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Part 1: 1978 Interflip Alaska 4 Player EM. The only one on the planet?

Pinball Shenanigans·video·28m 45s·analyzed·Feb 13, 2026
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Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.018

TL;DR

Restoration of rare 1978 Interflip Alaska 4-player EM pinball, possibly unique example.

Summary

Mike Dus from Pinball Shenanigans documents the restoration of an extremely rare 1978 Interflip Alaska 4-player electromechanical pinball machine—believed to be the only EM version in existence. The machine was manufactured by Recreativos Franco in Spain under the Interflip export label. Part 1 focuses on initial playfield assessment, bottom board service by specialist Rob Noel, and beginning restoration work on seized solenoids, corroded wiring, and deteriorated lamp sockets.

Key Claims

  • According to Pinside, there are only three registered owners of the solid state Alaska variant

    high confidence · Speaker cites Pinside registry data; one owner is identified as Steven Pruza

  • Only two photos of the 4-player EM Alaska exist on the internet, and the speaker now owns one of them

    high confidence · Speaker conducted research and found flyer documentation; only one photo on Internet Pinball Database

  • Recreativos Franco was a Spanish manufacturer that used 'Interflip' (international flipper) as export label

    medium confidence · Speaker deduced brand relationship from cabinet nameplate and company address (Rufino Gonzalez 25, Madrid 17, Spain)

  • The playfield weighs 400 lbs with significant rust, crappy sockets, and seized solenoids

    high confidence · Direct observation during restoration assessment

  • Steven Pruza swapped electronics on his solid state Alaska to a standard Bally/Stern board

    high confidence · Speaker mentions knowing Pruza personally and noting this modification

Notable Quotes

  • “So when my buddy Kevin brought back this fourplayer electromechanical version, I was even further intrigued. So, I did some research and pretty much these two photos are the only photos I can find on the internet of the existence of a fourplayer EM Alaska.”

    Mike Dus @ 0:30-1:00 — Establishes rarity claim and research methodology for identifying unique machines

  • “Inter flip. Rufino Gonzalez 25 Madrid 17 Spain.”

    Mike Dus @ 2:45 — Direct manufacturer information from flyer documentation

  • “Can't buy stencils for an Alaska. Probably can't buy much of anything for an Alaska.”

    Mike Dus @ 5:30 — Illustrates restoration challenges for extremely rare/obscure machines

  • “This playfield weighs 400 lb and there's a lot of rust, a lot of crappy sockets, and some solenoids that are seized.”

    Mike Dus @ 11:20 — Describes primary restoration work ahead

  • “Look at the size of these end of stroke switches. Massive. I'm thinking maybe I'll just remove these two screws so I can really get at this.”

    Mike Dus @ 23:45 — Notes heavy-duty construction and engineering of Spanish EM design

Entities

Mike DuspersonPinball ShenanigansorganizationInterflip AlaskagameRecreativos FrancocompanyKevinpersonRob NoelpersonSteven PruzapersonInternet Pinball DatabaseorganizationPinsideorganizationInterflip Dragongame

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Multiple friends (Kevin, Rob Noel, Chris Kiss) actively supporting restoration; specialist knowledge network engaged

    high · Kevin sourced machine, Rob Noel performed bottom board service, Chris Kiss provided soldering supplies; speaker notes 'I'm surrounded by good help. got very smart friends'

  • $

    market_signal: Rarity documentation effort (photo search, IPDB tracking, Pinside registry) suggests community valuation of extremely rare/unique machines

    high · Speaker conducted extensive research specifically to confirm uniqueness; only 2-3 examples known to exist globally for variants

  • ?

    technology_signal: Steven Pruza's modification of solid state Alaska with Bally/Stern board swap represents aftermarket electronics modernization trend for rare machines

    high · Speaker notes Pruza 'swapped over all the electronics and changed it over to just a standard like ballet stern board set which I find to be pretty remarkable'

