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Episode 32 – Technical Ecstasy

Slam Tilt Podcast·podcast_episode·analyzed·Feb 23, 2017
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.034

TL;DR

Slam Tilt Episode 32 covers Dutch Pinball payment crisis, Magic Girl's beta rules issue, and Firepower ROM compatibility.

Summary

In Episode 32 of Slam Tilt Podcast, hosts Ron Hallett and Bruce Nightingale discuss industry news including Dutch Pinball's payment issues with Big Lebowski machines, Magic Girl's troubled development status with only beta rules after 25 units built, and recent game releases like Ripley's Believe It or Not with color DMD. The episode features guest Scott (Stern Pinball) discussing technical topics including System 7 board requirements for Firepower ROMs and restoration work on F-14 Tomcat machines.

Key Claims

  • Dutch Pinball has not paid manufacturing bills for Big Lebowski machines; manufacturing company reported 1,000 euros in additional interest charges owed.

    high confidence · Bruce Nightingale reporting industry news; manufacturer directly contacted customers about non-payment in October/November timeframe

  • Magic Girl has 25 units built with only beta-level rules that 'all they do is flip'; owners received machines and disclosed issues after NDA lifted upon delivery.

    high confidence · Bruce Nightingale citing complaints from two machine owners; confirms growth from original 15 to 25 units through side deals

  • Firepower ROMs require System 7 boards due to ROM space and extended RAM requirements; cannot run on System 6 boards even with minor modifications.

    high confidence · Scott (Stern Pinball designer) providing technical explanation about RAM constraints and byte allocation

  • Full Throttle machine (presumably Highway Designs) has fast gameplay with good shots but very lacking rules after being out for 1.5 years without software improvements.

    medium confidence · Bruce Nightingale and Scott discussing Full Throttle at shows; Scott notes 'software can be fixed, but they haven't done it'

  • John Papadiuk (Papa Duke) disappeared during Magic Girl project development, requiring another company to attempt completion before realizing 'this is a freaking disaster.'

    high confidence · Bruce Nightingale describing project timeline; confirms software engineer was promised payment and game credit that never materialized

  • Spooky Pinball has recently raised prices from $3,000-$4,000 less than competitors to match competitor pricing (the 'Stern model').

    medium confidence · Bruce and Scott discussing boutique manufacturer pricing strategy; confirmed as recent change ('Not anymore')

  • Ripley's Believe It or Not has been released as a color DMD game; host Ron attended 2004 Expo where shrunken head prop from game was given away as prize.

    high confidence · Bruce confirming new color DMD release; Ron providing historical context of Expo attendance

Notable Quotes

  • “Dutch Pinball has not paid their bills... there's no board issues. It's all on Dutch Pinball's side.”

    Bruce Nightingale (reporting manufacturing company statement) @ Early in news segment — Key disclosure of financial crisis affecting Big Lebowski production

  • “Magic Girl... 25 built, and all they do is flip. The rules are like beta, beta, beta.”

    Bruce Nightingale @ News segment — Critical assessment of Magic Girl's incomplete state; implies significant development failure

  • “The guy who did the software... he was supposed to get a game and get paid. Neither happened.”

    Bruce Nightingale (on Magic Girl situation) @ News segment — Details financial/contractual breakdown in Magic Girl project

  • “One is that the ROM space is too large to work on a System 7 board. But the other more important reason is that there's not enough RAM on a System 7 board.”

    Scott (Stern Pinball) @ Technical discussion section — Technical explanation of hardware limitations preventing ROM compatibility

  • “If you keep winning, you play the better players, and you always end up in your groups, it's exactly the same.”

    Scott (Stern Pinball) on tournament structure @ Tournament discussion — Describes competitive tournament mechanics and matching system

  • “I would say, that's the preferred tournament setting. Sure. But anyway, news as the tournament...”

    Scott and Ron discussing Dracula mystery hole settings @ Mid-episode — Documents tournament ROM settings and community best practices

  • “The Magic Girl debacle... It's dead. It's dead Jim. He'll never get hired by another color company.”

    Ron Hallett (speculation on John Papadiuk's future) @ News analysis — Community sentiment on project failure and industry reputation impact

  • “Spooky was building the Jetsons... Stern was building, like, the Medieval Madnesses. But they've kind of dropped out of that now.”

Entities

Ron HallettpersonBruce NightingalepersonScottpersonJohn PapadiukpersonDutch PinballcompanySpooky PinballcompanyStern PinballcompanyBig Lebowski

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Dutch Pinball facing non-payment crisis with manufacturing partner; machines held pending resolution; additional 1,000 euros interest charges

    high · Manufacturing company sent official email/letter to all Big Lebowski buyers; Dutch Pinball blamed vs manufacturer's claim it's Dutch Pinball's fault

  • ?

    product_concern: Magic Girl shipped with beta-level rules; 25 units built but non-functional without significant software development

    high · Two independent owners reported 'all they do is flip' issue; NDA lifted upon delivery; software engineer unpaid and unprovided promised game credit

  • ?

    product_launch: Magic Girl units delivered despite incomplete software state; represents problematic launch timing

    high · 25 units shipped; owners disclosed issues after receiving machines; project went from 15 to 25 units through side deals during troubled development

  • ?

    personnel_signal: John Papadiuk disappeared during Magic Girl development; required another company to attempt completion

    high · Bruce describes 'John went, whoop, disappeared'; another company had to take over; original timeline missed repeatedly

  • $

    market_signal: Spooky Pinball raised prices to match industry standard; no longer undercut competitors by $3-4k

    medium · Scott: 'they've went red and raised their prices now'; Bruce: 'that's the Stern model'; described as recent change

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.348

0:00
As decent young men, don't you agree with me that there's something very, very wrong with these so-called music videos? Yeah, yeah, yeah, really. These rock videos are immoral, indecent, profane, colorless, and blasphemous. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They suck! They suck! They're decent, profane, yeah! Yeah. Hey! We're on the air. You can't use that language. Do we use language?
0:31
Uh, hey, Beavitt. He says we can't say socks. Really? Can we say butt wipe? Yeah. How about bunghole? Yeah, bunghole. Uh, how about butt munch? Yeah, butt munch. How about dill? Yeah.
0:58
Coming to you from beautiful upstate New York, this is the Slam Tilt Podcast, a show about all things pinball. I'm your host, Ron Hallett, here with my co-host, Bruce Nightingale. The painting's done. Yeah, the painting's done. All right. The painting's done. Oh, okay, I just got that. It was supposed to be the heat is on. That was extraordinarily bad. Yes, it was. Thank you. You're welcome. And welcome to episode 32, Moonraker. My, one of my favorite bombs. You're so high. I mean, that movie sucked. Did not suck. It sucked. I mean, it brings Shirley Bassey back for the weakest of the three songs she sung. Yes. The plot was stupid. The freaking space shuttles in space and all that was ridiculous. The bad guy left no impression on me at all. He did nothing for me. I remember his two dogs more than I remember him. The only thing I remember about the movie is the woman's name was Holly Goodhead. Oh, my. But we're not alone. Again this week. We have another guest, and I could be lazy. You could be lazy? Why can you be lazy? Oh, you're talking. Yes. Well, hopefully all three of us are on this time, so they'll actually hear all my great comebacks to you two guys insulting me. but welcoming back scott mr stern himself hello hello how are you guys we are wonderful and it'll be even better when they can actually hear all three of us this time go freaking figure hopefully wow that's skype for you right yes it's the recorder i i think it worked fine and then we re-hooked up and then i screwed it up but whatever whatever it's all It's going to be great. It's all going to be wonderful. And then here's the first time we get to dump on you is that Moonraker is actually a good movie. Oh, geez.

  • Buffalo Pinball Open tournament scheduled for August 18-20; Ron Hallett retired from tournament play after Tri-State loss involving Dracula machine.

    high confidence · Bruce announcing event date; Ron confirming retirement status and preference to spectate and manage rule disputes

    • Scott (Stern Pinball) on manufacturing partnerships @ Manufacturing discussion — Clarifies manufacturer responsibilities in remaster/new game production

    game
    Magic Girlgame
    Full Throttlegame
    Ripley's Believe It or Notgame
    F-14 Tomcatgame
    Draculagame
    The Jetsonsgame
    Medieval Madnessgame
    Firepowergame
    Starzgame
    Harlem Globetrottersgame
    Buffalo Pinball Openevent
    Texas Pinball Festivalevent
    Pinball Expoevent
    Larry DeMarperson
    Kahoot Enterprisescompany
    Bay Area Amusementscompany
    IFPAorganization

    product_concern: Full Throttle released 1.5 years ago with severely lacking rules; no software updates despite issues

    medium · Scott: 'rules are very lacking'; Bruce: 'they haven't done it' for 1.5 years; noted as one-man operation potentially explaining delays

  • ?

    technology_signal: Firepower ROM expansion requires System 7 boards; System 6 incompatible due to ROM space and RAM limitations

    high · Scott's technical explanation: ROM space too large, insufficient RAM on System 6; only ~10-15 bytes additional RAM needed but unavailable

  • ?

    product_launch: Ripley's Believe It or Not released as color DMD game; represents adoption of color display technology

    high · Bruce confirming release; Ron noting historical connection to 2004 Expo where shrunken head prop was distributed

  • ?

    manufacturing_signal: Stern Pinball reduced third-party manufacturing work; Medieval Madness and potentially other remasters discontinued from their production

    medium · Scott: 'they've kind of dropped out of that now'; reason cited as being 'so behind' on in-house games; represents shift in manufacturing priorities

  • ?

    operational_signal: Buffalo Open and other tournaments using online platform for leaderboards and live standings; represents modernization of tournament management

    medium · Scott describing new online system replacing Brian's software; accessible website for live leaderboard tracking

  • ~

    sentiment_shift: Industry pessimism about boutique manufacturer viability; Magic Girl failure and Dutch Pinball crisis raising concerns about manufacturer sustainability

    medium · Ron: 'it's kind of sad when new manufacturers kind of run into financial difficulties'; Magic Girl described as 'dead' project; industry speculation about consolidation

  • ?

    design_innovation: F-14 Tomcat prototype restoration incorporating original-spec flasher domes and custom mechanical modifications; detailed documentation of restoration process

    high · Scott detailing flasher dome sourcing from Bay Area Amusements; electrical tape vs heat shrink tubing debate; discussion of original prototype coil specifications

