WOZ Playfield Tour | Episode 2

Jersey Jack Pinball·video·8m 56s·held·Jan 28, 2017

Analysis

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TL;DR

Jersey Jack's Butch Peel explains WOZ playfield mechanics and component integration.

Summary

Butch Peel from Jersey Jack Pinball provides a comprehensive technical tour of the Wizard of Oz playfield, explaining how switches, lights, targets, and mechanical assemblies work together to create gameplay. The video emphasizes the importance of proper maintenance and functionality of each component, as even a single faulty switch can disable entire game features. Peel walks through the playfield from bottom to top, detailing key features including the No Place Like Home drain recovery system, multiple flippers, pop bumpers, the witch character, winged monkey targets, dual upper playfields (castle and Munchkinland), and the Emerald City ramp.

Key Claims

Wizard of Oz features a 27-inch LCD screen divided into four quadrants displaying the main game goals
high confidence · Butch Peel, Jersey Jack Pinball, describing the backbox display technology
Jersey Jack licensed Williams flippers, pop bumpers, and slings for WOZ to ensure reliability and familiar feel
high confidence · Butch Peel explicitly states these are Williams parts used in Medieval Madness and Monster Bash
The ruby red slipper flippers were an idea from Jack Guarnieri daughter and have been part of the game since the beginning
high confidence · Butch Peel credits the design feature to Jack Guarnieri daughter
A single non-functional switch can disable entire game features, such as preventing the No Place Like Home mode from ever being accessible
high confidence · Butch Peel emphasizes this maintenance principle multiple times throughout the video
The castle playfield is a separate complete assembly added at the factory that includes its own flipper mechanism, targets, and a vertical up kicker
high confidence · Butch Peel describes the castle playfield as a 'complete separate assembly' set on top
The Munchkinland playfield features a spinning house that can be kept spinning by looping the ball repeatedly
high confidence · Butch Peel describes the house mechanics and the loop-based gameplay
Jersey Jack realizes games will break during play and plans to teach maintenance and repair through this video series
high confidence · Closing statement by Butch Peel about the video series' educational purpose

Notable Quotes

“Keep in mind that everything that the ball interacts with, every switch, every pop bumper, every flipper, all the different mechanisms, if those are not working properly, then that detracts from your game and makes it less fun to play.”
Butch Peel — Core maintenance philosophy emphasizing that component reliability directly impacts player experience
“In Jersey Jack Pinball, we try to make where the drain of your ball is a more exciting portion of the game. It actually is a feature now.”
Butch Peel — Describes Jersey Jack's design philosophy of turning traditionally negative gameplay moments (drains) into engaging features
“We've licensed Williams flippers, Williams pop bumpers, Williams slings. So they're tried and true designs... We've brought that reliability, that feel into the Jersey Jack pinball games also.”
Butch Peel — Explains the strategic decision to use licensed Williams parts for proven reliability in modern Jersey Jack games
“If it ain't broke, it ain't pinball.”
Butch Peel — Classic pinball industry saying about the inherent difficulty of keeping complex machines operational
“So this metal ball smashing into plastic, smashing into wood, it's going to break things.”
Butch Peel — Acknowledgment of the physical wear and tear inherent to pinball machine operation

Entities

Butch Peelperson Jersey Jack PinballcompanyThe Wizard of OzgameJack Guarnieriperson Jack Guarnieriperson Williamscompany Medieval Madnessgame