Transcript

youtube_auto_sub · $0.000

0:02
I think most pinball enthusiasts have heard of Interflip Dragon. It is a bit of a got a bit of a cult following and it's a pretty fun game. But have you heard of Interflip Alaska? I didn't think so. Because according to Pinsside, there are only three owners registered on Pinsside that own this solid state four player Alaska. So when my buddy Kevin brought back this fourplayer electromechanical version, I was even further intrigued. So, I did some research and pretty much these two photos are the only photos I can find on the internet of the existence of a fourplayer EM Alaska. And there's one person that has this in their pinside collection, and that is I. I was able to find the flyer on the game. So, that is how the Internet Pinball Database knows that this game exists because not only did Kevin bring home this fourplayer Alaska, turns out that there is a oneplayer as well. The company is actually called Recreativos Franco in Spain. And I believe when they shipped games internationally, they used the name Interflip, which you can probably imagine stands something for like international flipper, right? Probably. So, there's a lot of question marks here, but here is the single player version of Alaska, and here's the flyer. So, for the single player version of Alaska, yet again, there is one person that has it in their collection, and that is I. I was able to find some other photos of the one player version that exist on the internet, and it looked like it was somewhere in Europe in a collection of games. But that is pretty much the only EM version that I was able to find. But literally could not find a fourplayer EM photo on the internet out there at all. So needless to say, we're going to Alaska. I'm Mike Dus and this [music] is Pinball Shenanigans.
3:01
So, this next project should be interesting. I don't know how many playlists I have that feature electromechanical pinball machines. Very little, if any. Not that I haven't worked on them before, but I just like my solid state stuff. So, this is a little bit out of my comfort zone, but that's okay. I'm surrounded by good help. got very smart friends and uh if I can't figure something out, they certainly can. So, for starters, let's zoom in here cuz I noticed that we've got some English text here and let's see what this game is all about. Make a trip to this magic world of Alaska full of snow, ice, sounds horrible. Uh Eskimos and ice bears. I don't think we're allowed to say Eskimos anymore. So, I will probably just say dude from now on like these angry dudes on the front of the cabinet. While playing on this brand new fourplayer pinball, you will feel the cold delight of this new game with its new and spectacular target system, its new and attractive bumper, and its lit up bottom lanes. Doesn't that sound exciting? [snorts] [snorts] And as usual, our everlasting bumper and And as usual, our everlasting bumper and flipper system. Meta Crylight playfield of 6 mm. Oh, that's what that's called. Fun-filled entertainment. A challenge for skilled players. Three ball play convertible to five. Ball in play and lottery counter. A lottery counter. Here we go. Inter flip. Rufino Gonzalez 25 Madrid 17 Spain. Oh, there's a back of the flyer, too. Let's uh check this out. Okay, so special in left kickout hole when hitting the five left targets. Double bonus when passing through left central lane. Advanced bonus stop through top lanes when hitting central targets or targets on both sides. Triple bonus lane. Increased score on central bumper. [snorts] Okay. Special in right kickout hole when hitting the five right targets. Triple bonus when passing through the right central lane. Extra ball regalable from 50,000 to 90,000. Double bonus lane increases score on side bumpers. and special when last three ciphers of obtained score are the same as those appearing on the screen when game is over. Oh, it's like a match. Anyway, here, have a look at the playfield. This is what we're playing with.
Rob Burke
person
Chris Kissperson
5:58