    • 2:59
    I mean, it's not great, but if you look at the plot of every single James Bond movie ever, what you just described it as could be described as any other James Bond movie. They're all bad. Especially the Roger Moore ones. But in space, with the frigging space shuttles, that was bad. Come on, what about all those guys when they turned the gravity off and they were, like, kind of floating in their yellow suits? Yeah.
    3:25
    I didn't even get into the previous, the Spy Who Loved Me. Doesn't Jaws, like, actually, like, a shark attacks him and Jaws wins? Yes. He kills the shark. Of course. Well, he's a badass. I mean, that's what his character is. He is a badass. He is Richard Kiel, rest in peace. Yes. Yeah. Any other movies he was in besides the two James Bonds and Silver Street? He was in Happy Gilmore. Okay. He was still alive when that was made? Yep. Wow. Yeah, he had a cane at that point. He was also in, he was in MASH, the original movie. Oh, okay. Wow. And he was in a couple of movies that were in Mystery Science Theater episodes, so that tells you the quality of those films. The quality. Yes. He was in Human Duplicators, where he talks a lot, which is not good. And then he was in Ego, where he played a caveman who doesn't talk at all and just makes weird noises.
    4:23
    So pretty much he was talking. See, I would say even the grunts were dubbed. They weren't even him. Wow. But in Human Duplicators, it actually was him talking, which was probably not a good thing.
    4:37
    Sorry, Richard. You were definitely better as Joss. That was the perfect ball for you. So what's going on in the pinball world, Bruce? Let's get some news of the week. Pigs in space.
    4:51
    Okay, first, the Big Lebowskis. They are under lock and key because the manufacturing company that's doing the manufacturing for Dutch Pinball, the Big Lebowski's, put out an email and a letter to all the people who bought Big Lebowski's, saying Dutch Pinball has not paid their bills. They need to pay. And the interest found in everything else is 1,000 euros. They have to pay extra. Permission.
    5:20
    So, it's in limbo right now. Dutch Pinball was telling everyone it was board issues, and this company who was manufacturing said, there's no board issues. It's all on Dutch Pinball's side. So it should be an interesting Texas pinball for you next month, Ron. Yeah, it's just been good. Well, assuming they come there. Assuming. However, they were supposed to be at Expo. Yeah, I know. I think they need to. Yeah, and it's just around the time when they didn't pay their bills because it was October, supposedly.
    5:50
    Did they stop paying? I think they got a couple machines released just before Expo, and they didn't ship them out until November, December. But people have the machines, right? I've seen it at the York show. Only 40. That could be a good collectible then if they go under, which hopefully they won't. Because, I mean, I didn't get to play it at York. I could get nowhere near the machine. The line was incredibly long for it. But, I mean, it's kind of sad when new manufacturers kind of run into financial difficulties. I thought you were going to say that they didn't have the licensing rights or something. So they were like, I'm sorry. Yeah, that was another cluster. Yeah, that was. Wait, with the Big Lebowski you're talking about, the other company? They had some issues. I mean, they had the rights, but kind of, but then they were using music from the movie, which turns out they couldn't use, and then they brought in Roger Sharpen to smooth things over, and then it was all good, and that was all behind them. Now it's just actually changed. I mean, what do boutique pinball companies, do you think, what's like a good run for them? Like, you know, I've heard that Full Throttle. Whatever Spooky does is probably the problem. Okay, so they're doing about, what, $200,000 then? $200,000 to $300,000. Yeah. Yeah, but they're coming in. Aren't they like $3,000 or $4,000 less than all these other companies? Not anymore. No, no, no. Now they've went red and raised their prices now. Of course we have. That's what everyone does.
    7:19
    It's the Stern model. The Stern model. Highway's probably, I guess, best bang for your buck, if you will. Yeah, if they can get them out. If they can get them out. Yeah, that's the thing. That's the fear of it all. Well, you guys have played full throttle. Is it any good? It's fast. It's got some good shots. But the rules are very lacking.
    7:41
    It plays fast, and the shots are really good, actually. Unfortunately, the rules are very lacking. You have to time out mode. You've got to do everything else.
    7:50
    Software can be fixed. It can, but they haven't done it. It's been out for a year and a half now. Give them time. It's one guy.
    7:57
    What are they using for mechanicals? I mean, are they using an established, like... No, I think they're making their own.
    8:04
    Wow. I mean, they're going through some, you know, going through some iterations of things. But, I mean, I guess I'll have to try to play it, you know, next time I see one of these games at a show. But I'm an extremely impatient person, and I won't wait in line to play a game. I know. Yeah, yeah. And I'd say, you know, like, if I had my own, I could tweak it to play the way I want. That might just tie into the fact that a lot of people just have no clue how to set up a machine. I mean, one of the reasons I got a 14 Tomcat is I played it at so many shows that I never liked the way it played. I thought it could play better. So I thought the best way to do that was to, because I thought. You have an F-14 Tomcat and you haven't put my eight-digit ROM upgrade in yet? No, I have not put the eight-digit ROM upgrade. I've never gotten that close to turning it over. Really? Really. You've got to set up one. You must suck. Oh, man, number two. Come right over, baby. Let's see you beat my score. Come on. How low is your score on it? I actually have no idea what the score is on it. Do you remember, Bruce? I can't remember.
    9:08
    Do you have it set up Papa style where the upper flippers, if you forget to flip it, it causes the drain down the middle? Pretty much. It pretty much is, you know, no extra balls. And one of the coolest things you can do to your F-14 Top Cat, By default, the kickback is on, and the starter game, turn that off. Mine's off. Yeah. And I moved the posts up on the one side. On the right side, I moved it up, and I made it a smaller post. I stuck a bally post in there with a smaller rubber. Nice.
    9:39
    He's got a prototype, so he's got the flashers in the back box or anything, too. So it's pretty bright. Ron has the prototype one? Yes, he does. I made a prototype. You made a prototype, but it's... Is it the same as the real prototype because there was somebody on RGP that was trying to track down how it was wired and set up and stuff like that? Yeah, there was. The thing is, what you have to do to make it a true prototype or to go back to what it is, number one, the flasher domes. I think we talked about this in one of the previous podcasts. The flasher domes, the clear flasher domes. Yeah. The ones they make now are not the right ones.
    10:18
    Okay. I don't know what you call them, refracted. You know, they got the rips on them. The original ones would have been like, were on like Millionaire, High Speed. You know, they're clear, totally clear. Like you can see the... Well, there's your solution right there. Just buy a Millionaire machine and part it out, because that's all that's good for. Oh.
    10:37
    Boom, boom, boom. That's a lady. My games I hate, so I can't argue there. But what I did is Bay Area Amusements actually had them in stock at one point, like the old style. So I was able to get them. So I got them all in the back. and then to make it, to put the extra flashers back in, you just get the bulletin and reverse it. Okay. And then there was one other detail that I had to do. Doesn't the prototypes, the displays are different, right? They have the separate credit and match display on it or no? No, I don't think so. No.
    11:14
    The original, original prototypes had slightly different cabinet artwork, but that's like real, like maybe five in existence type prototype. Okay. The original prototypes and early production models had the same coils and the upper flipper as the lower flippers. Oh, that's crazy. Just crazy, insane. And that's one of the reasons they had the flasher short out, because they got those suckers up there. So on mine, because mine's later in the run, I have the weaker coils up there, And all I did is just to make sure the flashers don't short, when I put them back in there, you just take the switch, the stand-up, and I just wrapped electrical tape around it and wrapped electrical tape around the flasher socket. You didn't use heat shrink?
    12:00
    No, I just used – hey, this was early in my development. Yes, I just used electrical tape. Fail. Hey, I put heat shrink tubing on a wire when I was fixing that sea witch over the weekend. so hmm ah we'll have to go over that I'm interested to hear your experience with that when we get to the repair section oh that's that was very interesting in that it wasn't even I'm guessing what happened at some point in his life is that somebody took the board out of it with the transformer and the rectifier board to use in another game okay and it had nothing in there so they put something in there ah and it just never worked well it worked well we'll get into that sure yeah we'll get into that also news we got Magic Girl Yep, 25 built, and all they do is flip.
    12:49
    Don't you want them to flip? What do you mean all they do is flip? All they do is flip. The rules are like beta, beta, beta. And how do you know this? One of the people who, actually two of the people who own it have complained about it now.
    13:04
    Ah, what happened to their non-disclosure agreement? They don't need to since they've received the machines now.
    13:10
    Ah, so it's just a gag order until you actually got the machine? You got it. Does this mean they can't sue now? Oh, they probably could. Well, I don't know. Hey, I didn't say you would get a working machine. Exactly. That's what I say. A pinball machine. So you're telling me that I might have an opportunity to write some software for 25 machines. You could. There you go. If you're talking about rare Lebowskis of 40, now you have 25 Magic Girls. Which probably play better. I mean, are they flipping it? And are they saying that the shots flow? or is it typical Papa Duke stuff? Not that that's bad, but... Papa Duke stuff where it could flow, but it needs a lot of tweaks. And luckily when he was at Williams, he had good engineers, and I guess he just, his scatterbrain just went from one thing to another. He needed people at Williams to rein him in, I'd say. Oh, he did. Well, that's true. I mean, I heard that every project that he was involved on at Williams kind of went long, and he had to have somebody kind of step in and kind of push it along. Larry DeMar saved his ass on World Cup soccer. The original rules on that were going to be completely different. And terrible. Yeah, that's like one of the last games Larry really worked on. It's one of my favorites. Yeah, Jackpot, I think, was his last game. Probably. But that was one of the last games he worked on where he actually came in and did, even though he's not in the credits, in the promo video for it, you can see he did a majority of the software. I mean, he had it right in his office, and he's doing the software on whatever wonderful computer they had then. It was probably some kind of 486, but I got to tell you, I was just in Atlantic City over the weekend on vacation, and walking through, first of all, I walked through Bally's, and, you know, not that Bally Pinball has anything to do with the casino anymore, and they haven't for a couple decades, but that place was dead, and we went next door to Caesars, and all of the video slot machines are Williams, every single one of them, and they're all penny slots. Yep. And there was nobody playing, and we were playing Monopoly. You know, there's a new version of Monopoly out, and we're like, oh, this is kind of fun, you know. But it's a shame to feel that pinball talent kind of, you know, moved over to gambling devices. Yeah. Yeah, WMSM Industries. Yeah. No one's on WMS anymore. It still is. They were bought. They're a fully-owned subsidiary or whatever. Well, don't forget, Williams and Valley Split, and then the company bought both. Yes. And they're now something else. Yeah, but there's still, this says WMS industry. I know, but the main corporation is called something else completely. It's called something else, which I just looked up literally right before this podcast because I was, something games or something. I was actually, I was looking for any, you know, remaining IGT games, and I was just like, wow, I don't really see anything out here. Really? Maybe they're not branding them. Maybe they're not branding them the same way, but, you know, some of the ones, yeah, you think, I mean, Williams is putting it right out there. You know, it's WMS, and I was able to see, you know, like, oh, there's Williams. It's alive and well. You know, and I was telling my girlfriend the whole story about, you know, how Williams said, oh, we need to split off, you know, the video games and split everything up. I mean, it's ancient news, obviously, to, you know, all of us in the hobby, but, you know, it's just kind of a shame that they did it, and we never got to see where it could have gone. Yeah, and like a lot of your Williams employees, like I believe Larry DeMar's company, he makes software for slot machines. Yes, he does. He makes designs along with Duncan Brown, and I think a couple other people work there that used to work at Williams.
    16:42
    The ITP is still around, though. Oh, definitely. Yeah, yeah. There's more around. It was one of our customers, actually, where I used to work. I've been there. I've actually been to the factory, and it was pretty cool. I see. It's Las Vegas, right? Yes. Actually, it was in Reno. Oh, wow. Right next door. Yep. So Magic Girl, we'll have to see how that goes. Now, did the people have to pay separately, or they just took the money that they had sent along, and then they just got to apply to it? I think they were all paid up. They had to pay up before even, I think they paid up like a year ago, a year and a half ago,
    17:15
    thinking that it was going to be done, and then John went, whoop, disappeared, and then they had another company come in and try to build them, and they realized, oh, my God, this is a freaking disaster. Yeah, I remember that. So then John. So they paid again. All the money that they originally paid is gone, or did it get applied? Probably, because it's still not working right. And it went from 15 games originally to 25. Yeah, well, because it went from 15 to 18, and then all the deals he made to, like, one for somebody who gave him boards and did board work, and somebody who did this, and then it went up to 25. Well, the guy who did the software, I mean, he was supposed to get a game and get paid. Neither happened. Yes. Yeah. So, essentially, it is kind of a dead project there, unless they complete it as a labor of love. Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah, it's dead. It's the end. The story is over. So, the people got there. I expect you to die.