Signals

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design_innovation: Wizard of Oz features dual upper playfields (castle and Munchkinland) that operate as complete separate mechanical assemblies, representing significant design complexity and novelty in playfield layout
high · Butch Peel describes castle and Munchkinland as complete assemblies with their own flipper mechanisms, targets, and diverters, adding distinctive gameplay layers
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design_philosophy: Jersey Jack's design philosophy explicitly treats the drain/outlane area as a gameplay feature rather than just a loss condition, with the No Place Like Home recovery system providing players a way to recover drained balls
high · Butch Peel states 'In Jersey Jack Pinball, we try to make where the drain of your ball is a more exciting portion of the game. It actually is a feature now.'
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design_philosophy: Jersey Jack strategically licensed proven Williams flipper, bumper, and sling mechanisms rather than developing new designs, prioritizing reliability and player familiarity over innovation
high · Butch Peel explicitly states: 'We've licensed Williams flippers, Williams pop bumpers, Williams slings... Same sort of flipper mechanisms that are in like Medieval Madness and Monster Bash'
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product_concern: Complex game features are vulnerable to single-point failures; even one non-functional switch can completely disable entire game modes, creating maintenance burden for operators
high · Butch Peel repeatedly emphasizes that if one switch in the No Place Like Home mode fails, the entire feature becomes inaccessible; similar examples given for other features
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Transcript

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0:00

Hi, I'm Butch Peel with Jersey Jack Pinball. We're going to talk to you today about the surface of the Wizard of Oz play field. We're going to go through from top to bottom. We're going to show you all the different features in the game and tell you how all these switches and all these lights and everything work with the game to make for a really fun challenging game of pinball. They're going to be different RGB LEDs lighting up underneath inserts here, pointing you towards, directing you to shots on the play field, things that you need to hit in order to succeed and complete the goals in the game. You're also going to have the 27 inch LCD here divided into four quadrants. Each quadrant will tell you one of the main goals in the game and your progress will be shown towards that goal as you play through the game. Also makes the game a really fun thing to watch for people when they're watching you play rather than just having to watch the ball roll around the play field. Of course you also have sound feedback and sound cues. So when you step up to the game, the first thing you know that you're going to do is start the game. Music is going to start up and you're going to be told to shoot the ball, launch the ball. So you've got your flippers here, your buttons here to control your flippers. You've got a ball plunger here to set the ball into play. And so that's how you start your pinball experience. So listen for the cues, watch the lights on the play field. tell you where to shoot the ball. All those things are there to help you and help you succeed in the game and do well. Keep in mind that everything that the ball interacts with, every switch, every pop bumper, every flipper, all the different mechanisms, if those are not working properly, then that detracts from your game and makes it less fun to play. In some cases it can outright disable features, like in this, there's no place like home in this corner down here. If one of these targets is not functioning correctly, you'll never Don't forget there's no place like home. If the switch on the pop bumper is not working, the pop bumper is what kicks the ball into all those switches, you're never going to get that feature. You'll never even know it's there. And it's just one switch that can cause all that kind of problem. So I going to start at the lower end of the play field and I going to work my way up And we going to go left and right kind of sweep back and forth as I go up And I just going to hit the highlights of what make up each of the features how they put together with switches and components and assemblies that are mounted to the playfield As we move up the left side of the playfield here, I'm going to start down at the bottom. There's the No Place Like Home and the Toto, the Outlanes. In Jersey Jack Pinball, we try to make where the drain of your ball is a more exciting portion of the game. It actually is a feature now. So there's a way to get your ball back. It's not just gone. So, again, if everything's not working correctly, that doesn't give you that opportunity, and that's not good. So the Toto rollovers here are just for rollover button switches. The pop bumper over here on the left side, there's no place like home. Five targets there. There's an additional target back here under the apron that makes sounds as that ball's bouncing around in there, and you're jostling and trying to get the ball to shoot back out and come back to the play field, Also trying to complete these There's No Place Like Home targets. As you move up, you have your ruby red slipper flippers. Those were Jen Guarneri's idea, Jack's daughter. Very, very cool. We've had those since the very beginning. Slings. These are all Williams parts that we're talking about, by the way. We've licensed Williams flippers, Williams pop bumpers, Williams slings. So they're tried and true designs. Same sort of flipper mechanisms that are in like Medieval Madness and Monster Bash in some of the Williams games that we've all played for years and years. So we've brought that reliability, that feel into the Jersey Jack pinball games also.