And oh, see on this photo it shows red on the left, yellow drop targets on the right. I believe my playfield is all yellow with maybe a replacement target or two. Anyway, are you excited to go to Alaska? Well, I am too. So, I'll give you a quick peek of what I got. Okay, so my buddy Kevin is currently probably right at this very moment working on restoring the cabinet. It is made of particle board and needed uh a lot of love. Like he replaced the back and fixed some chunks that were falling out. Gave it a as thorough of a restoration as he could without rebuilding the cabinet and resting the whole thing, which don't exist. Can't buy stencils for an Alaska. Probably can't buy much of anything for an Alaska. So this is the bottom board and um what I did with this was brought it to my buddy Rob Noel who is EM bottom board specialist said here you deal with this and he went through every single switch stepper and adjusted and cleaned and unseased this step or was it this one? One of these was totally seized anyway. So, if there's any issues on this, it should be minor because he did the full treatment on that. And then I have the playfield. And here it is. You can see the uh meticrolite. Is that what it's called? 6 mm playfield protector. And because of that, everything is going to be in like mint condition playfield wise. Look at these bright fluorescent colors. You got pink, peach, yellow, some very cool wolf pop bumper caps. This cool little dude right here, like a pink bear. And then we got dude fishing over here. Another dude ice fishing over there. Kevin has uh sent out all the metal parts or a lot of them for powder coating. Here's my back arches. So, we'll set those aside for now. And this is also for the back arches. We'll set those over there.
8:37
And then have a look at the art on the playfield here. You got this like green glacier with pink clouds in the background reflecting in the water here. Looks pretty cool. And the extra ball is like fluorescent orange. These rollover buttons. This bottom is very very similar if not identical to Dragon.
9:05
And I believe these were manufactured in the same year. So maybe if there's no Alaska schematics, the Dragon schematics should be pretty similar if uh if needed, which I probably will. It's pretty impressive that the apron card still exists. And it is in English.
9:32
And then we got this side here is interchangeable. Three balls in play. Different high score values. Might have to get something made up. Other than that, these things are like I just breathe on them and they fall apart. They just turn into dust. So, I'm going to need to find some new lane guides. That shouldn't be too difficult. I think I could use some gotle ones. Here's the uh drop targets. Mostly yellow. One red replacement. And these are all yellow, too. But we've got a blue text, red text, and no text. What do we got over here? All blue text. Oh, and then uh we got another target right here. Blue one. That's I thought was a drop target, but I think it is not. It's just a standup target. Anyway, that's going to be the fun part. Doing the top side. The dreaded part is going to be this.
10:48
This playfield weighs 400 lb and there's a lot of rust, a lot of crappy sockets, and some solenoids that are seized.
11:04
So, I'm going to, you know, do the dirty work first. I think my goal is that, uh, I'm going to throw this on a table on its face. I'll remove these pop bumper caps very, very carefully. I don't want them to I don't want to break any tabs. That was successful. Uh, I'm going to lay it on its face here on a table because this playfield is so heavy and my rotisserie is very flimsy and uh it's sure to um fall over as I'm working on it.
11:45
So, as long as I take anything that protrudes, if I take those off, maybe like put a piece of wood here to match the height of the apron and I can lay that on its face on a table and then I can work on the bottom side. That's the goal. So, let's get started. If you haven't met Ellie, she runs the show around here. Sits in her perch. Make sure that I'm not messing up. I'm not slacking off and uh she is the inspector. So, as long as we're behaving, she's happy. Right, Ellie? She wants me to open her window, but it's cold out there, so we ain't going to do that. I'm sorry. You just hang out and have fun. So yeah, I mentioned that um there were three registered owners on pinsside of the solid state version of Alaska and one of those belongs to uh my buddy Steven Pruza and he did something pretty incredible. He swapped over all the electronics and changed it over to just a standard like ballet stern board set which I find to be pretty remarkable. But anyway, he has one of the three Solid State Alaskas that I know of. And you know who does not is Rob Burke of Pastimes Arcade. And um you know, maybe when I'm done with this, might have to give him a shout and see if he's interested. But here's the solution. Instead of putting it on a wobbly rotisserie, I've got on a table here. And I used an old apron that I have to uh distance it. Look at that. Pretty almost exact distance from front to back. And the, you know, no playfield components are touching the table. So nothing will get damaged. And now we can have a closer look at the playfield. And now I can access everything. question is, do I like replace all these sockets? Like, I can't exactly test them. I mean, would be kind of cool if I could like just add, I don't know, six volts or whatever it is to whatever pins are needed to light up the playfield. And then I could really see like which sockets need to be replaced or if any do or if all do. But have a look at these drop targets. these. Yikes. Good luck ever finding any of these. Guess they could be 3D printed if I am in a bind, you know. But those are very unique. Interesting. And this kind of just looks like is this Williams? This seems like Williams flipper system here. That's pretty standard. We got some fuses.
