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Episode 424 - Interview with Ryan Claytor 6-14-18

For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·1h 28m·analyzed·Jun 21, 2018
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.029

TL;DR

Technical restoration deep-dive covering EM/flipper pinball repairs and design appreciation.

Summary

Ryan Claytor interviews host Nick Backbone about restoration work on EM and early flipper pinball machines during a vacation visit to Michigan. The conversation covers detailed technical repairs on multiple games including Penny Pitch, Paul Bunyan, Sheba, Fox Hunt, Puck Bowler, and Ragmop, discussing mechanical issues, design philosophy, and appreciation for classic game design. Key themes include stepper problems, relay adjustments, lubricant preferences (PBR grease vs. three-in-one oil), and the unique design innovations of 1960s Gottlieb and Bally machines.

Key Claims

  • Paul Bunyan (1968 Gottlieb) was designed by Wayne Nolan who was chief engineer (not designer) at Gottlieb at the time and felt rushed, resulting in what he considered a lesser work

    high confidence · Speaker (analyzing interview with Wayne Nolan) discussing Paul Bunyan design history

  • Puck Bowler is a 1977 United Thunderbird shuffle alley and one of the latest or last EM machines Williams/United made

    medium confidence · Host describing Puck Bowler specifications

  • Ragmop is the first single flipper game from Williams

    medium confidence · Ryan Claytor commenting on Ragmop's distinction

  • PBR grease is superior to three-in-one oil for pinball restoration work due to higher viscosity and longer-lasting lubrication

    medium confidence · Host endorsing PBR grease as a recent discovery and complete convert from three-in-one

  • Paul Bunyan features six flippers arranged downward-facing, similar to Fairytale series but inverted

    high confidence · Detailed gameplay description by host and Ryan Claytor

  • Sheba (1964 Bally) playfield and Hayride playfield were designed by the same uncredited artist; Sheba backglass is different

    medium confidence · Ryan Claytor analyzing artwork attribution

  • Bally games have superior mechanisms and are the best to service compared to other manufacturers from that era

    medium confidence · Host expressing appreciation for Bally engineering and mechanism design

  • Puck Bowler had 86 score reels rebuilt by Ryan prior to host's arrival, with one final reel rebuilt during visit

    high confidence · Host noting extensive restoration work already completed on score reels

Notable Quotes

  • “It seems, uh, it's really kind of a tantalizing game because it seems right within your reach at all times, but it's really not at all.”

    Host (Nick Backbone) @ ~8:00 — Describes the deceptive difficulty of Paul Bunyan gameplay design

  • “I really, truly appreciate working on Bally games the most. And, you know, that probably stems from my love of bingo pinball. But that said, their mechanisms are probably the best to service out of any of them.”

    Host (Nick Backbone) @ ~27:00 — Expresses deep appreciation for Bally engineering philosophy and serviceability

  • “It's such a gorgeous machine... the metallic gold screen printing ink when printing these, um, playfield plastics. I mean, you just don't see this metallic artwork anymore.”

    Ryan Claytor @ ~23:00 — Highlights appreciation for vintage artistic techniques on Sheba playfield

  • “He was rushed and he was also not in a designer position at the time. He was, I think, a chief engineer at Gottlieb at the time and so he wasn't designing anymore... he had felt like he sort of threw some stuff on a playfield and hoped for the best and shoved it out the door”

    Host (Nick Backbone) @ ~12:00 — Context on Paul Bunyan designer Wayne Nolan's perspective on his own work

  • “now this PBR grease is phenomenal. It's certainly more viscous and it tends to stay around longer than the three-in-one. So I'm a complete convert to that stuff.”

    Host (Nick Backbone) @ ~30:00 — Endorsement of new maintenance product representing shift in restoration practice

  • “There's a ton of work that you have a very high-level understanding of everything that's underneath after that thing. That's why everything is bigger.”

    Ryan Claytor @ ~42:00 — Acknowledgment of host's deep technical expertise on complex shuffle alley mechanisms

  • “This is like three pinball machines jammed into one cabinet. There's a ton of stuff back there.”

    Host (Nick Backbone) @ ~38:00 — Describes complexity of Puck Bowler mechanical design

Entities

Ryan ClaytorpersonNick BackbonepersonWayne NolanpersonSteve YoungpersonLarry BezapersonPaul BunyangameShebagamePenny PitchgameFox Hunt

Signals

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Host has switched from three-in-one oil to PBR grease for pinball restoration, citing superior viscosity and longevity

    high · Direct endorsement: 'now this PBR grease is phenomenal... So I'm a complete convert to that stuff'

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Extensive restoration of Puck Bowler shuffle alley including stepper rebuilds, score reel repairs (86 reels), motor installation, and pin deck servicing

    high · Detailed breakdown of multiple mechanical subsystems requiring professional-level intervention

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Paul Bunyan exhibits deliberate design throwback to flipperless era (20 years prior) despite being designed in 1968 with mature flipper technology available

    medium · Host and guest discussion of flipper arrangement, geometric playfield sections, and designer Wayne Nolan's engineering background

  • ?

    product_concern: Puck Bowler exhibits intermittent scoring errors in Slash mode depending on stepper position; not fixed by host during visit

    high · Host: 'in certain positions of the Slash motor, it's scoring nothing... Or a hundred less than what you're supposed to get'

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Host employs systematic debugging approach: when one problem proves intractable, shifts focus to related issues that may share root cause

    medium · Discussion of Puck Bowler mode selection issue leading to discovery of broken wire on player number reel switch

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.265

0:00
In the meantime, I have a special guest here today, Ryan Claytor. Hello. Comics illustrator and artist extraordinaire as well as a good friend of mine. And I've been spending some time up here with Ryan and he's been showing me the sights, the sounds, the smells. Of the great white north. And by that we mean Michigan. The south. So I've been staying with Ryan and his family and they've been showing me lots of hospitality up here and I've had lots of games to work on which is excellent. Lots of hospitality means putting Nick to work. There's so many double entendres here. I feel like a translator. That's what I love the most, though. So, I just wanted to quickly kind of go over some of the games that I worked on and then what I did to fix them or, you know, things that we talked about that are still broken and I need to fix. But I'm running out of time. That's the only problem. Because you haven't spent enough of your vacation working on my machines. Look, is everything fixed yet? No? So, first let's start with penny pitch. Alright, so penny pitch has a residual problem which we'll come back to. But the first thing that it was doing is when you spun the wheel, if you max out your spin, if you spin it super crazy hard, then what happens is there's a stepper in the back that continues to step. And this stepper is actually moving the penny across. One little lighted element dropoutcember The game was never getting the signal that it was maxed out and it was allowing it to continue to step forever. You know, you spin it hard enough, it would just keep going. So that was a quick fix and that took care of that problem. Now Nick Baldridge can show me his Taylor Reese hamfist spins on penny pitch and things stop just like they're supposed to. Yeah, so it's great. Instead of hearing clunk clunk clunk at the end, you just get that sound of silence before it takes it away from you. Now it doesn't have to burn up a coil anymore. Yeah, not as much anyway. So the residual problem, and this is a much harder problem, is that there's some sort of short in the game and depending on the pitch, the shot number, as well as the position of that stepper that moves the penny, you will get lighted elements illuminated on the opposite side of that stepper where it is currently. I've taken apart that stepper partially. I haven't taken the spaghetti disc off yet. I've taken that stepper away completely and the problem is a little better but not great. So I'm suspecting that there's a short in the bundle which is going to be a lot of fun. So in order to fix that, you know, the bundle has to be sliced open and you've got to look and trace out the wires individually and possibly replace the wire and that might be more than a vacation fix unfortunately at this point i'm thinking it might be but uh... can't fix everything. You've fixed about a million other games while you're here. alright so let's move on to something else. essentially doubling my collection, my functional collection. That's the idea. uh... so another one that i worked on was paul bunyan yeah paul bunyan is a game that i'd never played before uh... it's a nineteen sixty... sixty eight if i'm not mistaken sixty eight godly And, um, two-player. Uh, it's got beautiful, uh, backglass playfield artwork. And, um, it's got a really challenging, uh, yet simple sequence. It's, it seems, uh, it's really kind of a tantalizing game because it seems right within your reach at all times, but it's really not at all. So up at the top as you enter the playfield, there's a sequence for A, B, C on rollovers. The same sequence is repeated down at the bottom on stand-up targets which are placed between the bottom set of flippers. And you have to get that sequence in order. So, say you roll through the A. It unlights A, B and C remain lit. Then you have to hit B and then C in order down at the bottom, which is extremely dangerous, or work your way all the way back up to the top and loop through the next set of rollovers. C top-line, 6, Flippers, par nên, the 6 Flippers are really—they feel like a throwback to the Fairytale series. They're arranged in a similar fashion but they're downward facing instead of upward facing. Which makes a lot of sense with the theme of the game, too, because Paul Bunyan, you've got this fairytale, and it didn't really dawn on me that that was a thematic throwback, too, until you mentioned it the other night. It's kind of neat when taken in context like that. At least I think so. It might not have been the intent, but it's cool. It's a piece of art. We can read into it whatever we want. There we go. That's why it's helpful to have an artist on here.