    18:16
    I mean, everybody was surprised that it wasn't going to come out, and then they, you know, happened to release it. I mean, it would just be nice if Steve Keeler could go to shows and not be mistaken for him so they don't beat the crap out of him.
    18:31
    You better watch out when he goes to Allentown. People are really going to be pissed now. I'm going to put a sign. I'm going to fall behind him. You're going to put a sign on the back, John. I'm with John.
    18:44
    With an arrow pointing at Steve. Poor Steve. The Magic Girl debacle is It's dead Jim He'll never get hired by another color I doubt you'll ever see him at Expo again No He still works for Zizzle doesn't he No that's gone Long gone We have a new color DMD game out Oh cool I love color DMDs I'm sure it was made for a super popular title Tell me what it's for Ripley's Believe It or Not I actually have no problem with the game and truth be told the first expo I ever went to 2004 when I took the factory tour they were giving away the shrunken heads when you left like you got a shrunken head like the actual one that's in the game because it's just a toy that they bought and put them in and I still have it to this day it reminds me of the first expo Like, there's the shrunken head. You should make that on your special super limited edition Ghostbusters change Slimer to the shrunken head. Oh, that would have been cool.
    19:55
    Freaking shrunken head. When you hit him, does it say, yeah, man? Yeah, man. It's not plugged in yet. Yeah. It's not plugged in yet. Yeah. Yeah, man. And Buffalo Pinball announced the date of the Buffalo Pinball Open, August 18th to the 20th. So mark that down on your calendar. Marking it down right now. Avoid Buffalo between the 18th and the 20th. Wow. Got it.
    20:23
    Not a fan of Buffalo? Well, I mean, I've been to Buffalo, not for something pinball related, but as you both know, I'm retired from playing in tournaments. Yes. Unless it's your own. I won't make it up there. Unless it's your own. Well, not even my own. Really? Come on. no I'd rather kind of just watch I have to be available to make decisions as to hey that game tilted by itself well it's almost been four months since we last talked to you so when is the first we talked four months ago Bruce you see he retired after the Tri-State debacle when he lost to me he could not recover and he just retired yeah because of that horrible, horrible Dracula mystery hole. I got 2X Outlanes and Ron got 20 million. No, you got like 10 million and I got 20 million. Come on. Stop changing the story. Of course I'm going to change the story to make me look better. And the funny thing is what you didn't get to hear last time, because you couldn't hear me, was I had actually already bought that Dracula that we played on. Which I call shenanigans on because he secretly bought it before we actually played on it. Actually, I didn't pick it, if you remember. I did not pick that game. I have no such memory of these things. Was Bruce there? No, I was not. So, in other words, you probably picked it, Scott. It was either you or Jim. It was not me. There is no way in heck that I would have ever picked it. So Jim picked it. To pick Dracula. Jim must have picked Dracula. And the funny thing is, then years later, in my collection, I get the tournament ROMs that fixed that very issue with the random mystery from Scott. Which was the inspiration for fixing them was the tournament that I got screwed in. So everyone, when you play that at Papa and you get that $500,000 for the mystery, you have Scott and me to thank. There you go. It could actually be any award you want.
    22:30
    $500,000 is good. Well, that's what they asked for, so that's what they got. And also I'd recommend if you're using it to set, don't set the mystery. If you set the mystery to, like, no timer, which you would think turns it off, it's actually just, it's the opposite. It stays on solid. So just put it at the lowest timer setting. So the only way it's ever lit. Two seconds. Yeah, when you go through the right end lane, it's lit for, like, two seconds. So that's, like, you'll almost never get the mystery. And that's, I would say, that's the preferred tournament setting. Sure. But anyway, news as the tournament, I believe last time we were in the process of cleaning all the games off. However, because it's May, all the games are now covered with shit again. You need that P-27, you know. P-27? Yeah, you're going to have to hold out for P-28.
    23:23
    Well, there are only two? Or you're just counting it every year? It's going to follow because, of course, I have to do things my own way. it's going to be the number as if it had been every year. There just won't be any results for three through seven. Okay. I got you. There will be an entry, and it will just say, and I understand that the system is completely different now. I'm going to have to look into it to see what you have to enter. I know you guys are always on top of the IFPA rules and things like that and all the shenanigans going on over there. So I'm going to have to even look to see what I have to do to report the results properly and all that in it. Yeah, but the funny thing is, like, the tournaments I play in, the ones I play in at Rock Fantasy, it is literally the monthly Masters.
    24:10
    It's the same thing. The scoring might be slightly different. I don't know if they're doing, like, point whatever. None of the micro point things. I don't know if they're doing that, but it's literally the exact same thing. You just go over. Well, it's a good system. And, I mean, is he using the same software that Brian wrote? No, it's, like, all online now. It's like an actual website you go to. So you can see the – you can just go to a site and see the leaderboard. The live standings. Yeah. I mean, that's fine. But it's the same. Like, if you keep winning, you play the better players, and you always end up in your groups, it's exactly the same. It's one of the best, especially for just a get-together, nice tournament. Sure, sure. I always thought it was one of the better tournaments. Even my father would play in it, and he's retired now from tournament play. Well, he's retired from tournaments, and he doesn't work, right? No, he still works. He still works? Yep. He's not retired retired. He is retired due to Pinberg and Papa frustrations. I think mostly Pinberg frustrations.
    25:10
    That's funny. You mean when we all became A-level fodder? Actually, we play every week now, and the deal is we use random.org just to pick a game. All my games are numbered, you know, one through, Jesus, I think 22 now. God. And it's just picks one at random. And he gets three balls. I get two balls.
    25:32
    Okay. So that's the handicap we use now. And he beat me the last two weeks. Well, he has an extra ball. That's true. And then when you're playing some of these games, like freaking Stars or something like that, where it's all in one ball, if I don't get it in the first two, I'm in trouble. Well, yeah, there's no carryover in that game. And, you know, I racked my brain trying to figure out, is there anything that I would actually change on the rules on this other than eliminating that 100K special? And I was just like, you know, this is a perfect rule set. It really is. And, I mean, while you might think that having a game that lasts on average about a minute and a half is not that good, I happen to think that's the ideal time to have a game last because then you could play another one. If you have like a half hour time, you know, available before you go to work or something like that, or when I'm in the basement and I'm doing my laundry, and then I play like 40 games of Starz. Or I could play one game of Star Trek Next Generation. There you go. You got it. I have the ultimate twosome for me now. I have Starz and Harlem right next to each other. See, I don't understand why everybody has such a problem with short ball times on Harlem. I think that's one of the easiest games of that era.
    26:46
    Eh, Playboy's easier. Yeah. Well, I mean, you're talking in terms of short game time for Harlem? You're Harlem? I'm talking just easier to play. Longer game times, I would say. You are getting longer game times on it. On Playboy, you would get a longer game time than on Harlem.
    27:07
    Well, yeah, so you're saying that the Harlem game is short. Yeah. Nah, that game's easy. That game's easy. I would play way too long on that. Okay, you heard it here, folks. Harlem Globetrotters is an easy game. So I think I know what we've got to play. Let's do it. Harlem Globetrotters. There you go. Okay. The challenge is made. Challenge is on. And we'll play sometime in another dimension.
    27:34
    Well, I could drive up to the Syracuse area to, you know, play yours. Or I could bring it down to a show or something like that. Maybe I'll bring it to Buffalo. I said down, not up. Oh, there you go. Down. But that's all the news this week. Yeah, there wasn't much, unfortunately, positive news. It was just kind of negative stuff, which is unfortunate. I don't think that was negative. I mean, Magic Girl shipped. I mean, they'll work out the Big Lebowski stuff. I mean, they have something else in development, right? They're not just going to go tits up and say, oh, that's it. We're going to give up. We haven't earned anything in a while. You would think that's what I think they were going to do at the expo. and I think they put the brakes on it. Well, I mean, they probably have to do refinancing. Maybe there will be some angel investor that had looked at, for instance, the Magic Girl. The guy came in and said, no, I can't do it. Maybe he'll go and invest in the other company. Maybe. Work for CERN. Work for Jersey Jack. Yeah, maybe Jersey Jack will go, hey, listen, you know, I saw your game at the show. I'm impressed with it. Maybe I'll float you a loan or I'll take over the manufacturing or something. there's lots of you know creative ways to do things I mean Stern's building games for that other company right with the Jetsons yeah there's no news on the Jetsons last I heard I believe from you guys because I only get my pinball news from you know the Slam Tilt Podcast I thought I thought Spooky was building the Jetsons Are they Yes Yeah Spooky
    29:05
    Stern was building, like, the Medieval Madnesses. But they've kind of dropped out of that now. I think they've got to the point where they have so many games on the line and they were so behind due to all the... Well, I mean, at this point, you're going from a collector situation to it could be real competition for their new games. Could be. But, yeah.
    29:29
    Hey, who knows? So, I have questions for you, Mr. Scott. People want to know if they can use your new Firepower ROMs in their Firepower boards. And I'll let you take it along with Mr. Ron. But that's one of the questions I got this week. Okay. Well, the ROM chip is too large to work on a – well, there's two reasons. One is that the ROM space is too large to work on a System 7 board. But the other more important reason is that there's not enough RAM on a System 7 board. You do need the extended RAM that the – I mean, on the System 6 board, you do need the extended RAM that a System 7 board would have. It's not much. there's actually only about 10 or 15 bytes extra that you would need to be able to run the ROMs on a System 6 board. But those games are jam-full of just stuff. That's probably the easiest way I could put it. It's just that every single byte that's in regular RAM is filled, and even the non-volatile RAM. For instance, the scores are stored up there when you start multiball, so you have to have that much space. And the other problem is it's a half a byte. The battery-backed RAM on those machines, it's only a half a byte, so you're actually taking a full byte from your score, and it has to be split into two half-bytes. That cuts down the available space even more.
    30:58
    Basically, people can just run the software on a System 7 board. I mean, that's all they have to do.
    31:03
    So you're recommending that people either get a System 7 board or maybe the boards you and Ron both have in your fire powers, right? Yeah, we have the Kahoot Enterprises board.
    31:17
    Basically, I got it because I'm not sure why I got it. I'm sure there was some reason. I mean, I have enough working boards that I didn't need it, but I think I wanted it because I'd heard good things about it, and I like the idea of eliminating the interconnect board and just having everything socketed so that, you know, when I was blowing things up. I mean, you can imagine I do a lot of software development, and I need really easy serviceability when I blow something up to, like, swap something over. And that is pinballpcb.com. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and you can't use the Rotten Dog Board because they use, even though they support three to seven games, it doesn't use the standard software. where it's not a situation like Alltech is, where Alltech just doesn't have a socket available to put custom software on it. The chip that's in the Alltech board has all the original software in it, and it's unchanged. It's just in a large chip. The Rotten Dog software, apparently they had to modify something in it. I'm not really sure what. It's not something they really publicized. I mean, they're licensed, so obviously they went through Williams to get the modifications that they needed to do. But you can't just pop out their chip and put in, you know, custom software, you know, that you can get off of IP, the pinball database, or from me or from Ron or whoever else has copies of the software.
    32:44
    But, yeah, it's unfortunate. But, you know, anytime you add something to a game, you do have to find space to put what you need in it. Have we heard anything about your buddies who does your repair work for your stuff on the new bally boards? Either of you?
    33:05
    I haven't heard anything lately. I think he has his prototype run is out, and he's probably going through some revisions and things like that. I haven't ordered one yet. I'm just as well on this. So I'm waiting for the kit, you know, to come out because I can certainly put everything together and source all the parts if I don't have them already. So, you know, I'm cheap. I'm hoping to get it a little cheaper. The jumpers, do you have to solder those on this board? Well, the last I heard it was a solder, but you only have to solder when you're going between stern and valley boards. We did find out recently somebody had probably the most traffic on RGP that we've seen in the last six months to a year. It's like 44 messages of somebody that had a black pyramid, and he was trying to get it to work, trying to get it to work. He had a problem with his soundboard. He was tearing his hair out and going at wit's end, and it turns out that he had the Altec board that he had in it. It was set to the stern clock speed, and apparently when you do that, some valley games, the soundboard doesn't work correctly.
    34:15
