What's that sound? It's For Amusement Only, the EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast. Welcome back to For Amusement Only. This is Nicholas Baldridge, and today I have a special guest, Don Walden from the Pinball Podcast. How are you doing, Don? Doing good, Nick. How are you? Doing well. Don just went to the Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown, and he was able to try out the Scorgasm Master. Yeah, very excited to try out the Scorgasm. How did you like it? I loved it. It was actually sold that first day, and so they covered it up. But I was able to try it out at least before they packed it up that second day. So I was with Mike Shevchuk, who was one of the guys who did the board work on the game. And he kind of walked me through the different features, the scoring, what it was all about. For the longest time, I thought it was a joke because it came out around April 1st, and it has such a ridiculous name, which I know Terry has talked about on your show before. But no, it's a real thing. It's way bigger than I expected it to be. It's very large, I guess. Yeah, I had no idea until I talked with him how big it actually was. Yeah, it's sizable, and it comes in a pretty decent-sized box, maybe half the size of a Stern box or a typical pin box. But, yeah, it's still pretty large. It's under glass and everything. It feels very polished, very finished. It doesn't feel like a cheap toy or anything. It's the real deal. It looks great from pictures. But as far as the gameplay, what did you enjoy about that? So the gameplay is pretty simple, and I like Bagatelle games, but I seem to have a hard time finding them or they're really dumbed down. But this one has a lot of scoring holes. And basically, you'll load your balls up or you'll empty the previous round or whatever. Anyway, there's a hidden cache of balls. And they're marbles, and they're kind of a typical marble size, I guess. And all you do is you plunge them and hope for the best. And you can kind of nudge a bit, but there is a little built-in tilt mechanism. It's a pedestal tilt, I think it's called. and if you knock the ball off the pedestal then your game's over so it's kind of an honor system thing where you can't get the ball back on the pedestal without resetting the whole game anyway so if your buddies notice that it's gone then your game's over anyway so you launch the ball I guess the best case scenario is you get it straight down the middle and there's like two little hourglass shaped diverters I guess in the middle and I'm trying to look at, I've got their site open. Okay, so scoring here, the top hole is 800 points, but there's a hole in the very top without any pins around it and a subsequent ball in that hole will cause the 800-point hole, let's say, to bounce down a row to 1,500 where otherwise it would be inaccessible. So the whole time I was playing, that was my main goal, was get it in the 800 and then get it in the scorgasm hole, which is easy when you don't want to do it, but difficult when you have a ball primed and ready to go. I got the ball into the scorgasm thing several times, and what it does is it just gives you your ball back. It loads it back into the cache. So it's like a free ball, but, again, it'll boost your scoring if you have those balls primed and ready to go, which I think I did once. I think my score, you talked a little bit about scoring. The highest score you can get is 27,000, I think. And my score, I want to say, was 5,100. I know Jeff beat me by 100 points when he played. He got 5,200, I think. And the best score I saw when we were just standing around, there was maybe eight of us playing, was in the 7,000 range. I forget what. But, yeah, all of us did pretty bad. But it was still compelling to try and do our best. And it was the kind of thing where you know you can do better, so you want to play again and again, which was really satisfying. It's kind of a classic gameplay. I mean, an old lady could figure it out. A little kid could figure it out. There's not much to it, but it's still compelling. There doesn't necessarily need to be, though. No. Yeah, you're right. How many balls does it give you? I think it gives you 10. 10. Okay. It might be eight, but I think it's ten. And one of the balls is a... Ten would be what? Typical? Typical for the era. Okay. I think it was ten. One of the balls is colored red, and that one gives you double points in whichever hole it ends up in. Which I would often get that one in Scorgasm Hole, which awards you zero points. Perfect. Yes. So, is that something that you could see hanging out in your collection? Yeah, I really want one. I wanted it right then, and the one that was there was sold, but I was kind of nagging my wife. I got her to play it, and she really liked it. The price point is $1995.00, like $1,995, which is a lot, but if you think of it kind of as a piece of furniture, it's really a nice, sleek design. It's not gaudy at all. It has nice legs, and even the bolts are chromed and everything. I don't know. I could see it as something you keep in your house and the grandkids end up playing someday, which might be a little over the top, a little presumptuous. I don't know if the resale market is going to be there on