  • “No one likes to be robbed. I mean it's true. Especially when you're deep in competition for that beer frame.”

    Host (Nick Backbone) @ ~59:00 — Humorous observation about scoring issues in Puck Bowler with reference to Beer Frame mode

    • game
    Puck Bowlergame
    Ragmopgame
    Hayridegame
    Fairytale seriesproduct
    Nine Sistersgame
    PBR greaseproduct
    Gottliebcompany
    Ballycompany
    Williamscompany
    Unitedcompany
    For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcastorganization
    ?

    historical_signal: Wayne Nolan (Gottlieb chief engineer) acknowledged Paul Bunyan as rushed work; he was engineering rather than designing at the time and felt game quality suffered

    medium · Host citing prior interview with Wayne Nolan about design pressures and expedited production

  • ?

    design_innovation: Sheba features three slingshots including upper-mounted unit positioned to create 'pinball conducting effect' with cross-firing between lower left and upper right kickers

    high · Detailed mechanical description of slingshot arrangement and gameplay physics

  • ?

    collector_signal: Ragmop obtained free from PinSide community member Larry Beza as open restoration project; indicates active collector network and generous sharing practices

    high · Host: 'Larry Beza posted something on pinside about how he's got this single flipper project... he'd hand it to him for free'

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Host's assessment of Paul Bunyan improved significantly after hands-on gameplay and restoration, contradicting negative industry reputation

    medium · Host: 'I've certainly heard a lot of bad things about this game... I think it's a super fun game. I can't wait to put some more plays on it'

  • ?

    restoration_signal: Pin deck removal on Puck Bowler proved unexpectedly difficult; host suspected locking mechanism either complex or missing from this example

    high · Host: 'figuring out how to pull out the pin deck on this particular machine was a bit of a challenge... I figured there was some sort of locking mechanism and there's not'

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Host expresses strong preference for Bally mechanism design and serviceability compared to other manufacturers; attributes to Bally's bingo pinball heritage

    medium · Host: 'I really, truly appreciate working on Bally games the most... their mechanisms are probably the best to service out of any of them'

  • ?

    content_signal: Episode 424 represents comprehensive technical interview covering multiple game restorations, design history, and personalized arcade updates

    high · Episode structure covering 6-7 major game restoration projects with detailed mechanical and design discussion