14:55
I have to check on those. We got the fuse values here and in Spanish that is fusables. Over here we got the regulation for the bola extra which sounds to me like extra ball settings. You're allowed currently to get eight extra balls. It's a little uh it's a little abundant. We got to rectifier here. So that's I'm guessing converting some AC voltage to DC voltage for whatever reason. Um this big thick blue wire. So I guess no this is just end of stroke switch wires here. But uh look how thick these blue wires are.
15:51
this. This kind of system almost reminds me a little bit of Gamatron. This whole drop target system but with a Spanish twist. Here we have
16:09
kickout hole. Kickout hole. This one is pretty much seized. We got pop bumper. So I'm not going to Yep. There. Pop bumper number two. Pop bumper number three. Pop bumper number. Pop bumper number. Pop bumper number. Pop bumper number. It's tricky to say. Bunch of relays back here. Those are going to be should be easy enough to clean and adjust. You know, for these relays, it's not rocket science. Like one or they like I can't really see cuz I don't have my glasses on, but they look like they're both open. When you press it, they both close. And they look like they're doing that. Same with this guy here.
16:57
Just go through all these and make sure switches are doing what they look like they should be doing. Got a stepper unit here which looks like bonus count. So for the bonus points
17:16
got a two solenoids here. little gummy. You know, I'm not sure if I'll be removing this completely off the playfield or what, but not sure how I'm going to tackle all this. I'll go through every single switch, adjust and clean, and
17:39
that's basically my plan here. I don't see anything like it doesn't look like the machine was probably played a whole lot. The components look pretty good, you know. I guess it had to have been played because we got the replace drop target. That's the main indicator there. the one kind of jammed kicker, but that could be from storage. But yeah, I mean, other than the rust, it actually looks to be in pretty good shape and the mildew and the mold. And it's not really a whole lot of dust. Actually, that corrosion and stuff, but it's not beat to hell and it's not hacked up at all. So, it's a good start. So, oh, you know what I probably could have done is turn on the light that whole time. Okay, I just been kind of staring at this playfield. What's nice is that I can just like pull up a chair and uh work on this thing. The thickness of these wires is crazy, though. But yeah, I'm just kind of staring trying to figure out how to tackle this. I noticed a couple things so far. Maybe I'll start with this. Got this wire here that's supposed to be connected to all these switches for the drop targets. And that's broken here, here, and here. And then I was, as I was wiggling, this one broke free. That's supposed to go here.
19:25
And then I believe it's also come free here. So, I'm going to have to remedy all that. And I wouldn't be surprised if the other side has similar issues. But, you know, this one kind of looks okay, which is nice. Uh, the other thing I noticed is that this purple wire here leads to nowhere. I thought maybe it goes to like a screw tab thing like that because there is a hole right here.
20:04
So, I don't know where this is supposed to go. There's nothing really obvious around. Yeah, that's about as far as I've got so far. I think just because I can and it's relatively easy. I can I think what I'll do in this phase here is remove all the light bulbs and then patch up this wire and see how well the solder takes to uh this old crusty metal. Okay, I got to give a shout out to uh my buddy Chris Kiss who hooked me up with this flux here that I'm using for the first time. So, I've kind of like prepped this area here with a little Dremel just to get rid of the crust. Add some flux.
21:00