these. I guess it depends on how popular that initial run is. But I don't know. I kept telling my wife it was kind of like my ice cold beer. There's not a lot to it, but everybody gets it and everybody likes it. and I don't see myself selling that any time. Whereas with a pinball machine, maybe there's a different theme that comes along that I want to try, a different layout or whatever. You know, the pins I have aren't as classic, so they get flipped a little more often than something like this. And it's not that big. It's, you know, it's not taking up the full footprint of a pinball machine or probably even an arcade machine. It's maybe, I don't know if the dimensions are on here, but maybe two and a half feet deep and then a foot and a half wide, roughly. Maybe a little bit bigger than that. Maybe a foot tall. And it's on legs, so it's, you know, your typical pinball height, maybe three feet tall, three and a half feet tall. I don't know. I really want one, but I can't quite get her talked into it. How close? Give it time. Yeah. If they had an option that didn't have the sound and whatnot, Because the sound is kind of cool, but the game doesn't need it. The game uses a solenoid, but that's about it. You keep score yourself. Maybe if it had a custom scoring board, kind of like a dartboard has built into the cabinet, that would be kind of cool. Well, you could certainly program that in yourself. Program it to keep score? Yeah. Add switches and all that? Yeah. You're overestimating me. Oh. You could program it, perhaps. One could. One could, yeah. Should they choose to do so. It would involve something like on a bingo, you know, the switches that light up the holes in the back glass would need to be used. Yeah, what type of, now that I think about it, I had a bingo a while back. What kind of switches do they use in the actual holes? Well, I'm glad you asked, Don. You're the guy to ask. Yeah. So they use, I'm looking for a spare part that I had, but I don't have it right beside me anymore. It looks like a micro switch almost. If you are looking at it from the top, you know, there's a little piece of a leaf that's sticking out. Yeah. When the ball presses on that, it actually pushes on the common part of the switch, which is just this huge metal piece, which is about maybe half the size of a bingo ball. And that sits in a little area. Boy, I'm terrible at describing this. Well, I mean, I'm trying to think of it. The switch is there. Where does the switch go when the balls are released? When the balls are released? It just releases. So the ball, when it sits on it, it just pushes it in because there's no room. It has nowhere to go. It doesn't push it down. It pushes it in. Okay. I'm thinking of it differently then. So the ball's not sitting on it. Well, the ball's sitting on it, but sideways. The ball's basically crowding it out. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. so you could do something like that if you really wanted to you could do something like that but it's not I don't think it's necessary and yeah it's it is a classic type of gameplay I mean I appreciate those games and I also appreciate the silence yeah this one if you get it in the Scorgasm hole it plays I think there was 20 different sounds or 40 different sounds. I want to say 40, actually. They're programmed in. It might be anything from a coin drop or somebody gasping or somebody whistling, like a cat call. They're just random, but it also has five songs. There's buttons on the back, kind of like the operator buttons on any other game, any other pin. Same thing, but you can change between five songs. The sound system on it is actually really good, but I just don't feel like I would necessarily need it. it does add kind of a cool effect, but I don't know. It'd be fun to toggle it on and off every once in a while. Yeah, it'd be fun in parties, and then it'd be nice to not have it on as well. When you're playing at 3 in the morning going, I'll play it at 9 p.m. after my kids are asleep. That's about my time. Yeah. so you played it there and then they quickly hid it from view and took it away yeah I didn't even know I knew it was going to be there but I forgot it was there because it was kind of wedged between a table and a wall and then they put a tablecloth over it after it sold and I wondered I think I asked Joe Case why did you guys cover it up what's the deal? They don't want anybody playing it. And they said some kids were being really rough with it throughout the day and they just didn't want anything to happen. I think it's built to handle the abuse, but since it was sold, it'd be a shame to have something happened with so many non pinball, you know, members of the public. They're just kids doing that. The, the shooter rod feels like a pinball shooter, but it's a bit shorter. It's maybe three inches shorter. Um, But everything felt really nice and solid, and it does not have a coin mech, but it feels like it could. You know, it's that level of quality, I felt, anyway. A lot of it is 3D printed. I noticed even when you kick the ball in, there's like a little 3D printed plastic that keeps the ball from dinging up the wood, and that was starting to initiate just the hair. so they had talked about putting a