    • 6:11
    So, yeah, the sequence, again, seems very easy. It's only three letters. How hard could that be? But you'll find yourself losing the ball a lot more frequently than you think might be possible. When those stand-up targets are right in front of you, they are drain Monsters. So, if it's possible to loft it back up to the top of the playfield and hope that it, you can nudge it around into the correct lane, that's probably safest, but as you say, it's pretty tantalizing to knock off that B or C when it's, oh, it's just right there. I can complete the sequence. A glancing blow, we'll send it right back to the other flipper and away I go. Or the out lane. Or straight out of the game. So the outline gives you some consolation scoring and there's an alternating relay which will light one side or the other. There's two outlines on either side. So ideally you want to go down the lit outline for 200 points, but as generally happens to me it's 50 points. And everything's great there. But once you complete the sequence you can reset the bank and in order to do that one of the letters in ABC will light at random and you hit The Karchunk, the bank resets and you get to do it all over again. One of the fun things about it, you can earn an extra ball and the playfield is is essentially divided into three separate and distinct sections. At the bottom you've got the ABC stand-up targets as Ryan and I were talking about. Above that you have a middle section which is really geometrically pretty interesting. You've got stand-up targets 407 001 Size ado Cop driex and Militelyalle Get-Award from you'll never seven days before,achi Glue if you'll ever cross my road, and an over Fairytale series because you were still sort of in this post flipperless era, but oh my gosh Here's this thing. We just invented. Let's throw it on the playfield and they don't exactly have direct targets to them. Whereas by 1968 there had been 20 years of flippers being used and Wayne Nyans had designed a whole lot of games by then and
    9:05
    Consequently, I think he was able to really pinpoint and target where he wanted this projectile ago and Um, yeah, I just think it's such a unique gameplay experience. I can't think of anything else like it, but to get back to your question. Yeah, I, I dig each of those sort of like mini playfields in a way, but yet at the same time you can use those flippers to work your ball back up this ladder of mini playfields back to the top. Yeah, that's, I'm all about it. I find it very fun. You have rollover lanes on either side near that middle playfield and they feed the middle flippers, which is kind of neat. So as you're coming down, if you miss the rollover lanes and there is the opportunity to do that, you don't have to go down A, B or C. It doesn't funnel you into there. You can go down either side and it will roll right to the middle flipper. And from there you can make this kind of bank shot onto that white standup target that's up at the top. You only get 50 points, but it's very satisfying, I think. And directly above that, Ryan was mentioning another stand-up target. There are lots of stand-up targets on this game, which normally I'm not a huge fan of if the game is all stand-up targets. But something about the geometry of this game really makes it a lot of fun compared to, say, a modern game that's all stand-up targets. The targets are kind of the classic godly bullseye targets, not the two-phase bullseye targets, but they're a bullseye pattern. And when you hit them, you either get, I believe it's fifty points, or you will light, you'll qualify the extra ball. But in order to get the extra ball, you have to go through this roll undergate, which is all the way at the top of the playfield. And uh... Which Nick tells Me is accessible from a flipper. It's totally accessible. I haven't managed to get it from a flipper yet, but that's not saying much. That's a low bar to set if you're using me as an example. We've only played a handful of games, so it's... But yeah, it's quite fun. And that rollendergate also will award you this massive amount of points the first time you hit it, 500 points. However, as soon as you do that, it trips a relay and then you only get 50 points. So if you're able to find that sweet spot on those upper flippers and just bat it back and forth, you know, you're not getting very many points for that. And it's an extremely dangerous thing. It would also be a minor Miracle if you could bat that back and forth. Yeah. So and in that way, it also feels like the fairytale games, too, because in those games, You're not really volleying back and forth except you're going from say the mid tier down to the lower tier. You're not going up the playfield and down. On Paul Bunyan the flipper strength is so much greater and the angle is such that you can actually work your way back up which is neat. But really you're not kind of throwing back and forth on those fairytale games and in that way you're not really throwing back and forth through that gate. But, or at least I'm not. This is a pinball piece. Like in upper middle section, you have this nest of three pop bumpers, which gives you some ball action up there. We haven't even mentioned the Art Steinholm back glass on this thing, which I just crack up every time I see this thing. I mean, it's very well illustrated, but essentially it's Paul Bunyan sitting on a mountain, filing I'm going to be a pinetree with his giant buck knife. But while he's doing this, there's all these maidens keeping him up by raking his hair, combing his hair with a rake or giving him a sponge bath with a broom of some sort or, you know, tending to him in some way. And he's just got this, you know, very enjoyable grin on his face. The end. Oh, yeah. I, uh, like I said, it, it cracks me up every time I see it. My favorite is the, uh, the lady who's shaving him with an axe. Yes. Gotta trust that one. Yeah. But, uh, yeah. So everything about this game is quite enjoyable and, uh, I've certainly heard a lot of bad things about this game and, and I've spoken with Wayne Nyans, uh, I heard that interview, uh, last year at some point. John Papadiuk, Black Water, person's name or role at Stern Pinball), or He said very similar things that he was rushed and he was also not in a designer position at the time. He was, I think, a chief engineer at Gottlieb at the time and so he wasn't designing anymore and he hadn't designed a game in quite a while but they needed something to fill the line and so he had felt like he sort of threw some stuff on a playfield and hoped for the best and shoved it out the door and consequently I think he's got memories of it not being his best probably because he boards The game is a throwback, and by retro-modern I mean at the time, in the late 60s, it was modern in its gameplay, but this throwback to 20 years earlier when the flippers were invented, and consequently I think it's a super fun game. I can't wait to put some more plays on it. Yeah. So let me talk a little bit about what was wrong with the game. It really wasn't all that much. Or at least I don't remember it being all that much. It's hard to remember much at 3 o'clock in the morning. Yeah, that's part of the problem. So one of the things was that the power switch was tied together. I don't know who came up with this plan, but somebody had taken one of the leads off the power switch and tied it to the other one, so essentially the switch was bypassed. I swear it wasn't me. I mean, I believe you. I'm looking right in your eyes right now. But yeah, it was very interesting. So, I mean, that was a really minor problem, but it would start, but it was always in two player mode. Was that the issue? I think you got to this while I was child rearing or something. Yeah, it's been a very busy time here. So we've been kind of tackling stuff as we can. I am blanking on whatever the problem was right now. But there was some kind of problem that did not require unit rebuild. It only required relay action. Basically I had to go through a few of the relays and especially on the sequence bank to rebuild those. On Paul Bunyan, one of my least favorite mechanisms that's a godly mechanism is the relay tripped notifier, I guess signaler. And it's this little switch that resides under one of the trip relays and it says, hey, this bank is ready to reset or it has reset. And this little switch can be very problematic because it rides basically right on the relay. The armature itself. And so it can come out of adjustment very easily. It's essentially invisible because it lives underneath of the bank. So you have to flip it upside down. Now, thankfully in Gottlieb games, they're hinged and you just loosen a couple of wing nuts and they flip out and you can take a look at it, but it's still, you know, kind of irritating to work on.
    17:36
    That said, there was a problem with one of those and there were a couple other, you know, minor tweaks Pinnacle of the double throws which that was hitting both sides all the time that led to some interesting action and uh... you know a couple things like that but uh... overall I got it up and rollin pretty quickly uh... couple other minor tweaks outlane switch uh... was always registering fifty points instead of the two hundred uh... no one likes getting robbed so that was a simple switch adjustment uh... there's a dual ganged switch on those uh... that allows for the The alternating relay to score or Not. And one of them was just a little too far away. So that one was back up and rolling pretty quick. And then it was on to Bally Sheba. Now, Sheba, Ryan, what year was that? I think that was 1964. And it's a game that I gravitated to because of the artwork. A 1964 Ballet Hayride, which is done by a mystery artist. It's uncredited as to who did Hayride and Shiba, and in my opinion, I think they're the same artist. At least the playfield of Shiba is the same as the Backglass and Playfield for Hayride. I'm almost certain that the Backglass for Shiba was done by someone else. The faces just have a different look. The faces are very odd, yeah. The anatomy is just a little more fluid and not quite realistic, as realistic as this artist who I'm enamored with. But the playfield on Sheba is so environmentally conceived. It's this maiden sort of lounging and a guy who's playing a lute. Uh, and as you sort of look up, there are these trees that start arching up to the sky and there's a blue color in the top of the playfield, which, uh, you know, is the sky and that's continued onto the plastics throughout the whole playfield. And one of the neatest things is that they had used this metallic gold screen printing ink when printing these, um, playfield plastics. I mean, you just don't see this metallic artwork anymore. You know, it's something that's on my 56 scoreboard on the back glass. It's neat to see it on the playfield on Sheba. And so I just think it's such a gorgeous machine. So I've not had the time to get to it. But now that Nick's here, he's been helping me out a whole lot. And now it's up and running like a champ. So I'm really interested in putting some games on here. Yeah, it's uh, I find the playfield pretty fun as well on this one. It's a Ted Zale mushroom targets. Yeah, order of the day. Yeah But it's got this nice sequence that's actually split up into three so you have mushroom targets one through six and Targets one through three will open up the top gate. Oh, we better reference this