4:07

Over here is a vertical up kicker for the throne room. The ball hits here, is stopped by this snubber bracket, knocked into the hole, and then we collect some bonus and things, do some point collecting there, and then kick the ball back out for the player to continue play So we move further up You got the spinner on the left side This is for the crystal ball Ball kicks through here sends a spinner spinning goes around and drops into this hole here and is kicked out and back into play. And if you've got some of these ball targets made, can start you a multi-ball, those sorts of things. Again, the spinner needs to work for that switch to know that that ball went in that path. As we move up on the right hand side a bit more. There's an upper right flipper, has a unique shot that comes in behind it where you have to hold the right flipper up while you shoot the ball with either left or right and put it through here and collect your horse of a different color bonus. Very cool feature. Continuing on up, we have start to run into the pop bumpers on the left hand side here. Three pop bumpers with their trees on them. They're called trumper bumpers sometimes. As we move up now, you're going to run into the witch character here. She melts, which she sinks down into the play field as you hit her target in front of here. Again, these targets don't work, switches don't work, you're never going to be able to melt the witch. Those kind of things are important. So she's going to pop up from time to time. You hit her, she's going to taunt, she's going to be telling you, you can't make that shot, you're not good enough to compete with her, and you're going to have to show her that you are good enough by pounding her over and over again. This upper flipper works good for that. You can make an off-angle shot here with the lower flippers too. It's not too, too difficult. But hit her enough times, she's going to sink back down, and you'll wait to see her again at some other point in the game. Okay, so you get up to this area now. We're in the winged monkey targets in back here. This is a key portion of the rescue multi-ball feature. They're the ones that like the capture Dorothy mode and let the ball come down with the monkey, pick up the ball, and take it up to the upper play field. So now let's look at the castle play field. This is a complete separate assembly. These are added at the factory as one big piece that they set on top here. It's got a flipper mechanism underneath it all by itself. It's got all these targets for rescue. It's got switches for it knows when you bash the ball against the doors. It counts three bashes and opens the door. And then behind there is a vertical up kicker. So when you kick the ball into there, if you can get the door open and knock the ball in, you going to collect some points and it going to kick the ball back out to you There also a loop that kind of hidden back behind here You go around this loop here and you can shoot that with your flipper and every time you make that loop you get spotted a target And of course there the single door here that the monkey's going to grab the ball, bring it up and drop it behind. Then that's where the ball's going to be stored, a physical lock for the rescue multi-ball feature. Of course you get up to that castle by hitting the Winky Guard Vuk. So there's a vertical up kicker back behind here. There's a drop target in front. You're going to have to knock that drop target down a few times to be able to storm the castle. Shoot the ball up in behind and it's going to pop up onto this play field and let you make some shots up here and you'll be able to play until it drains off. Moving on to the Munchkinland play field, just opposite that, this is a spinning house play field. So we're going to send the ball up here. It's going to be diverted off the ramp onto here when you've made all the rainbow targets and then the house will be spinning around in a circle here. The idea is to keep the house spinning by sending the ball around over and over in this loop and just going around. And when you finally finish all that and get it to where you've earned enough spins, then the legs will kick out as if the house landed on top of the Wicked Witch. Last thing I'm going to talk about is the Emerald City Ramp, the one ramp in the game. It's a plastic ramp. It's got an entrance switch here. It's got a made switch up in this corner. If those switches aren't made, you're never going to get credit for making the ramp. So the ball shoots up in here, it can be diverted onto this upper play field, it can also be diverted into the lock and held there, or it can be just allowed to go freely through here and fed back to your left flipper. All depending upon what you've done in the game so far. So again, a very complex piece of machinery here. A lot of things going on, a lot of things that have to work in concert with one another in order for the game to play like we designed it to play. However, we also realize that the game's going to break. If it ain't broke, it ain't pinball. So this metal ball smashing into plastic, smashing into wood, it's going to break things. So we're going to try and teach you in this video series, we're going to try and teach you how to see when the problem's coming, to head some of those off, to fix them when they do happen, and keep your game working like we designed it to and make it really fun to play for everyone.