piece of metal there or something which would totally fix the issue but it's kind of cool seeing the 3d printed pieces in there and it doesn't it doesn't take away from the game and doesn't make it look cheap or anything it looks looks cool i mean it looks polished nice so how many one thing that really impressed me was the legs yeah legs are really nice really bright chrome on the uh i don't know the hardware i guess and then they're painted They're black with red lines inlaid. Really cool. Yeah, looks very sharp. It sounds quite attractive. Like Rockola legs, are they in that deco style? Yeah, yes, very similar to the Rockola legs. I think they're a little bit thicker, though. Rockola, I always feel like they're going to fall over to me. I know they can take it. Well, they are pretty old. They're old. Well, yeah, but they're real thin. the rockola legs. Kind of that high center of gravity. I don't know. I guess I've never seen one knocked over, but you don't see them that often, period. Maybe because they'll be knocked over. Yeah, you don't want to be the first. Mm-mm. No. Smash. How many 3D printed parts can you see above the plate field? Because I had the impression it was just some internal mechanisms and so forth. Oh, no. The pedestal, the tilt pedestal thing is both parts are 3D printed. The hourglass shapes in the center are 3D printed. Oh, really? Yep. I want to say the shooter rod or whatever, all three rods, I think the honeycomb. What's it called? Beehive? The beehive, yeah. Yeah, the beehive. I think those were 3D printed. Really? I don't remember. Right. And then whatever that little black plastic thing is, kind of where the ball kicks out, that's 3D printed as well. A little cover, I don't know, cave. I think that was it though. The lifter cover? The lifter cover, there you go. Huh that interesting There a lot more visible than I thought I knew that there was a small piece of the lifter underneath that was 3D printed but didn realize there was so much above I didn't get to see the inside. I think there are pictures on the WordPress site, maybe. I've seen pictures of it being put together, but I didn't get to see it in person. I'm not sure how the glass comes off, either. I don't know it was late at night and he was kind of just like alright don't take a look at it, don't draw attention don't make too much noise yeah don't be rough like the young cows yeah don't attract any children yep so you had mentioned that you owned a bingo in the past and I wanted to talk with you for a moment about that as well. Sure. Some were excited about it, though. Moments about all I know on that thing. All right. So what machine was it? Was it a Bally Hawaii? Yeah, it was a Bally Hawaii. It weighed about 900 pounds. I paid 100 bucks for it from some guy who had the original receipt from like 1981, I think, where he had bought it off of a casino, I think, in Kansas or Kentucky. I think Kansas. Anyway, so he'd had it for almost 30 years or 30 years or so. So I bought it, and a friend and I spent 10 hours straight one day just working on it, trying to get it going. And we got it up to five balls, plunging and scoring and the whole deal, but it just would not do the last three balls. It was an eight-ball game, or at least it came with eight balls. And it looked really cool. There was a lot. There was so much crap in there, we didn't know what was going on. And after that, you know, we kind of sat there long enough, just long enough for me to forget what we fixed. And there was another guy in town who's in his 80s, and it was really nostalgic for him, and he wanted a project. So I just gave it to him to let him work on it. So we moved it for him and got it set up and all that stuff. And he actually, he moved it a couple times around town. Wow. He can never get it going. He gave it to another friend, the one that helped me the first time. He gave it to that guy, my friend David, and he worked on it for a while. And I don't know if he still has it or if he gave it to somebody else. Wow, that thing's been passed around, huh? It has, yeah. Nobody's got it going. it looks complete I think I ended up drilling out all the locks on it because we couldn't get into it and there's I think it would have two doors on the side one for the one for adding credits and one for the coin box one is a hidden coin box and then the other is a service door of questionable use. Yeah. I know that's how we were able to get the game going, is we stuck our hand in there and pushed something. Very informative, I'm sure. Yeah, right. Yeah, right behind the door is a mechanism called the comeback key. There was another key that was shaped like a bicycle key that you could stick in to rack up credits, like service credits. I believe you. Okay. So you had all five balls shooting, but couldn't get the extra ball working. Yeah, maybe so. Maybe it was a five-ball game, and so the other three were extra balls. Yes. I guess that just makes sense. Yeah, there was only one game that was not a five-ball bingo that Bally made, and it was a three ball. So it's a weird one. But Hawaii is actually the sister game to Double Up, which you can see in the background there. Oh, yeah. And so it's got one extra feature that Double Up doesn't have. But