    20:54
    Ryan doesn't trust my memory Which I think it's probably sound loading up the engine Now we can speak about this with authority. Yeah, so of those six mushroom targets, targets one through three open the bottom gate. Targets four and five open the top gate. Target number six alone will open the top gate, which is really an ingenious little path that the ball takes. And maybe we can talk about that in a second But then it also gangs some of these targets Like if you hit one through five all of them will open the middle gate And when all six are lit then special lights Special is in the left out lane And each of these gates that we talking about top middle and bottom gate will redirect the ball to the shooter lane and give you some additional score You know 50 points 100 points 150 points The exact denominations but as far as the playfield layout is concerned there this I guess you might call it a loop shot for lack of a better term Basically, there's a lane on the far left side that has a rollover, and that rollover is insert number six. And if you recall, I said insert Number 6 alone will open the top gate. Well, if you launch that ball up there hard enough, it loops around to just under the top rollovers and screams across the side of the playfield and enters that gate. So if you don't hit it hard enough, the gate will still open. But if you hit that shot super square, wow, is it ever satisfying? The game has that beautiful ballet 50 volt feel, so everything hits super hard and feels very nice, including the flippers. It makes such a difference. But one of my favorite things about it is actually the slingshots which are aimed at each other. There's a third slingshot kicker which is mounted above and to the right of the bottom right slingshot kicker. So the lower left and that upper right one will fire back and forth at each other and you get this kind of C Bar), pinballducting effect. And that's something that was continued on into Hayride where there's not three slingshots, there's four. And so once I get that thing up and running, I think it's going to be a wild and wooly time. Now Ryan won't let me touch that one. But one day, one day. I've never played one of those either and I'm quite interested in giving that a shot. I took a little drive for that one. I remember. I remember. So back to Shiva, we've got a couple issues there. The biggest one was that the player up unit was not resetting fully. And the logic for the game requires that player up unit to reset back to zero. Now in this era of Bally, or at least in this game, the player up unit was actually divided one rivet per ball. This is a two-player game, and so there are five balls total that you can have, and so there are ten positions total that this unit has. Unfortunately, it was resetting back to position one or two, depending on how you index. I always index at zero. And therefore, the game couldn't start because it didn't think it had fully reset. The motor wouldn't continue to run, but nothing would work properly. And it would always be in a two-player game because position one, two again, depending on how you index, is actually player two's ball one. So in order to fix this, I just had to disassemble. I went ahead and recleaned, even though this unit was nice enough to eat off of. I went ahead and did that and laid down a little bit more lube and it was good to go. We did some experimentation with springs at first, but it wasn't the clock spring. Sometimes that requires one extra turn in order to make it back home, but it would do that, but then that spring strength was too much for it to overcome when it was stepping up, so just had to re-lube it and it was good to go. Little plug for PBR grease right here. Oh, absolutely. So that stuff came out relatively recently, I guess in the past few years. And I've been using three-in-one for everything and I'm swore by that for a very long time. But now this PBR grease is phenomenal. It's certainly more viscous and it tends to stay around longer than the three-in-one. So I'm a complete convert to that stuff. I've got a tube, you know, put verschaw Hopepin, Jộr pray mainly cockney hekoppi, GoPropleong premium training, Roy Including, KedlineD shipwreck, попlance, That kind of thing. But easily remedied, easily fixed. So that was good. And there's nothing like working on a ballet. I mean, their mechanisms are so nice and so well thought out. I really, truly appreciate working on ballet games the most. And, you know, that probably stems from my love of bingo pinball. But that said, their mechanisms are probably the easiest to service out of any of them. Even in this era, Where in flipper games they were using these carousel motors because they take up less space. Sheba in particular has this massive trip bank that's divided into two. You've got your sequence trip bank of one through six, and then you've got another trip bank that is your player tilts and your second player relay and those kind of things. And each of them has this massive 120 volt solenoid that drives it. So when you start the game, Kirk shot. Whoa, that's the sound it makes. Hulk Baldrick destroying the studio. So that was Sheba. Again, relatively minor fix here. Worked on Fox Hunt, got that slid back into your lineup. Yeah. So that was exciting. She horned a tenth game into my arcade. Yeah, I'm just trying to push them all in there. So Foxhunt had a socket that was shorted and I had cautioned Ryan about this prior to his leaving with the game, but as soon as he got it home, it managed to short out and caused a problem. So I got that resolved and I resolved it by desoldering that socket and now it should be in good shape. Ryan was also able to find a set of relays for Foxhunt that somebody had cut out of a machine that they had parted out. So I was able to install the missing coil and readjust a couple of the switches in those trip banks and things are working as they should. It's wonderful. So it's nice to get that in there too. So you've got this row of woodies here and then you've got kind of your early metal rails and then you've got your solid state things over in the corner as they should be. The biggest thing that I worked on so far was a puck bowler. This is a United Thunderbird shuffle alley. What year was that? 1977, I think. It's a late one. It's EM. As one of the later or maybe one of the latest EMs that Williams slash United made, it's very featureful. There are six different game modes. I think it's five, right? There are five different game modes. Six being Beerframe, which comes up every once in a while. Which I'm confusing, yeah. But it looks like it's in a place where a mode or a play, what do you call it, mechanic should be. Yeah. So I always get confused. I'm pushing the selector. I can't select Beerframe. Why not? Nick's always trying to select Beerframe. I mean, look. Somebody has to. So yeah, whoever had this before had set the beer frame to come up most frequently. So you see there are little Jones plug selectors and you can set which frames it comes up on. They set 3, 5, and 8. Someone was really thirsty that had this game. So I had new pins to install. So the pin deck needed servicing as well. The game was completely inoperational. All the steppers needed attention of some sort or other. I went through and rebuilt all the steppers. There were two motors. Did you rebuild the steppers? Yeah. Huh. I didn't realize you did that. You must have done that in the Dark of Night, too. I did. Yes. So, and there are a lot of steppers in there. I know. This is like three pinball machines jammed into one cabinet. There's a ton of stuff back there. Don't let this false modesty fool you guys. There's a ton of I have a very have a very high-level student at your don't bring Rizoto bingo I see underneath after that thing that's why everybody is bigger it's a start off noted affairs to am the most difficulting was really figuring out how everything comes apart so I've worked on shelf foss before and the work that I had to do them was Much less intensive. These weren't completely dead projects. It was, you know, something's not scoring appropriately or, you know, this pin never goes up, that kind of thing. Those are pretty easy problems to track down. But figuring out how to pull out the pin deck on this particular machine was a bit of a challenge. I figured there was some sort of locking mechanism and there's not or else it's missing from your game. And I don't know which. понятно exported KARANT Woahko999kay Nfanyŀ Left términinked NOTVEC ¿oZŀ Knapp Arcade is the one that allows you to pick out the pinball and the pins that are called pinball, and then you just poke at them and make sure everything's good, and all the 55s will be special bulbs, by the way, I need to get you that list. But for flash and strike bonus, those are the two modes that use those. So worked through that, got it up and running with regulation scoring, and the final problem that I had though was that it was always in 2-player mode and it would only play regulation. I could not get it to switch mode. And you can only do that after pushing start the first time before you bolt the first puck. And for some reason, I just could not get that going. So went all through the circuits, you know, looking at the schematic and schematics, you know, about a mile and a half long. Nothing compared to a bingo. Nothing at all. So, I mean, I was right in my element. I have the manual as well, which is nice. And I'm looking at this thing and I'm going, this isn't making a lot of sense. So once I start seeing something like that, I look for other problems which are kind of similar or I think might be related or might not, but they need fixing anyway. And so you give your brain a break from the thing that's driving you nuts and you try to fix something else. And one of the things is there were two additional score reels mounted in the pin deck. I was pleased with that I rebuilt that reel. Oh, and Ryan had rebuilt about 86 score Reels in this thing prior to me coming here. And while I was here he rebuilt the final one. This game had one of the reels cut out. And so I had to solder that in. It was also missing the pin reset motor, which was a bit of a scary challenge because it's a dual ganged motor. Boomin's home theater What's up man. Have a seat LaVey. Musik is Timing and Subtitles by the Amara.org community