    And of course, bringing that back to the Weebly CPU board that we're talking about, because you have to use solder jumpers, that might be difficult to switch back and forth. Because I was just going to tell everybody, you know, just set it to the strength clock speed. It doesn't really matter that much for a belly game. But apparently it does.
    34:35
    Yeah, I'm surprised because on the pinball PCB, the co-op boards, it uses like shunt jumpers so you can just move around.
    34:44
    And that is an excellent, excellent way to do that. And I have spoken with Andrew, and I suggested that, and I believe he has it in mind for future revisions, just because it makes a lot of sense to have more flexibility in your board rather than less. I agree. Yeah, because the Alltech boards, for me, I like to use them as the test boards.
    35:06
    And then I like to get the originals fixed and then put them back in. Like my Harlem isn't, I wouldn't say it's done done, because I still have the boards that need to be repaired. And I want to get that back in there to get my Alltechs back so I can, you know, put it in the big game, which I am sure will not boot. I haven't tried it yet, but I'm telling you, if this thing boots, it'll be amazing. It generally is. But, yeah, the dip shunt jumpers is a much better way to do it. If the goal of your board is to have the flexibility, I mean, that's, I believe, that's what I was pushing him to design the board for because, again, I only like to repair one, you know, burn one ROM instead of, you know, four, two, or three in the case of some of the balleys.
    35:51
    Speaking of ROM burning and, you know, firepower and custom chips, I understand, Ron, that you have picked up an EPROM burner? Yes. Yes, I'm looking right at it. Yes, Scott has got me going into the ROM burning thing. I ordered EPROMs, which hopefully are on their way. If I don't hear anything soon, I might actually email the guy and say, hey, did you get my order? But I got the Mini Pro. What is it called? The Mini Pro TL866CS.
    36:22
    I mean, it's this little guy. When you get it, the software is, like, from China, which is kind of scary. But you get the software, and, like, the first time you plug it in, it needs to do a firmware upgrade, which they call it like it's called a Firewire upgrade. But then in the software it's called a firmware upgrade, and there's all kinds of wonderful misspellings. It's beautiful. And how long did it take you to update the firmware? Like you said, yours took a while. Mine literally took like 10 seconds. It was done. Well, see, mine took 10 seconds, and then it sat there without the bar moving. The only thing I can think of is that I, being as I don't, you know, just trust random software that I've downloaded from Chinese websites, I actually installed it in a virtual machine, on my machine. Yeah, good call. And you being in IT, you should always do that, Ron. Eh, eh. There was enough people that downloaded it. It should be all right, right?
    37:17
    Hell yeah. Oh, my. And what bank do you work for? What's their website? Their website is bankofamerica.com.
    37:26
    That's too easy. so yeah because it upgraded and I let it sit there for five minutes just because even though it said complete if it does complete you're fine but I'm like I put the fear of paranoia in you so I got that in front of me once I get the EPROMs so you haven't actually burned a chip on it yet no I haven't burned a chip yet I need to actually get some EPROMs I did get an eraser so I got the equipment I'm ready to go And all of this cost you less than? Oh, what was this? What was the Mini Pro?
    38:04
    Well, I paid $42.70 for mine off eBay. Yep, $42.70. And, I mean, the EPROMs. EPROMs are about $25 for $20 to $30, right? Yeah, depending on the chip you get. Yeah, and then the eraser, you got the $20 one from Amazon? Yeah, the $20 one from Amazon. Okay, well, I mean, assuming it works. I bought one of those as well, and it was broken on arrival, so I just threw it out. But hopefully you bought it from a fulfillment by Amazon, so they'll just send you another one. Yeah. But so for less than $100, you're basically up and running for burning chips, no more buying chips from people that are charging $10 to $20 for them or waiting for me to get to the mailbox and mail them to you.
    38:47
    Yeah, so for those out there, especially with your older games, if you want to do the custom software route, There is a lot of custom software out there, and we talked about it in previous shows, whether it be, you know, like the Firepower, seven digits and different rules, or was it Barracora with updated rules? Yep, double 2X and 3X scoring, as originally intended by the designer, which he assumed it was in the game, but it wasn't. And pretty much any game in Scott's collection? Pretty much. so even if it's something as simple as just free play or something stupid like I like having the maximum of 99 credits on all my games and you know ballet games top out at 40 credits now why would you need 99 credits on a game well for a part of your tournament and also to get my the other thing with the fire powers I got my knocker back you did because if you put and I realized what a shitty knockers Williams had. They suck. Well, they just sound a little differently, but if you change them over to me, it wouldn't sound right. I would hear it knock and say, what was that? Who's playing a ballet game or a string game next to me?
    40:03
    Yeah, because if you have the game on the typical free play, it turns off the knocker on Choir Power. I don't know if it does it with other games of the same era, but it certainly does. It most certainly does. It doesn't do it like on Black Knight, you'll still get the bell. You will still get the bell on Black Knight. But that's a System 7, so maybe it's a System 6 thing. I don't know. It is a 6 and 6 and earlier, and the reason why it is because they check for the free game level before they check the credits, and they don't actually subtract the credit. They just skip over all of that code if it's set to free play, which is why it doesn't knock. And it's the same exact code that actually checks to see when you win a game, the first thing it does is checks the maximum number of credits to see if you have the right to be awarded that game. And since you have to set it to zero, it says, oh, zero credits, you cannot win a game, which is why it doesn't do it during the gameplay. All right. Interesting. Well, since we're talking about it, I have a question for you. Sure. And something I've heard, let me see if you've heard it also or if it's true, the reason that Williams used the horrific horseshoe switches on, like, System 3, 4, 6 games.
    41:16
    The way they do the drop targets, which is, I think I was going over this on a previous podcast. Well, yes, it's basically exactly like an EM, where while it's dropping, it has to pick up that drop signal. That drop. And then when they're all down, it has to, it has a separate series switch to reset it. I mean, clearly it is like that. And the horseshoe targets are slightly different. The ones for the solid-state ones are flipped around versus EM ones, which is why you can't just take the commonly available EM ones and just use them. They don't fit correctly. You'd have to flip them around, drill the contacts out, and replace the contacts. Now, what I heard is more of a programming thing, and maybe you would know if it's true or not. One of the reasons I heard they did it that way was that system three through six had a limitation in the maximum number of switch closures it could see at once. Um, the reason that would be in there would be switch current. And they were actually very conservative on it, which is why if you look at the history and evolution of Williams 3-7 driver boards, they went from a certain size resistor to limit the current for the very early ones, and then they were successively getting smaller resistance until they went to none on System 7 for better switch responsiveness.
    42:38
    They probably felt that if the, like say the whole bank of targets was down and that's usually in one column and it was kind of an active switch every single time, that it would draw too much current through that one row and it could cause problems there.
    42:54
    Additionally, the way Williams actually triggers the switches on those, you have to actually tell the machine all the time, ignore this switch. It's been down for a long time. Ignore this switch. Ignore it again. Keep ignoring it.
    43:10
    I think it was probably they wrote the operating system that way to get it to fit into one 2716 chip rather than Bally OS's.
    43:21
    Basically, Bally reads the switch matrix different, and they only allow a switch to be processed after it's been closed for two cycles of reading the switch matrix. and then it has to see an open, close, close, and then it reacts, and then it ignores every close after that because it hasn't kept track of the last three. It keeps track of the last three, so it sees a picture. And if it sees close, close, close, it doesn't react. It has to see open, close, close, and then it reacts. So it only reacts once. And Williams switches, they only have two switch registers, one history and one current, and they react when it just sees closed, closed. So as you get successive events going on in the machine and then it's going back and reading the switch matrix again, it has no way to mark that it's already paid you for that switch being closed. So that was another reason that they went that direction with the drop targets. So would you say it had the better operating system between Bally and Williams? Overall? That was the older era.
    44:28
    Stern MPU 200 games. Okay. Now, why would you say that? Well, it's a multitasking operating system with its own language that you can do things event-driven, and you have many timers available to you to do timing. You can get very discrete control over what the machine is actually doing. Bally always went through, and everything you see, for instance, on a Xenon machine, where it's moving all the lights and moving displays and any kind of animation with the lights. It's doing that kind of thing in real time where it's saying, okay, there's a routine. We're going to go update all the lamps now, and it has to read in all the status for the lamps and then set timers individually in that little subroutine to process it. In a Stern game, you just put a line in it that says, wait five, and it does it all for you in the background. So from a programmer's point of view, so much easier.
    45:31
    So Stern kind of took their system but made it better. Exactly. They actually, you know, they stole the Stern bought URL labs, universal research laboratories, because they heard that they were making the boards for the Bally system. So they went and bought the manufacturer of the boards so that they could, you know, copy the software. And there was a lawsuit about it in the 70s, and Bally's feeling on it was, well, listen, yeah, you copied our stuff, but people will buy our boards in the future. They actually wanted people to use their board set, and I guess to go along with it the actual operating system software. But, I mean, Williams was kind of a little bit behind with their operating system. I would call them, you know, amongst the more primitive. But it is actually powerful in its own right, and it's actually very elegant, and it uses a similar type of system where it's using like its own language and Golly did it the same way. They had like their own language where it was just bytes that would mean certain things depending on where they were.
    46:36
    If we go back in time and have access to all the original documentation and we could really evaluate it like you'd evaluate a programming language today where you'd say, okay, I'm going to read all the documentation for Python and C++ and Java and, you know, the other languages that people use, where you could really see what the designers intended rather than, well, we're looking backwards, you know, 30 years, 40 years ago, and trying to figure out what they did.
    47:05
    And then my appreciation for it has definitely changed, especially as I fixed all those bugs in Firepower, for instance.
    47:13
    You know, Ron was doing a lot of beta testing for me. I appreciate that, even though I had to send you all the chips.
    47:19
    because my machine, yeah, my machine, of course, is still not, you know, operating. I mean, it's operating enough for me to see what the software is doing, but it turns out that I had kind of a serious issue with my display cabling, which we can discuss when we talk about repairs. But I thought it was a software issue, so I was like going, is your machine doing this? Do you ever see it? And Ron's like, I don't know what you're talking about. Working fine here. Yeah. But, you know, looking backwards into things, like there are things that are very elegant, and I'm sure if I had the documentation in front of me as was intended, I could say, oh, yeah, I see why they went that way with it. They did the best they could with what they had. I mean, the thing you have to remember as well is that Bally's system was in development the longest. I think Nutting Associations was playing around in 1973, 74, getting their system up, and Williams didn't start until 75, 76.
    48:19
    So that's a huge amount of time, and you probably could check with some of the people that are designing machines today, like Dutch Pinball. Like, what pinball board system are they using? You know, it's not something that instantly, oh, we've got this great board system. Like, let's slap in our – They're using T-Rock. Okay. Well, they have a lot of people that are kind of – they can stand on their shoulders with the operating system, and it just makes it so much easier as a manufacturer. I mean, how about Highway? They're using their own system, or are they using another one as well? They're using their own system, actually. And what was your complaint earlier about the Highway pinball? It was something with the software, right? Yes. Yeah, so, I mean, whoever's writing that operating system, I know Brian Dominey is writing the code, but I don't know if he wrote the operating system code as well. But, you know, assuming he's doing it by himself, that is a huge amount of work to do. Oh, I agree, but they're also having problems with their now upgrade stuff. Like if you want to, say if you own the first one, the Full Throttle, and you wanted to buy an Alien, you have to upgrade your CPU now on your computer on your Full Throttle to get it to work on your Alien.
    49:32
    The original idea was it was going to be a kit. No, you just get the play field and the software, and boom, you're good to go. Well, I mean, things evolve. Yeah, I know, but the problem is they wait so long between games. Well, that's part of the problem. I'm willing to give them a pretty big pass on that.
    49:53
    I mean, this is the nicer Scott you're getting today. It's probably because I'm on vacation. Last time I was on, I was on strike, so I was angry. But this week I'm on vacation. I'm sitting here drinking a Yards IPA, you know, and, you know, just being very mellow.
    50:12