what's interesting is if you had it shooting five balls and scoring, you know, that's like 99% there. We were almost there, yeah. Yeah. So close. So close. It probably still does that. Who knows? Well, that's good. That's good. So I guess my question is, that's a 20-hole bingo. Have you ever played a 25-hole bingo? I don't think I've played any bingos. Okay. I've seen a couple others broken, like mine. But I can't recall seeing any working ones. No. Fair enough. I haven't made it up to Richmond yet to rate your collection. It's sitting right here. I'm waiting for it. Yeah, they're interesting. The 20 holes play completely differently from the 25. Where do they add the extra five holes? It's a totally different layout. Yeah, it's just a different layout. And what's interesting is that there are no holes which are of no value on the 25-hole bingo. But on the 20-hole, like on Hawaii, there are four holes, those star holes, which are completely useless. I thought that was to get your star lines or your mystic lines or something going. No, the stars count as your fifth in any event section, but they only count for the fifth. So if you had two others in the same section and the star, it wouldn't count as three. Okay. It's a trick. I remember an episode where you were kind of bashing them. Yeah. But without playing it, it's kind of over my head. Yeah. We need to get Farsight to port some bingos into Pimple Arcade. That would be awesome. Wouldn't it? Yeah. It would take forever to program one. You know, if you did it digitally, it probably wouldn't take that long. You know, a lot of what makes these complex is just understanding how the mechanics interact. But when you take that out of the equation, it becomes quite a bit simpler. But the only problem with Farsight's implementation is the nudge. they don't have a nuanced nudge it's just wham we'll do a kickstart to send you out there and teach them how to make it work if you could port one over which one would you port over which game yeah that's an interesting question what's the most mass appeal bingo that people would pay five bucks to play Probably the bounty that I sent you the write-up on. Okay. It's the most desirable magic screen game. The Twilight Zone of bingos. Yes. Although, you know, everyone has their own opinion, but that's my opinion. I like it. Oh, you're the one with the show. Yeah, there we go. Yeah. Everyone has to listen. Did you ever try the Gottlieb collection made by Farsake? Absolutely. Yep. On the Wii, one of my favorite games on there was Playboy, which was just a bag of tell, which was super hard. But it was nice that they at least put something different in there. Absolutely. It seems like that kind of release would, you know, Bingo would fit well in there. So it was an oddball selection of games they picked. Yeah, it was. For that. But they had Ace High. They had a couple of good oldies in there. Yeah, yeah. And also Victory. Yes. Also an oldie, but not quite as old. Not old enough, yeah. So, Don, do you play many EMs? Yeah, I love to, especially when I go to Vegas. I find, you know, I always go to the Pinball Hall of Fame, of course. I find myself playing a lot more EMs there because you just don't see them in working condition ever. and there you get to just they're all really nice and they work well and you can play Medieval Madness anywhere but you can't play I don't even know, like a nice Santa Great 37 for example or that Impacto that I love there's a lot of great EMs there. Locally I think I'm the only guy in league that owns an EM. I've got a Bally Beat the Clock and I've got a Zachariah Circus but there's actually an EM repair shop here. It's a motorcycle shop, but they work on EMs. They haven't had an open house in a while, but last time they did, they had a roller coaster, which was kind of cool. That's a fun one. Yeah. They had maybe 15 games, and most of them were working pretty well. What's the gimmick on Beat the Clock? That was the first multiball game on the table. So you lock one ball on the center, and then you get in another saucer, and they both kick out. But it's a four-flipper, the mini-flipper, which is difficult. I'm awful at it. My best game ever was a split-flipper game. I played with me and my friend's daughter. We're on a team. And the ball, we got it just right where it would go. If you go through the top lane, I think it lights double scoring on the pop bumpers. It would go through the lane, hit the pop bumper, go back up through the lane, that back down hit the pop bumper and did that several times in a row, which never happens, but it happened on us. And I think we ended up with 1,400 or 1,500 points, which probably isn't that good, but I'm terrible at it. The top score on that is 1,999, so that was pretty good. Well, it's 2015 now. I'll just point that out. Not the year, the score. It was three reels with an illuminated one or whatever. Yep. Yeah. So how long have you had that one? I've had that maybe four years. And we played it in league this last season, so maybe three months ago. And everybody did terrible. I was going to ask if there were any EM ringers on your team. No, no. There's no pinball ringers on our team. It was just a lot of people drinking and having fun. Well, drinking's