    35:08
    I wrapped up in a blue ribbon. It's got your name on it. And I really started to worry and so I asked him the question, how much do you want for it?
    35:19
    And he was very reasonable with me and so was Steve Young. I had the guy send it directly to Steve Young so Steve could repair it and he sent it to me and then I held on to it my tight little hands until you got here because I was I was a little frightened about how to install a motor because I've never installed one before. I was pleased that I wasn't trying to do this remotely. Yeah. Me too. Because I would have been thrown off by the lack of three leads off the motor, and I would have been second guessing myself from Richmond all this time. So that was, it was good that I was here. So that was good, but back to the problem with the game not starting and I'm not being able to choose the mode. There's a second score Reel that's mounted in that pin deck, and it tells you the number of players.
    36:11
    You can go from one to six players. Hence the 86 score reels. Right. And unfortunately, that reel would never reset. And so I figured, you know, there's some kind of simple resetting problem on that one. I'd rebuilt that reel previously. Checked the gapping in the switch. There's just a switch for the zero position, which is actually one on that reel. It's kind of a funky reel. There's ten positions like any other score Reel, but most of them are six. Huh? Yup. It's the devil reel. One, two, three, four, five, six, six, six, six, six, six, six. So, that one wasn't resetting, and I said, alright, let me take a break from this and I'll take a look there. Well, after examining that reel not very closely, I noticed that one of the tiny, tiny wires that comes off of that limit switch was broken off. And so I re-soldered it and bam, it fixed not only the resetting of the reel but also, of course, GameStart and selection. So all that was tied to just that reel. That was a pleasant Surprise. Now that game also continues to have a problem and that is that in certain modes it is scoring inappropriately. For the most part it scores correctly. It scores correctly in regulation from what I can tell for all six players which is I consider that a coup. But as far as Flash goes, Flash you're supposed to earn some multiple of hundreds of points, depending on if you get a spare or a strike. And unfortunately, in certain positions of the Flash motor, it's scoring nothing. And that's pretty frustrating. Or a hundred less than what you're supposed to get. Right. So if what you're supposed to get for a strike is 300 points, you only get 200. For example. And uh, yeah. Not getting enough points is very frustrating. No one likes to be robbed. I mean it's true. Especially when you're deep in competition for that beer frame. So, um, so yeah. I'm still working that one out. That seems to be some kind of short. But, or it could be just a finger on the flash motor stepper. It's not really a stepper, but Williams constructed them that way. It's a motorized stepper. So, take a look at that and see what I can do. And then you've got two more projects, basically, and one which I've been forbidden to touch. That's Hayride, yeah. It's making me a little crazy, but it's okay. And then the other is Williams Ragmop. Yes. And Ragmop is a really interesting game. It's one of the single flipper games from Williams. Yeah, the first if I am not mistaken. Really? Okay. And this is a pretty big, sizable project, I would say. Yeah, yeah. It's something I picked up from a very generous pinsider. Larry Beza posted something on pinside about how he's got this single flipper project. And for anybody who's interested in fixing it up, he'd hand it to him for free. And he made a post about this. And I think you were the one who notified me that this was happening. And I had been on the lookout for a single flipper game ever since I played William's Nine Sisters and that is a fantastic game and I hope to one day get my hands on one of those. That would be another coup of my collecting lifetime if I can find one of those. But I saw this rag mop and so I contacted Larry and he was several states away from me in Minnesota which sounds close as the crow flies from Michigan but there's this an twins golf tennis hockey football, dijiéfahjwwp drink, context of this moment, collaboration with H beiden teams, new uran, Anyway, I picked that up back in November and I've been working on some other stuff in the meantime, haven't had a chance to get to it but in response to your mention of it being a major project, essentially the entire top of the playfield has delaminated and cracked and needs to be secured and reglued somehow. So, you know, I need to take that out of there and, you know, I'm your suggestion with which I think was a sound one was to depopulate about half of the playfield so the whole thing the whole top laminate doesn't slip off the playfield and then glue that half and then repopulate that half and depopulate the last half and glue that move on with life and and then once that's secure then think about retouching and clear coating and other things that make Nick cringe. But I think with this, even you would agree that a clear coat is necessary because with those cracks and wobbles in the playfield, it's got to be evened out somehow. You're going to have to sand it down and even, you know, there's no way it's going to be even without some kind of coat. Yeah. Clear or... And by sanding it down, you mean sand down the clear coat. I mean, yeah. Not sand down the artwork. I mean sand down the artwork. You can draw your stick bears on the playfield. Well, actually in the middle is actually where I'm thinking of. In the middle there is a major crack that runs all the way through. And I'm thinking you're going to have to sand those to get them even with each other. I wonder if when half of it is depopulated and, you know, put some sort of wood glue in there and clamp it back down, The end of the day, I'm not sure if that clamping process might not flatten it out enough. You can hope. I'm an optimist. I notice that all the time. We've established this. I have blind hope. But I feel like, you know, it's got this warp in the wood there, and you're probably going to have to do some work to it. Clamp it down and hope that it finds out. And clamp it down and hope for the best. Right. That's exactly what I'm saying. So, in that- I've had enough of your reason. I mean, what can I say? I've said enough of your reason. I mean, what can I say? So, in a few moments here, we're actually going to be going to tackle the final project. And this is my favorite project. And that's a ballet. Ballerina. Bingo. Yeah! Yep. So, this resides with Ryan as well and I'm looking forward to cracking it open and seeing how it goes. Yeah, this is another one that was really serendipitously fell in my lap and I want to send a big thanks out to Pinsider Yancy who, you know, we were on a Facebook group of one form or another and I think it was Sean Cavanaugh who popped onto some thread of my, a picture of my game room and he sort of sarcastically said, oh, you need more flipperless games in there. I'm very interested in getting more flipperless games. And now I have a couple with Foxhunt and Metro. But Yancy chimed in and he said, Oh, actually, I have one. Do you want it? And I thinking a negotiation is going to ensue How much do you want for it What do you have What condition is it in And he like oh my parents have this old bingo game And I always wanted a bingo after listening to a number of your podcasts and coming to Bingo Row and getting to experience these you know really interesting games and a really interesting part of pinball history I'd like to have something from every decade of pinball's history at some point. That's my delusional pie in the sky dream for my collection. I have, what are we up to, like six decades right now? But anyway, that aside, bingo is such an important part of pinball history and why, well part of the reason why so many things bear the for amusement only moniker and why so many pinball machines were destroyed at one point in time, thought to be gambling machines and some of that is more true with bingos. I'm not going to say that there's not skill involved with bingo, but there is definitely an aspect of winning thousands of replays that you can never actually play, and how do you cash out of that? Well, you've covered that on your podcast before. So anyway, I think that's a really interesting part of history, and I want to have something in my collection like that. So to make this long story a little bit shorter, Yancy said, yeah, my parents have this old bingo game. And I was like, oh, my ears perked up. What is it? What do you want for it? It's like, they don't play it anymore. Do you want it? Yes, I do. So it's been actually sitting in my office since I got it. And by my office, I mean my actual workplace office. And it's been quite a talking piece as different folks come in. And