    So I don't know if you're going to get a rant out of me today, but, you know, I think you've got to, you know, cut these people some slack. I mean, Full Throttle was developed two, three years ago. The hardware they were buying then probably isn't even available today. No, probably not. I guarantee it. Yeah, I mean, so it adds a little extra money onto the thing. I mean, all manufacturers make compromises. I agree. I totally agree. Well, let's see how nice we can keep Scott. Why don't we do our games to like, games to hate. Oh, that was canceled. I thought you guys canceled that. We've been going like other week, but I wasn't even prepared for that. I was going for more of the news and for mail. You weren't prepared for that? Well, come on. I've got to get on your case. You always get on my case when I'm not ready. I can do it in two seconds. Gottlieb System 3. Three. He just looks up every Gottlieb System 3 except lights, camera, action. Have you been through them all yet? No. Not even close. Did you pick Gold Wings yet? God, that's not System 3. That's an 80. Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry, Gold Wings. All right. Well, I got mine. I can go anytime. So, Scott, go ahead. We'll throw you underneath the bus first. What, game I like or game I hate? Game you like and you can't own it. What about if it's a project that I haven't gotten to yet? I can go for that. We'll give you that one. Okay. I would say a game I like, Bobby or Power Play. Great game. It is an awesome game. I was playing it a couple months ago when I was over at the Pinball Gallery in Malvern.
    51:49
    And, I mean, it seems kind of silly because I've had a project for probably three or four years, and I'm playing, but it kind of lit the fire under me, you know, to think, hmm, I've got to get these other projects finished and that will be the next one that I do, just because it's a really fun game. I can't say that I really care for the pop-up kicker, you know, on the bottom. I don't mind that. So I'll fix that in software. You know, it will just stay down all the time. It will stay down all the time. It will never come up. Yeah, I could just cut the wire to the coil, but I'll put it in software. I'll put an option for it. But, you know, it's just a really fun game. I mean, it's so simple. It's totally symmetrical.
    52:31
    You've got the little mini flippers up there. They call them slap shots, and you're hitting drop banks across from them. But it's a strange angle. You know, it's not smooth. Like the small flippers trying to hit something on the other side, it's difficult, you know, and it moves pretty fast.
    52:46
    We discussed, Bruce and I did, at an email exchange, that we thought that it needed a spinner somewhere. Two spinners. One on each side. That's right, a dual spinner. And I am seriously considering, you know, putting that in on mine. I have to – well, actually, the play field it's in is pretty decent. This is the other reason I haven't started the swap yet. I got a CPR play field for it. And the play field it's in, it is decent. It's actually not worn by the slingshots. It does have a bit of wear at the top where the eject hole kicks it out. I can live with that because you really can't see it. It's behind a pop bumper. Yeah. But maybe I'll drill, you know, the holes and put some, you know, nice stern spinners in that and, you know, see how it plays. It might not be great, but I always thought that you needed spinners there. Every other, you know, ballet game from that era, like if you think about what Strikes and Spares has, one up the left, Evil Knievel has one on each side, right? Yep, it does. Yeah, so Freedom has that one kind of hanging out in the middle. Yep.
    53:47
    What other games does it have? Mata Hari doesn't have one, but I don't think Mata Hari would need a spinner. No, no, no, no. Yeah, that game doesn't need a spinner. But, you know, I might just kind of, you know, spitball it and see if I, you know, stick it on there and say, huh, that's kind of fun. Or maybe I'll say, boy, that really sucks. We were wrong. Speaking of freedom, you need a project to trade me a project.
    54:13
    Okay. Come on. Do me a favor. Get rid of my freedom. Come on, I need another product. Okay, so now we're going to go off to games I hate. Yeah. We'll segue on there. Valley Freedom.
    54:29
    I think your tray just went in the toilet there, Bruce. No, I don't think so. I think I forgot them. Oh, I've certainly, you know, had, you know, games that I've hated that I've owned. Believe me. But, I mean, my only purpose for Freedom is a game that I can really, you know, beat the crap out of, drag it to shows, and, you know, I would play and everything like that, but it's not a game that I would, you know, want to go out of my way to, you know, acquire. And unfortunately because I just acquired another game, I'm full up. I don't have any room. Fuck! Well, you trade. Then you'll have more room.
    55:05
    What games did you acquire? It's a Golly 4 Square. What do you mean? I can guess what Bruce is going to change his games I hate. No, no, I have mine already. I got them right now. But, no, it's a really simple EM. It's just a complete the color groups and go through. It's got that kind of maze thing on the right to go through, like, a lot of the Gottlieb games from the early 70s do. It's a nice, you know, wedgehead. It's got funky artwork on the back left because it's from 72.
    55:36
    But I always liked it. I enjoyed playing it at a lot of the shows that people would bring one to. And I got a pretty decent example. The guy delivered it, which is awesome. I didn't have to go pick it up. I met somebody new in the hobby, and I haven't set it up yet, of course. It's actually blocking access to my Flash that I set up a couple months ago, but I'll get around to it. I'm on vacation this week. I want to get at least one game set up or one game finished, or maybe one game cleaned off. Okay, Bruce. Nope, you're next. I'll be the last for a reason. Game I like.
    56:12
    I will say, and I remember specifically playing this. the first time was at Expo. It was second or third year I went, and it was a year where they had a whole row of all Stern and Bally's. And I had never seen a lot of these Sterns before.
    56:31
    Like, you know, this is where I first played Stargazer, which ended up being the one I actually own, was the one I played. You know, Sea Witch. Yeah, a lot of these, like, what are these games? I'd never heard of them. But Alley would be the game I like. were you waiting for the raspberries? I was waiting for it too I like Ali bite me I don't remember Ali saying that I don't think it's the greatest he's the greatest well here's why I don't like it it's because it has the same exact sound effects that Meteor and Galaxy have and space themed games sound effects should not be used for a boxing game They should have a bell in it somewhere.
    57:16
    I'll give you that. Oh, you don't have an alley because of the rules. I was going to say, get an alley, and I will add these things for you. Nice. I like just the simple things, like the three eject saucers. The ones they ripped off from Wildfire, yes, exactly like Wildfire. Instead of having, it's probably the same designer, isn't it? Yeah, Harry Williams. Yeah, so instead of having, you know, the three lanes that most games have, the lanes, they had, like, the saucers with the pop-upers right in front of them. So you'd go out and you could nudge it right into one of the other ones, comes out and nudge it into the other one. I thought that was pretty cool. Exactly like Spider or Golly Spider as well Spider Spider Spider Spider Games I hate I going to pick a Gottlieb
    58:06
    Caveman. Oh, that's a terrible game. Yeah, I agree. I just... Never did anything for me. It's like... Wait, hold on. Hold on a second here. Caveman. Let me think back here. Allentown showed sometime around 2005, 2006, I believe Bruce was there selling a golly, man. No. I transported it for Jerry. Oh, okay. Because I seem to remember that somebody was giving me a hard sell on it, and I was just like, are you kidding me? No way. I just brought it down, and Jerry was trying to sell it to anybody and everyone he could, and, yeah, that didn't go so well. That's one of those, yeah, we're going to try something interesting. Yeah, it didn't work. Well, we don't have many resources either. You know what somebody should do with that? I don't know if the hardware is the same for the, you know, I don't know anything about the video system on that. Somebody should take Caveman and instead of it being Caveman on the video game, put Q-Bert on there. That'd be fun. So you play Q-Bert when you go into the cave holes, whatever the hell they call them. That would be a lot better. But if you fall off, the knocker goes, just like in Q-Bert. The real knocker, yeah, exactly. Yep, there you go. Make it happen, folks. You've heard it here first. Somebody make it happen.
    59:27
    Make Caveman good for something. Captain Caveman! Captain Caveman. Hey, you can even put Captain Caveman on the video screen. You can have it run DVD over and over again. Captain Caveman. So, Bruce, what do you got for me? Okay, game I hate. You already brought it up a few seconds ago. Gold Wings. Oh, terrible game with that pop bumper in the lower left-hand side. Terrible game. System 80. You mean like Wizard of Oz? Yes.
    59:57
    I'm not arguing with you on that one. You don't like the air horn or whatever it has? It's because it's always off because people turn it off. No, no, no. They don't turn it off, Ron. They cut the wires to it. There you go. And the worst topper ever.
    60:17
    You don't like the landing strip? No. No, it's the takeoff. is the takeoff off an aircraft carrier. Terrible. And the back glass is a total ripoff of the Top Gun poster? Yes, it is.
    60:32
    Now, see, I have good memories of playing that game in the arcade, you know, back in the day when I couldn't get on a pinbot or a high speed at the spaceport. I'd say, oh, I'm not going to wait to play those games. I guess I'll put a quarter in this gotlick machine.
    60:45
    It sounds like California Extreme when you can't get on a single game, And finally, like the last couple hours of the show, the section that just had all the mid-'80s Gottliebs was finally free, where you could actually play games.
    60:56
    So a game I like, and this is going to be a segue game into one of our questions from one of our listeners,
    61:05
    Whirlwind, one of the few Lawler games I really, really like. Well, that's the only Lawler game that I actually sold. I've actually sold three of them. so I've owned it of course you don't yeah I've owned three of them too but I'd say between the two Earthshaker or Whirlwind I kept Earthshaker oh god I go the opposite way I go the opposite way but you got this building that's true I didn't have it but I had the I had it ready to go and then I sold it but good game so if you're segwaying first yawn if you're segwaying with a yawn So are we going to the slam bag? We're going to the slam bag. The person we helped out last week with the Whirlwind Optos, cleaning with the Q-tip and the Windex, worked perfectly. But he has another question for his Whirlwind. Oh, he does? Does the guest get to answer this? Everyone gets to answer this. Everyone gets to answer this, and he's lucky, actually. Yes, he is. That never works for me, the Q-tip. I know. The only time it ever worked was with a flipper cabinet switch Opto. Every other time I've done it, I've had to re-slow solder. No, no. It worked for him. So here we go. He's got a tech question about Aaron Nichols. He has another tech question.
    62:25
    It's about the ramp, the upper ramp that gets a ramp error on the game. And when he hears the relay clicking as it's trying to pop up while it's in the up position, or it's trying to drop, which I cannot tell. Where were you reading this from? His email. This is exactly how it's written. This is from who? Aaron Nichols. Nicholas.
    62:46
    Aaron? I don't see that. I'm looking right at the e-mails. I don't see it in there. No, it's not the e-mails. It's actually on Facebook. Okay. Oh, Facebook. You're killing me, man. You're telling me what this is. It's still an e-mail. It's still a question.
    63:01
    Because Ryan from Wisconsin was the first whirlwind question, so this is actually another person. I actually know the answer to this, but you guys can go first. I know what it is, too. Uh, here's the relay clicking as it's popping up, but while it's in the opposition or it's trying to drop, I can't tell. You know, Riverboat Gambler had the same ramp, and I've seen the same problem, that a relay just keeps hitting the coil while it's in the opposition. Not sure if it's mechanical, bad transistor going bad. Can you guys send any light? Does he mean the ramp on the right? Yes. The up-down ramp? Yeah, the one that goes up and down. Yeah. Everyone, there's two coils on there. Not one. There's two coils. One is the eject up, and one is the hold coil. Mm-hmm. It's probably either a misadjusted hold coil, where it's not dropping back down, or it could be the pin is worn. I've had that actually on my Whirlwind, where the pin is worn, and it won't drop down. It could be that. You hope it isn't that, because that's hard to fix. Yes, it is. But I've had it on mine, where the pin, and I had to refabricate something. Or, Scott? The most likely cause is the switch. Yes, the switch is misaligned or not touching properly. Or it has loosened up, or the diode is mashed on it. Usually it's the actuator gets screwed up on it, and it has to see both the switches for the up and down. It might only have one switch. I forget. It's been a while since I've only heard one. It only has one. Yeah, and so if it doesn't see that switch, It's actually very similar to Dracula in that the top drop target, and it's the same as the shadow's wall, the brick wall. It's all similar mechanisms or similar logic on how it's – it only has one switch, and the software is supposed to kind of guess, depending on what it sees, the status of that switch. This switch is messed up in some way. The problem is that that play field just pivots up, and everything you're working on is way down in the bottom of the machine, and it fucks up your back when you bend over to look at it. So pull the play field out if you can and kind of prop it on something else.
    65:13
    And then, you know, have it in switch test. And, you know, it'll be pretty obvious. Assuming the actuator is actually still on it, it probably could be completely missing. It's a $3 switch. You know, you buy it from Pinball Life or Marco Spec or any of the major suppliers that shows have it. that's probably 99% sure that it's something with the switch. A wire could have fallen off the switch. I'm curious with the hold coil adjustment, Bruce, though. You mean actually bending the plate on that relay by the adjustment?
    65:44
    Yeah, because if it's what I think it is, there's a single coil that puts it up, and then it clips, like, in place. And then the smaller coil, all it does is suck it in so that the clip disengages, and then it drops back down. Exactly. from weight or spring pressure. Yeah. But if you hear people, what do people maladjust on that? I'm kind of curious because, I mean, I have seen some crazy things that people do to games, and I've seen a lot of electrical tape used on that coil as well.
    66:15
    Loosening or tightening the spring, like cutting the spring and making it really tight or stretching the spring out to make it loose on the backside. I've seen that a couple times.