Think it's helping. and add heat and a lot of it. Maybe not so much for this wire, but if I have to start changing lamp sockets with these giant gauge wires,
21:25
that's going to be a challenge. I'm going to need to turn up my soldering iron to 1,000°.
21:35
There you go. That's on there. Good. Okay, I think I've got all of the joints intact. So, I just take my little screwdriver and just kind of like test everything, every solder joint. Make sure nothing's touching something it shouldn't. Make sure everything is secure.
22:06
This wire can almost be resoldered on this lug here. It's a little It's not amazing. Some threads are some strands are not connected. They're broken off. So, I may do that.
22:31
I think that's good. So, I decided to go ahead and solder that wire on a little better. I removed the solder from the hole, stuck it through the hole. So, we got a mechanical connection as well as a solder connection now. So, that should be better. And um the place that this machine came from along with a bunch of other late '7s goodies and mid70s. Uh a lot of this stuff has been stored since then like for 40 years. So, you know, could we be going through all this trouble with the bottom board cabinet, playfield mechanics soon, the head scoring reels and whatnot to uh find that this thing is never going to work again or are all of our efforts going to pay off? It's uh it's only really one way to find out. So, just got to keep plugging away. Okay, I managed to remove all of general illumination and controlled sockets that were accessible. And some of these ones are pretty darn rusty. Put up a fight. But the little WD40 was able to get the one most stubborn one out. But yeah, I don't have high hopes for these sockets. But replacing them with this gauge wire, like it's hard enough to get normal gauge wire to stick to a lamp socket leg like this. With this thick of wire, it's going to require so much heat. And h it's just going to be quite a pain in the butt, I would imagine. Do I just shotgun replace every socket? I mean, what would you do? Okay, just to be safe, these are some old fuses, there's one here that says USA on it. Okay, we got to go like this. USA. So, that fuse was replaced. So, that's an indication that this machine was played for a while anyway. And then these three other fuses are just a little bit different shaped. So, those are the original ones, I'm assuming, but I just went ahead and changed them all out. I just wanted to point out the uh heavy duty switches here that Interflip used like that is a lot of metal and the price of the machine must have been expensive. Like look how this operates. The rollover pushes through this metal which just keeps that eternally in place and then it closes the switch. So it these switches all need to be like just straightened out, tightened up and cleaned. Look how dirty these are. I'm thinking my Dremel wire brush should do the trick for those guys, but I'm not sure I'm going to do that just yet. Look at the size of these end of stroke switches. Massive. I'm thinking maybe I'll just remove these two screws so I can really get at this. Although might be unnecessary, but uh maybe I'll start with the end of stroke switches. All right. So, I just used my wire brush there, my Dremel. There's your sort of before. And here is your after. Look at that. Did a mighty fine job. And I didn't remove it. I didn't really have to. So, I'll carry on to the next one. Okay, I got this end of stroke switch cleaned up here. Very shiny. And I think I have these guys adjusted to my satisfaction. So, those should be good. Well, these springs were pretty gummy and gross, so I just gave them a little bit of a cleaning. A little better now. So, I think that these belite switch stacks kind of shrink a little bit over time. And so, I tightened every single switch and they all needed tightening. All these big guys here. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven. Uh, no, I missed that guy. But he's not the big switch stack. He's got the flat head screws. All the big guys have the Phillips screws. But yeah, there's a bunch over here. These guys. So, I tightened them all down. And I think I'm just going to like shove my Dremel in there, clean every single one of them, and uh yeah, I think I'll do that next. Okay, so I've got all of these switches
28:04
all these rollovers. Oh, that's this guy over here. He was being a little sticky, so nothing. A little uh isopropyl alcohol Q-tips couldn't resolve. Now he's working great. And all these guys
28:30
So I still have a few more to do, but um I'm going to call it. I got to I got to go buy some groceries. So, that's the end of the first Alaskan adventure.