every time I crack open that backbox, you can see their eyes turn into saucers. And oh my gosh, I can't believe all that, you know, makes the game run. Like, yeah, it's, you know, multiple machines crammed into one backbox and it weighs a little bit and they're awfully fun and one of these days it'll get up and running. So hopefully today's the day. We're about to head over to my office and check that out here in a little bit. Absolutely. Yeah, Ballerina is a Magic Screen game and it's one of the ones that has an extra section on the Magic Screen. It's also the only game where rollovers The game is a game that has this feature called 1-7-7-1 and with that you can switch back and forth between on being equal to one or one being equal to seven and on across the top row and that is such a brain bender that i often just completely waste the chance to use it for any good whatsoever but I really enjoyed that game and uh... I'm looking forward to getting yours up and running here so we'll see and uh... got my needs food oil uh... so I'm going to have my ritual bath in it like I always do I'll leave the office while you light the incense and burn the candles. Yeah, the sacrificial bowl and all that stuff. No, I don't anticipate it being a big deal, especially if his parents were playing it. You know, should just need some light maintenance, so looking forward to that. It looks like everything's there and it doesn't look too hacked up. I've popped it open a number of times and, you know, aside from it being crammed with mechs, So, it doesn't look like there's been hacky stuff done to it. So, that's what I like to hear. Yeah, cross our fingers that's actually the case. And you had a replacement back glass. Yes. If I recall. Yeah, so it was very interesting. This came with an immaculately screen printed horrible back glass. So, the original back glass was gone. Who knows where it is? This was a ballerina backglass that was re-illustrated, re-colored by some outsider artist. I don't know what they were thinking, but anyway, they reproduced this in a very technically adept way. It was screen printed, it had the masking layer, everything was perfectly registered, and the colors were very vibrant and smooth, and it looked from printing like it was a production glass, but from the artwork, oh no. So Koos in the Netherlands, if I'm not mistaken, is that right? Yep. So, I printed these backglass films and you and I were both very curious about this and I know you were curious about it for your MaltiBingo and we kind of ordered something from Koos a while back and I tested it out on a piece of glass. I actually got a piece of tempered glass made for myself because I have a very active son And if something goes through the glass, I'd rather it turn into diamonds than gigantic daggers. And so anyway, to make a long story short, the back glass film was very easy to apply. Koos has an instructional video on his website which maps out how to do this. And, you know, essentially with soapy water, you can reposition this film on your big sheet of glass until you have it in the place that you want it. Nordman, Loving on events and a Jewish etf. And他是 â studio灣xide konvčićșčččččččččččččččč ččččččččččččččččâmsēžkšččččččččë Bunuksi charity point and the easiest to apply Adam vinny. So, I mean, that's a big shout out to Cafueșčččččččččččččšččččččšččșččččč, so, I mean, that's a big shout out to. The screen printed back glass, it's not exactly that. It is digitally printed. And so if you do look very closely and you're as anal retentive as I am, you'll see that it's made up of these very tiny dots, but you have to get very, very close in order to see them. And so from a player's perspective, you are never going to see these. If you're inspecting it from a couple inches away, you will, but clearance © Well person who platform VODX It's weird that he will not ship it. He will now. Is that true? Yes. That's a relatively recent change. Oh. It ain't cheap. I was gonna say, I'm guessing you're paying for that. Yeah, but if you want authentic glass, you can do that now, and it's printed directly on glass. That is quite cool. I'm very thankful that such a resource exists, even if he's half a world away. And he's, you can attest to this, he's just a joy to work with. Yes, yeah, so easy to communicate with. Very highest possible recommendation from. So that's all. That's all good. And now we come to the final year of Flipperless. So I wanted Ryan to join me because he was actually the one who recommended the year of Flipperless back a year ago. And for the final episode, I wanted to do his newest game, which is Genko's Metro. Yes. This was one of my top three Flipperless grails. I have always seen Metro and thought what a gorgeous art package this was. The futuristic cityscape at least from the lens of somebody from 1940 and the back glass you've got these you know dome shaped and retro modern looking buildings and these futuristic cars which look very much like cars from the nineteen forty's with fins put on them The playfield itself has this gorgeous landscape of skyscrapers and more of what's on the back glass in a different way, essentially. And as flipperless games have, they have a bunch of bumpers and these bumpers are pretty unique. Key 물�
    54:11
    I'm not sure if I have a whole lot to talk about with this game. There is. So, my example actually came from a person who worked at a mold and dye casting company. And I say that because some of the bumpers, some of the bell bumpers were cracked and worn and burned and didn't look too pretty. The following is a story about a man who was a pinball practitioner and he took it upon himself to take one of the good-looking bumpers, the bell bumpers, and cast one of those bell bumpers and make a number of replacements for those bottom bumpers which needed replacing, which I would have never known how to do otherwise. So I feel really fortunate to have purchased it from this particular person who went through that trouble. And I don't know where we should go from here. Maybe gameplay? Should we talk about gameplay? Talk about the rules, Sam. Okay. So, um, this backglass has a set of cars on the bottom left portion of the backglass, and there's 12 of them. And they will increment around based on bumpers that are hit. Now, if you hit an unlit bumper, it advances the cars one space along this futuristic highway. taper dis upstairs siellä Hudsonoda, The pinballducts are numbered 1-5. In order to light them, you have to hit them in sequence. If you hit the one first, it lights up, and then subsequentlyantly the two, etc. But if you hit them out of order, they do not light up. They simply advance a car. So again, any unlit bumper advances a car. Once it is lit, if you hit that lit bumper again, it advances the bonus. bonus is counted from one, then two, three, four on upward sequentially.
    56:22
    And the bonuses in this game awards you that in thousands of points. But it doesn't just award you those points for draining like modern games do. You actually have to maneuver it into a particular rollover as you drain. So there's essentially four different places you can navigate the ball through Pinschek soon adsnite in online The following is a roll over. So you have one of two spots to go through with a roll over. And those alternate based on which cars are lit on the back glass. So if cars 1 through 5, not 6, if cars 1 through 5 are lit, then side A is lit, or one side is lit, I can't remember if it's left or right. And then when it gets to car 6, the lights go out. And then cars 7 through 11 will light the other side. A will make the lights go out. So there are times where neither side is going to be lit. And so as you're maneuvering the ball around and just bouncing off that lit post and over to the bell bumper, you have these strategic decisions to make about nudging the game and how many times you want it to hit that bell bumper in order for it to light The post where you're at, and sometimes it'll hit it just enough times where it could have navigated through there to award you that bonus, but you hit it one too many times and you went through when it was dark and it really makes for some interesting gameplay. So, back up to those five bumpers. As I mentioned, unlit bumpers, move a car, lit purple bumpers, advanced bonus, which can be collected through the lit out hole. If you lit light all five purple bumpers, then those bumpers, the lit bumpers, one through five, start awarding you replays instead of potential bonus. That is something I have achieved once in my dozens and dozens of plays on Metro so far. I've owned this game for maybe about a month at this point. Um, and let's see what else we have in this playfield. Uh, there are a couple of nests of bumpers that are in sort of a triangular sequence. The nest on the left is yellow and the nest on the right is green. And in the middle of the top two bumpers is a rollover. And right below that is an insert of the same color. So the yellow bumpers have a yellow insert, the green bumpers have a green insert. And if that insert is The pinballduct is lit and you can roll over that roll over between the top two colored bumpers then it lights that whole nest of three bumpers. Meaning if you hit those bumpers when they're unlit, once again, car advances, not a whole lot of payback but if you do it twelve times you'll get a thousand points. But once those bumpers are lit, those lit colored bumpers will give you a thousand points each hit. Likewise for the green one. Now the insert is lit in the same manner The bottom outlanes are lit, meaning cars 1-5 will light the yellow insert, cars 7-11 will light the green Insert, and you can only light those nests if the insert is lit. Once again, cars 6 and 12 will not light anything.
    60:16