    66:24
    Well, that's really people that didn't go for the basic stuff first, though. And especially if they're trying to compensate for that elongated slot that gets cut in it.
    66:33
    I mean, that's when you start running into crazy things like that. But, yeah, hopefully he doesn't have one that's kind of all hacked up, because I'm pretty sure that most of those parts just aren't available, and you'll have to actually fabricate one. No, I totally agree with you. Yeah. So would you like to take the next email, Mr. Ron? Well, is this an email, or is that the only Facebook one? That's the only Facebook one. Okay. Let me look here. What do we got? We got... So we had a... Oh, God. The Valentine's Day one. Oh, Jesus. All right. At least he didn't ask about sex on machines again.
    67:08
    Oh, boy. Oh, this is a serious question this time. About how to have sex on machines. Oh, my. White water. There seems to be so much pressure on Lyman to make Batman a great pin. Have a look at Fred on Pinside. Everyone has watched it to that. So my question is, who is Stern's biggest, well, it says it's this. I think it means asset. Who is Stern's biggest asset? Who can sell pins on their name alone? And also, what combination would you like to see happen? Choose one from each list below. So he has all the software guys and all the design guys and all the art guys, and you've got to put, like, what's the ultimate combination? And he also said make your worst combo, too. Oh, geez, it's the worst combo. So for software, it's right, Lyman, and Lonnie. For software, I have to abdicate from answering the software question because I promised the gentleman in question that I would stop making fun of him in public. Is it the same one I'm making fun of? Who would that be? Lonnie.
    68:20
    Is it still public? You know, you guys just give your choices. I can tell you the best. I mean, I'm a gentleman in some ways, and I did promise him. I said I understand his point of view and that I would stop making fun of him in public forums, of which, unfortunately, the Slam Tilt podcast does count. Yes, it does. Unfortunately, we are public. I would say that my dream team would be Steve Ritchie as a designer,
    68:47
    Lyman Sheets for the software, and I don't really care about the other things because, you know, who gives a shit about artwork when you're playing a Richie Lyman game? A Dirty Donny would be the home run for me. Okay, I'll take your word for it. I haven't seen any of the artwork yet.
    69:03
    Metallica? Yeah, I should have. I walked by it at the York show several times, but I didn't play it. That would be my top guys also, top three. Really? Okay. Yes, mine would be, well, you know who my designer is going to be. It's going to be Richie. It's like 90% of my team. Steve Richie, so that's where I'd say Lyman. Yep. Pick a three, and Art, I'd actually play, let's see what Zombie Yeti could do. Eh.
    69:24
    See, I don't play artwork on pinball machines, so I don't care. Okay, worst one. Ron? Software. This just seems so mean. But? But I'll say, well, this is, I won't say worst combo. Wait, hold on, hold on. Let me predict what you guys are going to say. Oh, okay. Because I'm not allowed to say. I'm sure that Ron is going to say, and probably Bruce also is going to say Lonnie Games for software. And for designer, you probably are both going to say Borg. Nope. No.
    70:02
    Not me. Well, that means you're going to say, what's his name, the Ghostbusters guy? Nope. Not your doe either. Who else is there? Gomez.
    70:12
    Yeah, you got it. I don't like Gomez. You don't like Gomez? Not lately That's exactly what I was thinking, not lately Okay, well, he's got What's he got beyond Batman? Because I remember Lord of the Rings, Batman Okay, Transformers sucked Transformers Pro is great Transformers anything else sucked No, they both suck No, Pro's really good Suck, suck, suck It What else before that?
    70:43
    I didn't think Batman was that bad. It's okay. Not great. I mean, that's Gomez and Lyman. And, you know, Lyman's software really highlights how you can take a design that maybe has some flaws in the design and then just make it so much better. Some flaws? Oh, my God.
    71:01
    What? And then you get Lonnie trying to help him on Avengers, and then, oh, my God, it's just like train wreck aroma. Okay. What are you picking, then? What are you picking? Lonnie.
    71:12
    Gomez. And for the artwork, I'm just going Photoshop, guy. Yeah, I was going to say Photoshop. Kevin O'Connor? That's Kevin O'Connor. No, it's not. It's a Photoshop thing. I'll go with that as the least desirable. Yeah. Not Trudeau, but Trudeau's only made Ghostbusters so far there, right? No, Mustang. Mustang and WWE. Yep, WWE. No wonder I didn't think of those other two. Yeah.
    71:41
    He always tries new things. It may not work. Yeah. It may not work. Sometimes they work and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they don't, but I like him for trying, so I would never pick him. Did he design Gold Wings? Yes, he did. Probably. If it's an Indian Scot leave, he designed it because he was their only designer by a certain point. That's true. So, next email. You got this one, Ron? Well, we got one from a Scot who said he just got back from AC. Yes. And I was confirming my appearance on the podcast today. And plus you also said a bad deal. Oh, yeah, bad deal. Whitewater is almost as bad as Party Zone. Wow. I said almost as bad. I think someone hacked into Scott's email. I think so. I mean, who could think? Not at all. listen I understand why people like Whitewater you know because you get the challenge you get in the 5x going and you get the shots down and things like that but the game just never gelled for me it's another one of you know Dennis Nordman's um kudos that didn't for me I mean pinball is a very personal thing I think that's a horrible trade though I mean especially since there's a stargazer involved Ron, you'll probably never find another Stargazer. Yes, that's what I try to, you know, say. But one person agreed with me.
    73:12
    Was it a WPC whore? No, no. He said, Ron, trade Bruce for this so he will not get a Fathom so other people can get a Fathom.
    73:21
    What? Okay, say that again. It just went over my head. No, he said trade so I'll get the Stargazer. Yeah. And so I won't want to get a Fathom because I have another Rare Game. So other people can get them. Yeah, so other people can get the fathom. And who said this? It was actually on Pinside under our 31st episode. Okay. So one for one, the trade is tied. Well, I'll break the tie right here, and I'll say no. You already voted. You said it was somebody that hacked into my email. No.
    73:56
    No. He said it was a bad trade. That was him saying that. We can vote twice. Well, I will give you this. Fathom is a better game than Whitewater.
    74:06
    It's like Stern's biggest fan. He can vote twice. Yeah, or vote 55 times. Yeah, he can vote 55 times. You know, and guess what, Bruce? I get an email yesterday from, I have a message at pinballowners.com, which I'm still on. Second inquiry now in a month. I see you have a Stargazer. Would you be interested in selling? You know, I deleted my pinballowners.com account because of messages like that. You too. So what did Dad say about the trade? He said, you know, he likes whitewater and he thinks it's a good game, but he thinks we were incorrect in thinking that was his favorite game of yours, or should I say that he played at your house? Oh, well, it's got to be Scared Stiff. Yes, there you go. So if I pull out the Scared Stiff, would that kick him over?
    74:58
    So what's the new trade then? Well, no, the new trade was I know one you cannot refuse. Oh, okay. Okay, I got to hear this. What trade can I not refuse? AFM.
    75:10
    For? I don't know. You have to attempt my number for the AFM. And you know what I want in that trade? He wants a Stargazer. Of course, I want that one and stars.
    75:22
    But you know AFM is one of the few that I know. I got the hook. I just get the remake. Okay, you keep on thinking that. Bad trade.
    75:33
    I'll get the rematch. I do have to laugh because I have every single one of these games that both you guys are trying to trade back and forth. Do you have an AFM? I don't remember you having an AFM. Yeah, I have an AFM. Oh, you were at P22, were you? No, I was not at P22. That's where it made its debut. Ah, I missed it. So, yeah, but I got the good trade bait there. Or scared stiff, see? I can pull up scared stiff. Eh. Well, see, the way you have to do that trade, Bruce, is you probably could trade my girlfriend for the stars and the stargazer that I have for Scared Step because she's an Elvira nut. There you go. And she'd probably do it when I'm not home. There you go. Perfect. But she still wouldn't get to play the Scared Step because I would sell it immediately. I know she would. So, Ron, not even interested in AFM?
    76:25
    Oh, see, I told you. I just... I think that's a... I mean, you have to ignore the scarcity for a minute.
    76:36
    And I mean, just go by the raw values. I mean, how much realistically is a Stargazer worth right now? I don't know what shape Ron's is in.
    76:45
    It's very nice. It's probably very nice. I mean, if it was... What year did you buy it? Four years ago? Five years ago? Did you buy Duncan Brown's one? The one that you had at Exxon? Yes, I did. Okay, that's a stellar example of a stargazer.
    77:01
    Yeah, that's... But the stars... Four. And what are you wanting four, Bruce? You want Attack from Mars directly for Ron's stars and stargazer? I don't know. Maybe you have to do another... Maybe you have to figure out something else. But yeah, maybe, you know. He knows my answer. You will never find another stargazer that's that nice. Oh, no. Phil Morrison's is probably that nice. but Duncan Browns is really nice. I know, but he knows it would go into good hands. It would never go bye-bye, too. And he would get my excellent. My AFM is really nice. He knows that, too.
    77:37
    Right, Ron? Is it as nice as mine? I don't know. I've never seen yours. Bruce, you didn't come to P-Twin, too, either? Nope. I was at P-Twin one. Nope. I never went to P-Twin. Oh. Yeah. You were probably at the Buffalo tournament instead. Probably. Mine has no. Mine has no fade at all. Neither does mine since it's a brand-new cabinet. No, mine's the original cabinet.
    78:03
    Oh, you original guys. Yep, you know me. Really nice plays, Incredible. Do you agree, Ron? It probably does play better than mine because I've been lax and lazy at changing ramp flaps and putting the proper parts in the back where you'd lock the ball. I got Bill Ung's first kid in it, just the saucers, and I have a color DMD. Oh. See? It's raw.
    78:37
    I think I got the hook in him. I don't know. Maybe we'll have Dad listen to this. Maybe he can make the decision. Yeah. Dad, I also have Scared Stiff.
    78:46
    Now, if you traded him Attack from Mars and Scared Stiff, that would be a good trade. Yeah. Yeah, that would be a good trade. It would be colossally stupid on Bruce's part. It would, but it would be a great trade on my part.
    79:00
    It might be, but I think Ron could probably sell his Ghostbusters and get the funds to buy an attack from Mars. Yeah, probably could. The money's already pre-sold.
    79:11
    For Dialed In. Got it. But honestly and realistically, I will have that money by then, whether I sell the Ghostbusters or not. You probably get that fat tax refund money coming back, right? You can just pay for it on a pinball machine. That's part of it.
    79:28
    But honestly, I'll probably sell the Ghostbusters, and most of that will go to principal-only mortgage payment, probably. Oh, okay. Or just go into savings. It'll go to good use, not disposable income use. Okay. That's what I'm thinking. Fair enough. But I don't know. What else does Ron have that he would have to – I think it's rather funny that Bruce is dictating the terms of the trade where it's like, it's Ron's, you know, doesn't have to do anything, and he ends up keeping the two games, you know, that Bruce actually really wants. But Bruce is trying to, like, I mean, here's a variation on that trade. Tell me what you think of this. Attack for Mars and freedom for just Stargazer. So Ron gets to keep the stars because you're giving him freedom. Nah.
    80:21
    Nope, I want that Starz. It should have been mine originally. It should have been mine. Well, you guys aren't doing it right. You should let each other down when you're bidding on each other's eBay auction. Well, we didn't know at the time. We didn't know at the time. He cost me $65. And you cost me a game.
    80:40
    Yeah, I would rather pay the extra $65 than have the game than not end up with it. I totally agree. So you'll have to think about this with Dad now, but see? Yeah. Once he catches up on the – actually, I think he's caught up, so he should hear this one. What have you worked on lately, guys?
    81:00
    Projects. I worked on the Sea Witch with that – Hack of a hack. Oh, that was – so, yeah, at some point, someone had taken the actual – the entire wood panel, the wood panel itself was removed. Yeah. Everything gone. and at some point they, you know, like, okay, we've got to put something in there. So there's like a makeshift wood panel in there with a Bally transformer rectifier board. Oh, I'm so sorry. Like on a, actually, I like it. It's one of the ones that's all on a plate, like it's all one unit. Well, the transformers are slightly different, though. So it was actually quite easy to remove. Yeah, it's easy to put it in there, and it's functionally the rectifier board is exactly the same between the two. Yep.
    81:46
    How did they hack in the volume control? Oh, that's true. That's on the speaker. Yeah, it's on the speaker. So you were missing a knocker.
    81:54
    Yeah, because they took the entire board, the knocker, the, yeah, everything gone. So I actually have, from when I was working on the stars, I have the knocker. I have the bracket and the coil, although I don't have the plunger yet. You have the hard part to get. You don't have the little plate for the cabinet? That's in there. That's in the cabinet, okay. That's in the cabinet. So I just moved, and I moved it up a little bit so I actually have room for the knocker whenever I put it in there. And they had hacked, they had the bridges separate, like screwed to the metal plate, like below the rectifier board, and all kinds of wires running directly from the top of the rectifier board, and they put some extra wires on the transformer to this whole setup. Oh, my. So I was just, like, thinking, oh, God, please tell me they didn't cut any of the actual wires from the transformer. They just added wires, which is what they did. Why would they have added wires? Are they going directly to the bridges? Yes, they were directly to the bridges. So probably all the connectors and the solder points are probably broken or something like that. I am sure, yes. And the GI part of the playfield connector, the pin for the GI actually was not even there. It completely held it. It tarnishes and it gets really hot. I mean, that, by the way, is why you don't want a valley transformer in there. The stern ones are slightly beefier.
