfortunately, I think that'll do it. Thank you very much for listening. My name again is Nick Baldrige. You can reach me at 4amusementonlypodcasts at gmail.com, or you can call me on the bingos line. That's 724-BINGOS1, 724-246-4671. You can listen to us on iTunes, Stitcher, Pocket Casts, via RSS, on Facebook, on Twitter, at Bingo Podcast. You can follow me on Instagram, also at Bingo Podcast. Or you can listen to us on our website, which is foramusementonly.libsyn.com. Thank you very much for listening, and I'll talk to you next time.