    Right in between those, there's a purple bumper which is always lit, which means it will always advance bonus. And below that, there is a row of four So much. This game is a game where you make the first hit of the game through A, B and C and then make it through the bottom rollover lane that is lit which traditionally awards you thousands of points of bonus, it converts those numbers of bonus points not into thousands of points but rather replays. So there's a number of ways to get replays in this game, there's a number of different sequences and a surprisingly deep game for a flipperless pinball machine made in 1940, almost 80 years ago at this point. It's really something to behold and a whole lot of fun. I've played literally two dozen games in a row and not grown tired of this game. I love it to pieces and so glad I found it. Yeah, me too. I've never played one before or seen one. But I'd read Russ Jensen's write up on it, which spoke extremely highly of the game. Yes, yes. And a couple things. First of all, I wanted to mention Russ Jensen's write up about it, which is really fantastic. But there's a couple things that I wanted to add to and correct about Russ Jensen's write up. And one is he refers to these white bumpers at the bottom, which I actually think we're not white. I have those original bumpers that were replaced with these custom molded bumpers that I mentioned a little earlier. And they are sort of a faded peach pink color and, you know, originally marbled, obviously came with the game. And the circles just underneath those bumpers are that same peachy pink type color. And I think that they were originally and last but not least, the guy that reproduced these bumpers made them that same color that's underneath them, which I think was probably correct. Of course, they're not marbled like they were originally, but far more functional than they were. So I wanted to mention that because he refers to these white bumpers a number of times. And then secondly, he didn't go into the detail about how and when these two outlanes light alternately and likewise for the nests of colored bumpers, yellow or green, on either side of the middle of the playfield will light. So I hope I clarified that a little bit or put you to sleep one of the I'm still awake. Well yeah, the game is extremely fun. I came down there and whooped you on it. Yeah, within Nick's second game, he had trumped my high score. My high Score was 40,000 points
    63:23
    until Nick got there and then he in his second game got 41,000 points. So now I've got something to work for. Not much of a whooping, but yeah. I think I was at the end of that. You had to go with a pinball. Yeah, I had a pinball that I wanted to work for. Not much of a woman but yeah. I gotta see if I can increase that lead a little bit. But yeah, the game is extremely fun. The fact that there are multiple sequences, I love games where there are more than one way to win and it's not just score and one sequence for example. The fact that there are so many different things that you can achieve as the ball is All that stuff we talked about in the game is rolling down this playfield that you have no hope of bringing back up to redo the sequence. It's quite a lot to think about on the fly and I love thinking games as you might imagine. This game is fantastic and I highly recommend it. So you're bringing it to York, right? I doubt that, but I don't know. We'll have to talk with Pat Gallagher. I'm hitching a ride with him from Pittsburgh onward, and I have a feeling that he's going to want to keep an empty van in case he finds anything there. So that might be a tough sell. But one of these days when I can take my son with me and we've got nothing but room in our car. Sounds good. Have to bring it out. The last thing I wanted to talk with you about was actually Swinger. Yes. And Swinger, we famously talked, I mean it was all over the news. Episode 100. Yeah. So this is some time ago and I said, I'm going to have to have you back when you're done fixing it up. That's what podcasters say though, right? Yeah, it is. We're going to have to have you back. And then... Never. It never happens. So I've got you cornered here. All right. I thought we could talk a little bit about this. Now this is reaching back in time. Totally. As you bring this up, I'm trying to remember what in the world I talked about when I was on episode 100, where I was at in this restoration process. Basically you had just finished rebuilding the score Reels and you still had a lot of units left to rebuild and of course the game had not turned on yet. Now, the thing that I had asked you to do was to go ahead and rebuild all the stepper units and make sure they moved cleanly and smoothly and then we would attack each individual problem as it came up to get you up and running as quickly as possible. I just wanted to talk with you a bit about that process if you recall it From score Reels on was working on the steppers much of a challenge for you I trying to remember I certain there were some challenges therein I documented this really heavily on a pin side thread Maybe we can link to that in the show notes Uh, that documentation is a far better memory than I'm able to recall right now. But, uh, all that to say, um, essentially it was taking apart a unit and putting it back together and cleaning it a bunch in the process. And I probably cleaned it way more than I needed to, but that's again, my anal retentive personality. I want to make sure everything is shiny and new as possible anyway. I'm not sure if I can get into the future, but I feel pretty confident that those units are going to be fully functional far into the future. So if I can avoid getting in there again, that's what I like. I like playing them. But I also genuinely like working on them too when I can make the time to do it. As you were over here and I was working on that last score reel for United Thunderbird, I really sort of harken back to these late nights I was pulling as I was working on Swinger and there's really this like restful contemplative zen mindset that you get in when you're disassembling, cleaning, reassembling, getting everything back together and working toward this more functional game. I really enjoy that and miss it and look forward to getting back to it. I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to do this, but I'm going to be able to do it. So, maybe I said this on episode 100, I don't remember, I should have listened to it before you came here, but I never really understood when people would say, I like working on games better than I like playing them. And I don't know that I'm going to say that yet, but I certainly understand why they would say that. You know, there's a very meditative quality about working on games and refurbishing them. And then there's this huge payoff. You've got this giant toy to play with when you're done. And that's pretty gratifying. I mean, I feel bad on one hand that you've been doing a lot of work on my games since you've been here on vacation, but I also kind of understand a little bit that, you know, There's this big feeling of accomplishment once you get something working that was previously not. And, uh, yeah, I mean, when Swinger sprang to life, it was quite a feeling and then subsequently diagnosing some of these problems, which I documented in that thread and, uh, you know, getting a little familiar, a little more familiar with schematics and being able to diagnose problems on my own without, uh, the training wheels of some pin side saints like yourself and Pecos and there's more people than I can name that helped me through that machine. And so for anybody out there who's contemplating, oh, I don't know that I can understand electromechanical games. And I've heard so many people say, oh, electromechanical is more complicated than solid state. And I don't believe it for a second. Yes, when you pop this thing open, it looks like a rat's nest of wires and it looks like an insurmountable mountain to climb, but I am the least technically savvy person involved in the pinball hobby and I was able to nurse this thing back to health with the help of lots of great people in the hobby. So if there's a chance for you to pick up a machine, I would highly suggest it and hop onto Pinsight, hop onto the EM forums. Ma zombies, Cinerella, ond���otic Adπanc TT sz 언�iembre, Partťال, art galore,
    70:27
    To call a lasa, Grzegorz Kuç, fehltťa, Vimymervõdnič, Jimibtšč, KidŽ� I would have folks get on there and say, oh, well, I think this post was misplaced, or I think your rubber is misplaced, or I think this or that or the other thing. I'd look at it and sure enough, they'd have some great suggestions and I'd fix things based on what I was uploading. It was really a gratifying experience. If you're asking me to be a poster boy for EM Tech, I'm happy to be that. Well, good. That's what I was asking. Well, yeah, and if I recall correctly, there were only some minimal amount of switch adjustments needed to get that thing to spring to life. I think it was maybe six. Yeah, yeah again, I'd have to go back in that thread, but it was it was minimal. Yeah, I think it was probably, you know, 90-95% working once everything was disassembled and reassembled and And yeah, it's funny, you know, once you're in this hobby, solutions to things pop up in the strangest of places. I was exhibiting my work. For those who aren't familiar with me, I'm an artist and I've done artwork for various pinball companies and events and podcasts and, and different things in terms of posters and shirts and, you know, blanking on it. Anyway, I've done some art stuff. And I was exhibiting my work at the VFW Pinball Show in Ann Arbor and an attendee happens by and we start talking about pinball and our collections and the subject of this project that I was doing at that time came up and I was poking through some pictures on my phone and at that moment I was having a problem with a particular unit. I was in the office and I didn't know what was going on and he looked at the picture and he said, oh, your printed circuit board is cocked. You just need to unscrew these screws and write it again and then that spider unit is going to be directly on those rivets and it all will be right in the world. And sure enough, that's exactly what it was. And it was just because, you know, I had sort of launched myself into the hobby. And when you're in a community, you start getting to know people and you start We start learning things and it's been such a fun ride. I'm just head over heels about being in the pinball hobby and I think we've got a lot more to come. That's good. And speaking of that, just as I and many of the other bingo collectors curate this bingos for sale