good, too. That's all right with me. Yeah. So your circus, is that a project, or is that complete and working? It's sort of a project. I actually haven't touched it in a while. it plays, like it turns on, it plays but not all the switches score if I remember right. I think one of the scoring reels just keeps turning on the player one reels. It's been a while. It's in our back room and that's sort of our catch all. And every time we have a garage sale for kids baby clothes and what not it ends up as a clothes rack. Where it currently is. unfortunately. I only have room in my house for six pins and I only like to have five so I can walk around them but I've got six in here right now and a customer's pin so no room. The pinballers lament. I know. Yeah one of these days I'll have room for like 30 pins. That'd be sweet. So any EMs that you'd like to pick up? there's some I love. I love Old Chicago. That's probably top of my list. I love the layout and always have a good time with that. I feel like I know what I'm doing and it's compelling. I love hitting the spinner and watching the lights move instead of just hearing points rack up. But I made a point of putting my wife on it last week at Rocky Mountain and she hates it. She's terrible at it. So she's like, no, no, no, no, no. but that's one I really like. I like Fireball, you know, Centigrade 37, some of the classics. I haven't gotten too niche in the EMs I like. Have you played many wood rails? Some, yeah. Again, mostly at the Pinball Hall of Fame, but I played an Arabian Nights there several times. I really liked, at first I thought it was just a mess. If you look at the backbox, you know, you just see numbers everywhere, but it makes sense. You play it a time or two, it makes sense to you. And I remember especially liking that one and playing it over and over. Of course the art on that one is great. The big goofy face and whatnot. Who doesn't love that? I've got a big goofy face myself. So have you played any EM arcade games? You know, anything like Gun Game? Gun Games? Yeah. I'm not big on Gun Games. it's kind of a cool idea, and I loved like Revolution X and Operation Wolf and like those type of arcade games, but the gun games to me, I always feel like I'm just missing. It's not like a satisfying shot to me personally, and I've only played, you know, a half dozen of them. I do like kind of those nickel, oh gosh, what the heck are they called? I've talked about it on the Pinball Podcast and I can never remember what it's called, but it's like where the nickel rolls from from one side to the other, the machine. It looks like a cigarette machine, kind of. And the ball loads, or the nickel will load in the side It roll down into a different pocket and then it hooks it again You knock it down again the ball will roll to the other side or rather the nickel will keep rolling Whatever pocket you get it in you earn more credits I'll have to look it up. It's something dumb. It's like roll a nickel or roll a dime or something. But they have two of them there, and they're different, and I really like both of those. Like skill roll? Is that one of them? Skill roll, maybe. Yeah, I should Google it, I guess. I do have a modern computer here. Skill roll. Got one too. Yeah, skill roll. Yeah, you nailed it. Yay. Yeah. I spent a lot of time. Oh, wait. No, it wasn't skill roll. I have seen this one. Maybe they have this one, and they have one with animals on it. I remember specifically the animal one, like zoo animals. That one's harder. Yeah. I don't know. I have a picture of it somewhere. But, yeah, this is exactly what I was describing. so the harder you fling it kind of like a pachinko depending on how far it'll go and fall down a certain pocket I really like those there's one called I don't know what it's called safe cracker ish it's like a safe and you try to crack the safe before the timer runs out so you're just turning a dial and you feel like a vibration to know when to stop or I think it was lights and sound I don't know we were able to crack that one several times in a row and then the next trip we were never able to crack it so I don't know if we were just getting lucky or what. We cracked it so many times that we started putting prizes in for other people. There's like a $5 in there. Oh man, somebody's going to be super stoked to find $5. We found one of those little googly monster finger toys. There's a place in Manitou Springs, Colorado that's like a penny arcade and they had a lot of different things. All I remember is the peep show barrels, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Or it's just like a bad pun, I think. No actual peeping. But those are kind of fun. I'm trying to think if there's anything else that really jumped out at me. I remember something about ships, like blowing up ships or something. Battleship kind of thing. I don't know. Did you do an episode on that? I'll have to go back and see. You probably already covered it. I've done... Your battleship EM games. Battleship EM, not a submarine one Okay Is that what you're thinking of? It might have been a submarine Or a torpedo kind of thing Sea Devil, that's kind of the famous Sea Devil, maybe that was it But there are a bunch Of ones that were made Around