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Epsode 370 - Game progress, 1965 Bally 50-50

For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·27m 25s·analyzed·May 19, 2016
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.023

TL;DR

EM emulation progress, early bingo complexity, and 1965 Bally 50-50 review.

Summary

Nicholas Baldrige discusses his progress emulating early bingo and pinball machines, detailing the technical challenges of recreating games like United's Lord of the Rings and Bally's Spotlight, and preparing for a hardware cabinet build over Memorial Day weekend. He also features an in-depth review of the 1965 Bally 50-50 pinball machine, a rare two-player game with mushroom bumpers and carnival theming.

Key Claims

  • Only 580 units of Bally's 1965 50-50 were produced

    high confidence · Nicholas Baldrige citing Internet Pinball Database

  • United's Lord of the Rings was the first game United produced with extra balls

    high confidence · Nicholas Baldrige describing his emulation work

  • Don Hooker designed the circuitry for early Bally bingo machines and was an 'absolute genius' at portioning spotted numbers

    high confidence · Nicholas Baldrige reflecting on technical design

  • United's Stars and Atlantic City bingo machines have identical bingo card orientations and spotted number options despite different portioning

    medium confidence · Nicholas Baldrige comparing schematics and gameplay

  • Early United back glasses are prone to flaking, especially Art Ross

    medium confidence · Nicholas Baldrige noting restoration challenges

  • Bingo Butch's son Mike is making service calls for bingo machines in Pennsylvania and surrounding states

    high confidence · Nicholas Baldrige providing community resource information

  • Nicholas plans to pick up a donor bingo cabinet over Memorial Day weekend to build his multi-game machine

    medium confidence · Nicholas Baldrige discussing cabinet build timeline

  • Bally's Spotlight was the first bingo machine with advancing odds

    high confidence · Nicholas Baldrige describing game features

Notable Quotes

  • “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.”

    Nicholas Baldrige @ ~17:00 — Reflects respect for early designer innovation and technical sophistication in bingo machine design

  • “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.”

    Nicholas Baldrige @ ~5:30 — Underscores the documentation and testing challenges in accurate emulation of obscure early games

  • “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.”

    Nicholas Baldrige @ ~23:00 — Highlights the gap between software emulation and physical hardware verification

  • “I tend to prefer mushroom bumpers as kind of an added thing that you have to hit, and not necessarily the main thing.”

    Nicholas Baldrige @ ~47:00 — Personal design preference revealing gameplay philosophy regarding bumper-centric versus multi-target playfields

Entities

Nicholas BaldrigepersonDennis O'DellpersonLinda RothpersonDon HookerpersonChris DadepersonJeffrey LawtonpersonBingo ButchpersonMike (Bingo Butch's son)personKyle WeatherspersonUnitedcompany

Signals

  • ?

    technology_signal: Nicholas Baldrige is developing comprehensive emulation of early bingo and pinball machines with high technical fidelity, moving from desktop testing to real hardware implementation

    high · Completed 8 fully emulated games, 9th in progress; transitioning to hardware cabinet build over Memorial Day weekend; using schematic analysis and community documentation

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Early bingo designers like Don Hooker and Linda Roth employed sophisticated statistical portioning strategies, with United and Bally using fundamentally different circuit approaches to achieve similar outcomes

    high · Detailed technical analysis of coin-based extra ball advancement in Lord of the Rings, multi-mixer systems in Spotlight, and complex spotted number probability adjustments

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Accurate restoration and emulation of early games requires direct community outreach for high-quality documentation, as online resources are often insufficient or low-resolution

    high · Dennis O'Dell provided score cards and back glass photos; Bingo Butch and Mike provided documentation of United machines; open-source code approach with periodic public drops

  • ?

    community_signal: Strong collaborative culture among EM/bingo enthusiasts with willingness to share technical knowledge, photographs, and repair expertise across geographic regions

    high · Multiple community members providing documentation; Bingo Butch's son offering service calls across Pennsylvania and surrounding states via Pinside coordination

  • ?

    product_concern: Early United bingo back glasses are prone to flaking and color degradation, creating challenges for restoration and documentation photography

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.082

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.
0:15
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.
0:32
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,
0:43
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,
1:46
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.
Bally
company
Genco Jr.game
Bally 50-50game
United Zingogame
United Lord of the Ringsgame
Bally Bright Lightsgame
Bally Broadway 51game
Bally Coney Islandgame
Bally Spotlightgame
Bally Atlantic Citygame
United Starsgame
United Circusgame
Internet Pinball Databaseorganization
Pinsideorganization

medium · Nicholas notes faded artwork and eye detail loss in 50-50; identifies early United and Art Ross as particularly vulnerable to flaking

  • ?

    design_innovation: Bally's 50-50 demonstrates a design philosophy where mushroom bumpers serve as both primary targets and color-selection mechanisms within a multi-player competitive framework

    medium · Playfield uses nine mushroom bumpers (three colors) as main scoring targets combined with color selection lane system and inter-player challenge mechanics

  • ?

    historical_signal: Early game design credits and designer identification remain partially obscure, requiring community research and documentation sharing to establish accurate historical records

    medium · References to Linda Roth and Don Hooker with acknowledgment that 'not a whole lot of information about it online' exists for early United games

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Bally 50-50 had limited production (580 units), typical of experimental or niche designs in the mid-1960s era

    high · Internet Pinball Database documentation cited by Nicholas Baldrige

    • 2:32
    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.
    2:50
    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.
    5:20
    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.
    5:54
    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.
    6:07
    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.
    6:22
    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.
    6:43
    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.
    7:05
    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.
    7:33
    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.
    7:51
    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.
    8:21
    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.
    9:41
    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.
    10:10
    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.
    11:20
    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,
    12:35
    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 weather 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.
    13:55
    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
    14:25
    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.
    16:25
    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.
    17:09
    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.
    17:24
    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.
    17:36
    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.
    18:16
    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.
    18:30
    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.
    18:43
    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.
    19:15
    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.
    19:35
    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.
    20:02
    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,
    20:50
    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 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.
    21:36
    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.
    21:54
    That's pretty neat. But we haven't talked about the artwork yet, so let's hold our horses, shall we?
    22:02
    The artwork on the playfield plastics is actually very good. The whole theme of this game is that you're at a carnival.
    22:16
    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.
    22:51
    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.
    23:22
    Otherwise, pretty cool. And looking at the Playfield Plastics again is very neat. You've got that carnival theme repeated.
    23:31
    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.
    24:01
    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.
    24:21
    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.
    24:45
    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.
    25:10
    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.
    25:51
    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.
    26:44
    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.
    27:14
    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.