thread on Pinside, you've kind of taken up the mantle of the Flipperless games. Yeah, yeah. I am getting very interested in pinball history and I've been, you know, purchasing the Dick Buchel books and reading up on pinball history and talking with pinball historians and meeting designers and yeah, I think it's such a rich hobby. I mean, you can get into so many different things in terms of gameplay or competition or restoration or fixing games or buying The history of pinball is so rich once you get into the number of manufacturers that used to make pinball machines. Back in the early days, in the 30s, there were seemingly millions of manufacturers. That's a gross overstatement, but there were a lot. Which is a far cry from when I got into the hobby and there was literally one manufacturer standing. Thankfully we've come considerable way since then. But yeah, I think it's so interesting to see where pinball has come from and the different innovations that have happened and where a lot of quote unquote innovations of today originated from. So yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm in head over heels. I am very interested in the history and like you said, sort of spearheading this flipperless I'm not the one who created it, but it was kind of a big light bulb when I saw it, and the thread had kind of gone dormant for, I think it might have been a couple years or so. And, you know, I was enjoying looking through the thread itself and seeing what had been posted. And then when I got through it, I thought, I want more. So I started poking around and sharing what I had found with people and that thread This is my first time working at this pinball venue. It's been a while since I've been here. The city's been revitalized in recent months, I would say, and it's been nice to see other people hop on there too, occasionally, and post a flipperless find that I didn't find on my expeditions around the web. So yeah, it's been pretty exciting and gratifying. It's always fun for me to learn new things. C Bar disadvant pinball history. Especially the older games. I mean the older you go, the more of a mystery it kind of is. Yeah. And yeah, that's always been extremely appealing to me. Yeah, I feel like this ballet mystery artist is just the tip of the iceberg. I mean that was in the early 60s and you start going back further than that and some of it's documented but there's a lot that isn't. And yeah, it's been fun trying to, you know, piece some of these mysteries together. Absolutely. Well, thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, thanks for having me and thanks for taking that suggestion of the year of Flipperless and really running with it. It was fun for me to hear every couple weeks some new, to me, game that you had unearthed. And, you know, throughout this past year, I don't know how many times I emailed you or called you or messaged you and said, Where'd you find that one? I was like, how did I find that one? How did that come about? And inevitably it seemed like it was sort of this being part of the hobby, you start to hear about stuff and learn about stuff and you'd say, oh, well, there was, it was mentioned in this thread or an eBay sale came up or something that inspired you. Occasionally you were combing IPDB, but it seemed like a lot of times it was sort of a serendipitous realization like, oh, what's this game? But, Bernie Papadiuk, if you are going to beuting your team as a team or than what have you know about your team here in the long run, what do you do? You know, my goal is... To build my team. In my opinion, change over time…
    78:31
    and I think I was guilty of that too for a long time. When I first got into pinball, you know, my first game was a nineties game. And I was interested in the ramps and the call outs and you know the artwork like I am and but I was interested in modern stuff but the longer I've been around the pinball hobby, it seems the older my tastes lie. And you know, it was at your house that I was interested in pinball. I was in a house when I visited a couple years ago where I first was able to put my hands on a flipperless game and I was interested in a historical way but not really in terms of gameplay and out of your entire collection, I mean you have a pretty diverse collection from you've got a DMD title, you've got that killer Gottlieb Circus from the 80s, a ton of bingos of course, a horse race game, you know some wedge, a wedgehead, Um, uh, you know, what is that Williams game that you have? The Peacock one? That's, uh, Chicago CoinTwinky. ChicagoCoinTwinky. Okay. Um, and out of all of your lineup, I think I played Mystery, the flipperless game the most. And that really turned my head around on flipperless games of, wow, there are interesting and complex and fun rule sets. By its own Nacional上面 at Spמן merchants high NI however United Pieae at Moye is opening in the tournament 18 July 2019 there'll be a But I've heard so many people talking about all flipperless are no fun and oh, they're just destined for the garbage or parts machines if anything and Man, that is such an ignorant point of view if I had anything to say I would say Get your hands on a flipperless machine. Try it out. Play it. There's a lot of fun to be had I Don't know what other recommendation I can give but do not turn these things into coffee tables ... Closed captioning by David Meyers
    81:27
    We've found a home for it with somebody who wants to keep it a pinball machine. And who knows how many of these even exist anymore. I mean, this could be one of literally a handful of that title around anymore. And maybe less, maybe less than a handful of those games. I mean, because they weren't producing a ton of them at the time. It's not Adam's Family Numbers. They were producing them in the hundreds, not the tens of The So anyway, that's my soapbox call to action to not coffee table eyes these Piece of pieces of history. Well, I fully agree with that sentiment so yeah, just try them out and See what you like and there's plenty to go around So if you don't happen to like the first flipperless game that you try Try a different era. I mean they were making them for I think Razaitutional electron算 لل això東 Karl De�חנו Snžčнюcz SKŽA śviećure Jetztły oldest Well, with that, there's one more thing I wanted to talk about, but it's a bit of a surprise. So we won't be discussing this in detail, but Ryan and I will have something to reveal at York this year. Oh, yes. That's right. We will. Yeah. You and I. So look forward to hearing about that. Of course, with the revelation of this year's Bingo Row, which is planning on coming up. And I'm so thankful that you're planning on coming down and I can't wait. I made my first trip to York in 2016 and had to miss 2017 so I am jonesing to get back in 2018 and already have work and family obligations in line that's going to allow this to happen so if you've never been to York it's a pretty incredible show if you're into the history of pinball. I've heard more modern focused I'm not saying that there's not enough modern games, but to me that's a refreshing way to run a show, to not have as many modern games, because how many Monster Bashes can you see? How many Adder Samlies can you play? They're everywhere. And I'm not saying that they're not good games, but as a collector, I really like to see games that I've never seen before. I like to put my hands and play on games that I've never seen and that I might I'm not ever get to see again. That excites me. So York has a Woodrail row. York has a bingo row. Bingo row in 2016 had the largest public showing of bingo pinball machines in one place that there had been since they were released. And I think that's pretty amazing. There's a ton of electromechanical games from Wedgeheads to Williams to whatever your taste is, it's there. There are a lot of weird 80s, like System 80, System 80B games. You know, there's a Spring Break that I never tried before. There was a, what is that robot game, Robo War or something? Robo War. Yeah, yeah. A lot of off the beaten path type of titles showed up. And, and that's what I love. That's what I love to play. And so that's why I'm jonesing to get back. And that's why I'm certainly not complaining at the, I don't even know if lack of is the right way to say it, but a less percentage of more modern games. I mean, they even had Total Nuclear Annihilation last year. And was that pre-pandemic? The production game, yeah. Scott Dinesi was there too. I mean, York is a fantastic show and it's very well-rounded. So what may feel like a lack of solid state games is just really the rest of time catching up with it, you know? I've never really felt the lack of solid state in all the years that I've been going to York. And even when I was new in the hobby and I was seeking out solid state games that I hadn't really I can always find, you know, a goodly variety there. I was never, I never felt like there wasn't enough. So definitely get out and, and try games. Try something out of your comfort zone. Try bingo. Definitely try bingo. In fact, try them all and, and come see me. I mean, talk to me about some of these games, get my recommendation. I'm happy to point you in the direction of a game that I think is quality. I'm sure Ryan feels the same way. If you feel like there's not anything to play, then you're not trying. Just to give some more credit to Bingo Row, if you're hesitant about trying a bingo, I can understand why because they are complex beasts, but there's a lot to enjoy in them too. I say this only because I had a personal experience of trying a bingo at the Pinball Hall of Fame on my own and it was a confusing experience. But Bingo Row is staffed by numerous bingo pinball owners who are there and ready and willing and happy to help explain to you how to play these games. And that's really where I got an appreciation for bingos and thought, yeah, I need one of these in my collection. Uh, one for now. We'll see if it grows from there. Well, we got to get this one working for you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, speaking of which. Let's head on down the road. Okay. Excellent. This has been great chatting with you, Nick. Thanks for having me on the show. Thanks for your time. You got it. All right.