    83:27
    I'll say that. It is a slightly smaller transformer. Yeah, the stern ones have a couple extra volts. It's like fractions of a volt available in more current capacity for the coil ones and the lamp ones. Yes, I'm using the cards I was dealt. And I put one of the – so I ripped all that shit out and replaced it with the Great Plains Electronics. Yeah, Great Plains Electronics. No, that board's awesome, and you can have no worries with that one. Oh, I love the board. The problem is it's only available like once a two months, you know. Well, he makes it on demand when he gets enough people bugging him to make it. Yeah, so I got that in there. I found, and so if anyone is going to do something like this, I found the pinwiki.com transformer to rectifier board connection table was not correct. And did you fix it? Since it's a wiki? Maybe I should have. I thought maybe it was for, see, I'd almost, what I ended up doing, I mapped everything, and it didn't, two of them did not match. Then I went back to my old copy of the, this old, you know, the pin repair, Clay's guys. Some kind of bootleg copy of Guy J. Yeah, where he had a picture of the Transformer, and what I had matched his picture. you have other ballet games you could have looked at if you wanted to see it and other Stern games as well that is true but once I saw that it's like oh ok it's right well I mean anybody that's listening if you see something on PinWiki that's not correct there are people that review things for technical correctness and they do miss things but if they see a new edit on something like if you go in there and edit it so it matches and it's only going to help other people that do find PinWiki as a resource. I wrote most of the CPU original section on PinWiki where it explains the boot up sequence. So I was involved with that whole thing that started then, but I don't really patrol it like I used to, but I will review it probably once every two or three months. But there are other people that are kind of like super editors on there, like Chris Hibbler and Jim Paulson in Pennsylvania. They'll review any new entries and um you know it's probably just something that one of them missed ron did you have pictures of before and after now of your repair before and after uh i said i was going to do that and of course i didn't great keep up the good work thank you thank you it was pretty hacked that's what it was yeah i was actually going to film it and say like this is what it looks like before this is what it looks like now so yeah and then i had to i forgot what a paying the ass to repin, because I had to repin that the connectors in the game, especially the one that goes to the back box, the big, what, 20-pin? The 20-pin one, yeah. I'm not paying the ass. It's just tedious. But, plugged everything in, it fired right up. You butt-plugged everything? Oh, my.
    86:29
    Actually, I plugged the... If you're going to do this, did anyone out there who's still listening at this point with all this tech stuff, if you're going to plug in one of these director fireboards, triple-check, make sure you wired everything right and you soldered everything right, just plug the input connector, just the power connector in and test the test points first. That would be the cabinet connector, which I believe is the 8-pin one. Yes. So just make sure because if all your voltages are good then it feels safe to like okay now I can plug the other stuff in Yes exactly But it does change voltages when it not plugged into the machine and it is plugged into the machine. Yes.
    87:10
    Some of the voltages will read very high. Yes. Yeah, what you're looking for is, I think they're printed on the Great Plains board, aren't they? Yes, the instructions that come with the board tells you all the voltages you should be getting. Yeah. And then, you know, Dad's a really good guy, so his directions are always really clear and things like that. Like everybody says, I wish he would put the board back in production more often, because when I'm doing a project, I might just say, do I want to spend two hours rebuilding this original, you know, 100 rectifier board, or can I just spend, you know, 20 minutes swapping a brand new board into it? Yeah. And, you know, at this point, time is more valuable to me than anything. So, yeah, I'm going to say, hey, you know, I have enough disposable income, you know, I'll drop, you know, 60, 70 bucks on that board, stick it in the machine, you know, rather than say, oh, gee, I got to desolder all this stuff. And it might even be more than two hours. It depends on how hacked up the original board is.
    88:09
    And in my case, if I can even find where I put the replacement parts. Anything else you repaired? I repaired that, and that was about it. That was kind of a pain. And I had to bring a lot of it. Like, I was able to take the rectifier board back to the workshop, if you will. But a lot of the repinning and stuff I did at my parents' house, so I had to bring a lot of my tools over there.
    88:33
    Scott, any repairs? Well, if writing more software and sticking in machines counts. Basically, I'm working on multiball for Flash right now.
    88:45
    I have it working, but the beta tester that requested it, it doesn't work on his stuff for some reason. So we're kind of scratching our heads as to why.
    88:56
    I have a flash. You have a flash? Are you willing to? Well, there's actually a way you can test it. You can test it the same way I'm testing it, and it doesn't require seven digits or anything like that. I have seven digits in my flash, but the multi-ball you can test, and the way you'll simulate the second ball switch in it is the big tilt, weighted tilt that's under the play field that's near the out hole. that's actually going to become the second out-hole switch. So you can play the game with two balls, and then every time it's supposed to drain, you would just close that switch manually if you don't want to permanently change your game. The problem is that the four-square machine that I just bought is in front of the flash, so I can't get the glass off enough to actually really give it a good test. So how does the multi-ball work? The lock is the one switch? Well, obviously the eject hole on the play field is going to be where you're going to lock the ball. and what you do is every time you hit down the three bank of targets in the center,
    89:55
    it will light, it will actually start blinking the eject hole and then you put the ball on it and it will be steady. And there's an extreme amount of logic involved in that type of game if you're not going to just release the ball on the first switch hit. Like, for instance, if the ball drains before you're able to collect the locked ball, then you have to account for that. And that's extremely difficult to program. So I kind of took the cheaty way out and I said, okay, so you just lock the ball. You get another ball served to the shooter lane. Shoot that ball up. First switch it hits. Releases that ball and you're in multiball. So it's really simple.
    90:35
    Once it's working, you know, and solid, you know, I would entertain, you know, changes to it. I'm probably not going to do it to my game. I don't think Flash needs to be multiball. Yeah. But how do you do the – because there's only one switch. There's only the out-hole switch. I mean, how do you – Well, you have to add a switch. What you do is – Oh, okay. You use a memory from that tilt, and you – All right. Yeah, you run them down to – you know how your nine ball has, like, the two switches kind of stacked there, or a flight 2000 will have, you know, three switches stacked there? Yeah. It's the same type of thing. You just add a switch that sticks through the apron, and now you've got two switches.
    91:14
    All right. Yeah, but that's my main thing there. Other repairs that I did, I was playing fast draw the other day for, you know, Loughborough Atlantic City, and one of the drop target banks, the wood threaded screw that I always recommend people to convert over to machine screws, which, of course, I haven't done yet because I haven't swapped the play field yet. It was kind of pulling out of the play field, so I had to glue a dowel into it, let it dry, and I just screwed that back in, so that's back up and running. my F14 one of the switches for the locks at the top the actuator completely disappeared it actually fell off the micro switch it's somewhere in the machine I can't find it it's not somewhere where the ball hits it because I would have ran over it so I had to replace that switch you know small things that always happen on your games which is why I haven't gotten around to cleaning them off because I was going to start cleaning them off again I said I'll play a game F14 and I'm like why is that switch not working Had to go into ball search every single time. So I'm like, oh, great, the switch is missing. Wow. Can't make this stuff up. But, yeah, that's about it for repairs, haven't you, Bruce? You were painting your basement. Painting's done. Yeah. Officially done, and I actually converted my color DMD from a WPC to a Stern.
    92:34
    Okay. So you did a little software update with the USB stick? No, you have to do more than that. You have to replace the back plate on the color DMD. Oh. You need the plate to mount the White Star Stern secondary. Oh, the dot matrix controller board, too? Yep, and it comes in. You have to use different cables. Oh. So I had to buy all that crap, but now I have my color DMD now in the Lord of the Rings.
    93:00
    Oh. Designed by George Gomez. One of the last good ones he's done. That's Sprouse. Sprouse is good. Yeah, that's Sprouse, too. Does that mean that game? It's very similar. Yes, very similar, very similar. Just just in.
    93:18
    Pop the circuit voting. Final results are in. We have our six places. Six places. Before we get to the six places, we did have one more email. Yes, we did. From Mr. Eric S. You can answer that. Eric S. Russell.
    93:33
    He laughed at your Ground Zero Arcade comment. Yep, and really laughed. Yes, that it may include a game that you had sex on.
    93:47
    And he posted a picture of his best star's memory, the stars they have at the Sanctum. He had 934,400. Oh, my.
    93:59
    Now, did they have it set to pay $100,000 out on a special? Yes. Oh, okay. I really wish they would not do that. I know. I agree. So the sixth place is for the Papa Circuit voting. Just finished.
    94:13
    In sixth place, Bat City Open got 329 votes. The Pinball Showdown got 381. The Cleveland Pinball and Arcade Show got 392.
    94:26
    Vancouver Flipout got 419. Northwest Pinball Championship got 440. And who do you think was number one, Ron?
    94:35
    Oh, I don't know. Who was number one? Texas Pinball Festival, 443. Well, everything's bigger than Texas, you know. It is, but the bad thing is, who didn't make it?
    94:46
    Pintastic. Yeah, Pintastic did not make it. So. Unfortunate. What are you going to do?
    94:55
    Maybe go to the Texas Pinball Festival. Oh, my God. That's where I'm going. That's great. Of course, it's for next year's Texas Pinball Festival, but I'll probably be there. Yes, you probably will. Hopefully they will have their usual selection of classic sterns there. That's what I look forward to. I can't wait until three weeks from now when we go again for the other. I think we'll have a better time in the Arcade Expo. I think that was first, isn't it?
    95:22
    Yes, we did. Yeah, I think, yeah. The consecutive weekends I'm going to Arcade Expo, and the next weekend I'm going to Texas. It was not supposed to be that way, but Arcade Expo kind of got moved.
    95:33
    So, other than the color DMZ swap out, I'm going to start working on stars next week. As far as I mean, he's got it already. Yeah, I got it in my head. Wow. And considering that Ron has finished the stars, Bruce is already planning, well, I'm going to fix everything that Ron did wrong. Exactly. No, nine ball.
    95:56
    That's even going to be more fun. Oh, bless you, son. I know. I'm going to need it. Have fun with the mech. Enjoy. Oh, I'm going to buy it. It's not hard. Just paying the ass. It just takes time. Paying the ass. Up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down. That'll be my... Yeah, that game does do a lot of up and down with the targets. That would be a good one to actually redo the software on and add some auxiliary boards in that actually could drop more than one target at once. That would probably change the entire character of the game.
    96:25
    That would be cool. I wonder if there's an easy way to do that. Let me think. Auxiliary ball? Because it already can control.
    96:32
    Well, yeah, but do you get what I mean? You know what the complaint is with nine ball. Like, you've got it down to, like, oh, I'm on ball number five, so I just hit, you know, number six down, and now the whole bank has to reset and then drop, you know, one through six. And that takes time. You know, it's going to-to-to-to-to, and it's, you know, dropping them down. Wouldn't it be better if it just reset and then dropped the ones down that, you know, all at once? Honestly, I always thought that was one of the cool features of the game. Yeah, doom, doom, doom, doom. Of course, it's probably not the best for wear, but I always thought it was a cool effect. Well, I mean, it would still have the same amount of wear.
    97:11
    I mean, the nice thing about the CERN DropMax, which, of course, I've emailed you, Ron, on your 9-ball, and, you know, hopefully you share that information with Bruce, but, I mean, it's completely adjustable. It's got the two set screws on each side, and you can twist the bar like you need to so that you can get everything resetting fine, and even accounting for wear.
    97:29
    Yeah, I'm going to be playing with that because I still have the first target. Number one is still not going up all the time, so I have to play with that a little bit. Yeah, so you're going to be doing some twisting on that side as well. Yes, exactly, which I'm not worried about. No, that'll be relatively easy. The big pain in the ass, of course, is taking the mech on and off the playfield if you need to, which you shouldn't with that. But, yeah, no. And then I'll need to play with the holes where the locks and the balls sit in, of course. Oh, yes. Well, you know, the drop target mech does have the connector on it. Yes, it does. You can actually take one connector off and get the thing off. Yeah. So, I mean, they were saying. And how many screws are holding it on? I mean, really, it's a nine. It's only four, but it's a nine-wide, you know, drop target tank. And they're holding it on with four screws. If nothing else, take the mech down off the playfield and make sure that, like, I would put dowels just up in there, you know, just on general principles because they're loose, you know, over the years. Yeah, probably. I agree. You don't want that mech to be loose at all in the playfield because that's just going to make any problems exaggerated. And I like the electrical tape on the light board.
    98:38
    Oh, CERN always did that. You'll notice that, you know, your big game has that on the light boards and Meteor always had that. It's just kind of like an insurance thing. And, you know, over the years, it probably turned out to be better than what other manufacturers use. They use that weird cardboard that distorts with heat, and they end up just falling off or turning to dust.
    98:57
    Okay. So that's all done with my repairs. I have one more thing. One more thing. And a new subject we're going to talk about. Okay. I'd buy that, and I would not buy that. Oh.
    99:11
    I would not buy. Okay. What have we got for I'd buy that this week? Only one, but it's a good one. Are you ready? Are you following along, Ron, with the ticket numbers, or are you just going to listen in? Hold on. I'm going to actually bring eBay up and go ahead and punch that number in. Okay. When you guys are ready. I'm ready.
    99:32
    172-540-988-734. Alien Poker. Oh, yeah. There it is. $9.95. Buy it now. 750? Yep. Where is it at? It is in New Jersey. Oh, it's in New Jersey.
    99:52
    Let's see. Who could... Oh, my God, is that faded. Yeah, it's faded. But it looks like a good player. Plus, Planetary Pinball is... You can get the back glass now. Yes, you can. Yes, that's a very good back glass for them to remake. Looks like there's some touch-up in the lane where you whip out of the entry, but it's not that bad. No, I think it's not that bad. 750. It's always not one. That's the starting bit, of course. I mean, I have owned Alien Poker before. It has the wrong spinner on it. It's got a Gorgar spinner on it instead of a supposed to be a firepower type spinner. Got the original bumper caps, which is good because they're impossible to find. What else we got here? I broke it on the right-hand side.
    100:34
    Oh, the center. Wait, what are you saying is broken? Oh, the stand-up target. The right-hand stand-up target on the blue one. Yeah, they're common as sin. You can get those. Exactly. I think PBR even has them. Yep.
    100:48
    The cabinet is extremely faded on the left, but the head is not faded, so that would lead me to believe that that head is from a different alien poker, or they had it in a very strange location that really exposed the body.
    101:02
    But I like the game. It's always been a fun game for me. It is not a bad game. Nope. 750? Good deal, I think. Yep. Back glass looks decent. I go with that. Okay. Hey, game I would not buy. Ready? Is this another eBay? Hold on. It's another eBay. All three are eBay. It's not going to be a Gottlieb again, is it? No, it's not. Nope. All right. Go ahead with the number.
    101:25
    302-2267-01253. Pinball machine. 70s Valley Kiss. And watching. And why would you not buy it other than the fact that it looks like it doesn't come with legs or a head? Wait, go scroll the pictures and look at the head. Oh, there's the head. Oh, my. That looks like it's been rather wet. Yes, rather wet. Oh, warped. Yeah, that's going to need a new cabinet. That is going to need a new cabinet. Oh, God, that looks horrible. I know. It's in Shelbyville, Michigan, probably pulled out of one of the Great Lakes. Yes, I think it was pulled out of the Great Lakes. It's a fucking turd. Look at it. Oh, wait, there's more. Look at the price. Well, 50. It's $12.50. Buy it now. No crack? Seriously? That's free local pickup, though. It is free local pickup. I didn't see any pictures of the back glass, but if you read the description, it says hard to find. Hard to find. Because the back glass, but it's in pretty rough shape, looks complete, needs restored. The wood on the head needs repaired. As over age, it's become loose and very wet, but it doesn't say there. Could be switched with another ballytop or repaired. this is a project piece so it adds as where it is okay so this is something that I almost guarantee and it looks like there's no playfield glass because it's extremely filthy the there's a lot of wear on the playfield too that's if that's dirt it will clean off but this looks more like it's wear to me I mean that's one of those things that if you know you could restore this if you happen to have a KISS cabinet around it could be restored but this is something that I would run away from or not even entertain by I would not buy this. Yeah, this would be $100 or $125. One-tenth of what he's asking would be a fair price for this game. The first line burns me. This is just out and out. Why? Hard to find machine.
    103:27
    No, it's not. This is one of their higher production numbers kits. They made a ton of these. Are you ready for the next one, guys? You thought that one was bad?
    103:37
    Hold on a second on that one. And I'm trying to look the very first picture. What is that that's in the background behind it? It looks like he's got something leaning against it, and it looks pinball-y type artwork.
    103:49
    GM, it says on it. It says GM, but it looks like there's something leaning up against it that sort of looks like a pinball. It looks like a playfield turned to the side. It does. So, you know, what does that tell you about the seller?
    104:04
    Is it a big guns? No. I don't know what play field it is, but, you know, sellers that have multiple games and then they – I mean, the seller is honest with it. He says it's in rough shape and things like that. But sold untested, I mean, this is – he's fishing, you know, at that $1,250. Oh, he's hoping. Because it's chipped. Yeah, he's hoping to grab somebody that just sees it, and he's like, oh, I'm just going to see if I can, you know, dump this piece, you know. If he gets anything over probably $250 or $300, not that you should really part it out. I've definitely, you know, I used to hate KISS. I thought it was a horrible game and boring, but I've mellowed a little bit on it. I mean, it's still not the greatest game in the world, but it's not that bad. Are you ready for the next one? Give us the next one. I would not buy this one. 1-6-2-4-0-3-0-1-3. 399.
    105:04
    Okay. It's another project. Pinball Machine, 1978, Valley Playboy. Needs work. Oh, it needs work, alright. It needs some paint. That is a very, very faded cabinet. Holy shit, that's faded. It looks white. How about the back glass, guys? Did you see the back glass? Oh, that is... Oh, my God.
    105:29
    Wow, it's actually got a backless in it that has 98% cleavage. I don't think I've ever seen that before. I have never seen a backless that bad. You can actually see it says AYB. You see a little bit of the key on the right, and you see a little bit of the cleavage in the center, and the rest of the glass is gone. Completely gone. It's like flaking.
    105:56
    They need restoration. Is that what the description says. Here's the worst thing. Look at the coin door. The coin slots are actually sealed over.
    106:07
    Operators do that a lot. There's probably no mechs or internals in it. They don't want it to compete. I'm looking at the play field. It definitely looks like it had mouse shit on it at some point. There's a stain down the bonus ladder. It's actually not too bad. It looks like it has all the original targets, the chicklets that you can't get. That's right. That's the tombstones. You can get them now.
    106:30
    I mean, it's restorable. It's probably more restorable than the Kiss that we looked at. Now look at the other side fade. Did you see the other side fade? Both sides are just equally faded.
    106:44
    It's in need of restoration. Make me an offer. Make him an offer. $25. He doesn't have the means to ship it, so this is in need of restoration, and I do not need it. Who does? it doesn't have the means to store it any longer. And I've got to tell you that it looks like he's got it outside. Oh, yes. It's been outside for years, I think. Yeah. See, I would worry about machines that are down south where it never freezes to see if it has termites in it. Or salt.
    107:14
    Salt. I would take salt over the termites. Yeah. That's pretty rough. Yeah, that would not be one that I would buy either. So, Scott, I'm going to give you one that I would buy if I had the money. Are you ready, guys? Sure. Ticket number 252769227609.
    107:40
    Ah, a restored Meteor pen machine. That's cheap, $2,200. Meteor should be worth much, much more than that. Really? It's actually a really nice job he did on this. considering that the amount of work and money that probably went into this machine it's strange it's not letting me zoom on some of these pictures i know because i kind of want to zoom i mean it looks extremely clean with that transformer he's got uh who makes the red rectifier board i forget it's the pin star one i think okay i think it's the pin star one um looks like he cleaned all the stuff in the in the front um okay here's a picture of him repainting the cabinet so It looks like he added some colors to the rocket. It's got some blue in it that wasn't originally there.
    108:27
    It looks a little too glossy, like, for the cabinet. I mean, I know some people like that look, but that's not something I would care for. And he probably made an aesthetic decision to paint the door black instead of the gray hammer tone that it should be.
    108:43
    I didn't mind it, though. I actually thought it was worth $2,200. That's the first question. I would say, yeah. Yeah, I mean, Meteor is my favorite game of all time. I mean, I wouldn't pay $2,200 for one. I do like to keep aesthetically my sterns the way they were originally. Yeah. And it looks like he corrected some ills in it, like the flipper thing. And I said, yeah, that's a decent one. Let me go ahead and read some listing.
    109:12
    Okay, so, well, that's why it's shiny, because he sealed it with automotive clear coat. I mean, I would prefer a more matte finish on it, but that's an aesthetic thing. So you drive into California to pick it up, Bruce? No. Okay. Okay, it's in California as well. Yeah, we're equal opportunity here. We show everything. Yeah, of course. And you probably have some listeners out there. Okay, so it says pinhead rectifier board. That's an interesting board. I'd have to check that out. Yeah, it's nice to see it. It includes the old boards with the sale, so there you've got $200 worth of boards. I know. Not bad. New knocker, new flipper buttons, new hardware, powder-coated legs. restored coin, well, I mean restored coin door. It's changed, but that's fine. Completely cleaned and waxed, and it did look like a decent play field. Yeah, not bad. New flipper assemblies have been installed. I wonder if they're the pinball life ones. New drop targets installed, so there's your hint right there, because, you know, chiclets just aren't available now. New pop-upper caps. The bed.
    110:16
    One display. That's probably a loose connector. three wear spots can be found on the play field and he was going to replace it with a CPR play field when it's available which hopefully will be soon because I will actually buy one of those as well flaking and back glass I don't think that's a bad deal at all I like that meteors in good shape are pretty hard to find I would reverse the drop targets for sure and, you know, do some work with the flipper in the corner. Because it looks like they installed the flipper plate slightly off. That's why it's moved over. The left flipper looks like it's definitely too far under the rail, the return rail.
    111:00
    I thought you were going to get a cane out of those boys. Oh, yeah. Well, you know, I love meteors, so I'm going to work that judgment. That's why I pulled it up.
    111:09
    So we'd buy that. It is done. And we wouldn't buy that. I love that Playboy glass. That was something. It was like, there's no back glass in it. Oh, wait a minute, there is. Yes. So you like that. Somebody should grab that picture off the end and just archive it for future reference. So I thought you guys would like my new segment of I would not buy that. I'm going to try to find a couple more every kind. We'll pop them in. Pop them in. Yeah, make you smile. So, upcoming shows. Tournament coming up in two weeks. This Thursday is the tournament in Syracuse for the comic book shop. And the 25th is Keeler at Rock Fantasy for the Winter Open. Rock Fantasy Winter Open. Match play madness. Yep. So, a couple coming up. And don't forget www.pinballlifter.com. Waiting for the joke from Scott.
    112:11
    Waiting for it. Okay, good. No, I'm actually, I was looking at other eBay auctions. A couple things on eBay right now I'm looking. Like, there's actually the drop target assembly for our Flight 2000.
    112:24
    The big one or the side one? The big one. Which, interestingly enough, is the same exact mech that Ninepaw uses. Yep. Except that it's missing, you know, the fingers for the drop targets that aren't there. But it is a nine-wide drop target mech. I'm looking at it. Oh, my God. This one's a roach for $80. It's just funny having all the stuff you can find on eBay and go, yeah, no, no, yeah, no.
    112:50
    With that second yawn, I think it's time to pay the bills first. I think I've just paid them. With www.pinballlifter.com, come check us out with all of our lifting helpers, tilters. What else? Creature mods. Get your license plate frame from me, too, if you want.
    113:08
    We've been getting an uptick on sales, so I'm very happy with that. Thank you, guys, and I hope all you new customers are enjoying your new products.
    113:17
    So I'd like to thank Scott for appearing once again on the podcast. You're welcome, guys. You got, like I said, the positive, Scott, and I'm sure now that I've suckered Ron into buying an e-prumber, I'll be using him as my beta test mule for all the games that I'm too lazy to clean up. I have time. I'm going to be burning probably the Stargazer ROMs. That'll be my first test. And I get to enjoy them then. Oh, that hurts me so much because those Stargazer ROMs actually aren't mine. I'm sorry. I always thought they were yours. That's the funny thing. And then he's like, oh, they're Oliver's. That's the problem with being vocal about things. But now it's Oliver from Switzerland, Sweden, wherever he is. I hope he's okay with whatever that terror attack was that just happened in Sweden that I heard about on the news vaguely today. but yeah ha ha no I didn't know I didn't know about that well you might want to just research it for a little bit of a laugh oh I saw it now I see it now yeah but I'm just kind of looking along here but yeah Ron that one's just right from Oliver you can get it right from his page you don't even have to play with burning stuff on it but I'm sure some of your other games might need some corrections like Harlem Globetrotters give that a give that an upgrade and a facelift.
    114:42
    I'll be happy to enjoy your Star's upgraded software and your Stargazer upgraded software soon enough, Scott. Right after the trade, yes, I'm sure. Once again, thank you everyone. This has been episode 32, Moonraker. We can be found on Facebook. Just look for Slamtail Podcast. We can also be found on YouTube. Just look for Slam Tilt Podcast. I also just set up our Twitch channel, which I don't know when or if we will be using that anytime soon. Again, you can just search for Slam Tilt Podcast on Twitch. I actually have linked Timmy, Tim Balls off of there, so when he broadcasts, it should show up on our channel. I believe that's how it works. I'm new to the Twitch things, but I linked to him, so hopefully that's how it works. So thanks, everybody. Thanks to Scott again. Thank you again, Scott. See you next time. Say goodbye, Bruce. Goodbye, Lorne Peretti.