the time of World War II Okay With different features Gun games and so forth Cool I haven't tried the bowlers with like the little dude the bowls I haven't tried one of those but those look really neat the mannequin bowlers yeah those are quite appealing I tried one where you're the bowler and it's like a miniature bowling alley and those are fun but the mannequin I tried a mannequin basketball game which is kind of cool but the bowlers look even better pigeon bats of course I like pitching bets quite a bit. Yeah, those are fun. I've never had one in a collection, but I've shopped one out. It's fun while you're doing that, but I'm not sure how long they would last in a collection. Yeah. At least for me. The two-player one's kind of more fun. Yeah. I can see that. At Rocky Mountain, what was your favorite EM-era game to play there? Probably that nice old Chicago. I'm trying to think what else they had. That's the one I kept going back to, and it's there every year, so I kind of look forward to playing that one. And your wife was shooing you away from it. Yeah. We didn't spend that much time playing together, but she just didn't like that one. They didn't have as many EMs as they have in the past. They had a Delta Queen. I only played it once. It played pretty well. That's a fun game. Yeah, and they had something like right next to it. I keep thinking of like they had a Medusa there, but that's not an EM. A Firepower. They had like early solid states around that same area. I guess I didn't really notice that there weren't that many EMs. Oh, they had a really nice Central Park. That's a fun one too. Yeah. Yeah. How did you do on that one? I'm pretty bad at that one too. I think I did better on it than I did on the Pinball Arcade though. for some reason I always get a goose egg on Bimble Arcade. I cannot make anything happen on it. Yeah, just tap the screen once and it'll shoot back up to the arch. I feel like I want to nudge. I find myself shaking my iPad. I don't have it set up for that. Yeah, it's different though when you're playing the actual machine. I do hope that one day they improve that feature. So, Zachariah, that circus, do you know if that's similar to Williams on the inside? Yes, it did seem similar. The only thing that was odd is it had an electronic soundboard, but the rest of it looked kind of like every other EM. in my opinion as a non-EM guy. It didn't look too unusual. If anything, it looks like there's less stuff in there than in the Beat the Clock. They all look the same to you, Don? Is that what you're saying? They kind of all look the same. Kind of, yeah. Yeah, I could send you some pictures, I guess, but it does look pretty similar. I was actually playing the Zechariah app last night, and I was playing Lucky Fruit. What is it? Moon Trip? Moon something. They added a couple EMs there. Combat is actually really cool. Zachary at EM. Yeah, I'm curious. They have the same strobing effect on their pop bumper lights that they have on their solid states. On their solid states. I know. I was thinking about that, too. I was like, I never noticed this on my circus. Does it really do that? Okay. Well, that's good to have confirmation. Yes. Yeah, they got the same thing. I don't see any. I don't think I've ever seen a Zachariah EM. I have seen a couple solid states, but, yeah. Head to Papa or ReplayFX or whatever. I know they have an aerobatics. Those places are far away. It's going to be a lot closer for you than me. How far is? I don't know. Eight hours, something like that. no that's nothing hitch a ride with Taylor not bad I could do that so you're the only EM guy locally that you know that's in league that's right and you mentioned a motorcycle shop that has like an open house and they yeah EM Pinball Albuquerque they kind of whatever they were working on at the time they own the last time anyway, they owned maybe five or six EMs of their own, but then they'd be working on another 10. That's why I was saying they were in mostly working condition. It kind of depends on how far they were into each game, but they had them there for us to stress test, I guess. It was pretty fun. Do bingos and EMs show up on your Craigslist? I should pull it up and see if there's any on there. There was a bingo on there that I told you about. I don't remember what it was. It was like Midget Lines? No, Mystic Lines or Magic something. I think it was a Tahiti. I might be wrong. Doesn't ring a bell. But it turns out one of the guys in our league owned that game, and he's the one who posted it because he was in a similar position, and he was just trying to get rid of it. There's a super score on here for $600. There's an Argosy for $500. They pop up now and then. They're usually really overpriced. They're usually $1,500 and up, even for a Beat EM. Really? Unfortunately, yeah. Trying to think. I just looked at one at another customer's house. He had an Ali, a Lucky 7. Amy had... Oh, it was Spin-A-Card. Mm-hmm. And actually, one of the other guys in the league has a Spin-A-Card as well. That's why I was like, oh, yeah, I know that game. But he doesn't quite have it up yet. He has it close, and it's in pretty nice shape. So it'll be nice to kind of throw that in. Yeah. Freak everybody out. That's a fun game as well. And another couple, they own a Gay 90s. Mm-hmm. But that's the only pin they have, so we haven't had League Night there or anything. I have not played Gay 90s, so I don't know how good it is. Who makes that one? It has a very memorable name. It does. This Super Score is kind of cool because the back glass is people playing pinball. People playing Super Score. That's Gottlieb, right? Yeah, that's a famous one. Two player, too. How much is that? $600? It says in working order. The cabinet looks really rough. In working order. And all the mechanics are on the ground. Well, you don't need cabinet paint to play a game, I guess. Yeah. Because the front does not have any cabinet paint. It just makes it easier to repaint. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's it right now. Gotcha. An overpriced Jurassic Park, but that's not an EM. And there is a Roy Clark the Entertainer. I know you collect cocktail pins. I could send that your way. I do have one right now. I need a drop target, so that would be helpful. What do you have? What's your cocktail thing? It's a Star Shooter. Star Shooter? What company is that? Allied Ledger, same company that made Roy Clark. Oh, okay. It's interesting. There's a bunch of drop targets, and they're all independently controlled, which is kind of unique for 1978. Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. It's neat, but it is very... It's like The Hobbit. Yeah, it's exactly like The Hobbit. They all pop up. Yep. And if you knock them down, different ones will cause others to raise and there's rollover buttons on the play field that cause certain ones to raise and it's pretty fancy for what it is. Yeah, that sounds cool. Yeah. I'm Googling it. I've got a Star Battle made by Coffee Matt. That's an interesting one. Do you have it working? No, I got it the month my kids are born. It's been a coffee table for two years now. It lights up, but whatever coffee table we had, they stood on and broke, so then I put that there so they could not knock it over. Well, that's probably a lot sturdier. Oh yeah, it's pretty heavy. This star shooter looks pretty cool. It is cool. Thanks for noticing. Yeah. Well, a lot of people knock the cocktail pins and some of them are pretty boring, but not all of them. Some of them are actually pretty fun. Yeah, they had some interesting layouts. So the big knock against them is the plastic mechanisms. Every mechanism is plastic. Oh, like the flippers and stuff? The flippers, the pop bumpers, the out-hole, the drop target, I mean, everything. Wow. Plastic. So, slings, I mean... Wow. You name it, plastic. So, stuff breaks. Yeah. There's no replacements. There's John Ed Robertson up in Canada. I don't know if he bought out a warehouse full of Allied Leisure stuff years ago or what the deal is, but he's got some pieces, but that's pretty much it. Send them over to Meezel Mods. Have them print them out. Yeah, I had an offer from some guy locally to do that. I need to actually take it apart and do some stuff. But anyway, this is all solid state talk. Come on, Don. I'm sorry. You're right. I'm on the wrong show. We need to bring you on our show and talk about Salt State. Old games no one's heard of. There we go. I apparently know a lot about this. So have you played many wedge heads? Yeah, a few. The Beat Clock is a wedge head. It's a reverse wedge head. That's a bally, though, isn't it? Or is it Williams? Yeah, it's a bally. A bally, yeah. I'm not a snob as far as what type it is. I don't know. Wood rail or whatever, it doesn't matter as long as it plays fun. That's a good attitude. Yeah. Do you like single-player games or multiplayer games, or does it really not matter at all? It doesn't matter to me. Single-player is an excuse to stand there by yourself for a couple minutes. You go on a challenge with a group and then have some extra time to just go use the restroom or grab a beer or whatever. I guess if I had to pick, I guess I'd pick a two-player. So at least there's some variety. But to me, four-player is more stuff to go wrong. That's true. But also, when you add multiple players, it simplifies the rule set, usually. Oh, I did not know that. That seemed to be the same thing. Well it the same thing for each player but yeah when you have a choice between single and multi usually the single player has a deeper rule set I guess you say so good to know I'm learning something hey I'm good for something that's me I was saying I don't know if I told you but I was telling somebody the other day that this podcast is maybe not this episode but this podcast in general would be a good resource in the future, kind of like Joshua Clay's repair guides. I did see that. Thank you. There's a lot of information here you're not going to necessarily find anywhere else, but will still be relevant in a year and five years and 10 or 20 years when somebody's going through a game from their grandparents' garage or whatever. They say, I wonder what Don had to say about this. Yeah. Skip. Click. so um have you played many flipperless games no i'm not um those rockola games jigsaw world series is all that's coming to mind i can't think of any like big body flipperless games i've played i'm sure there are some right oh yeah yeah So Especially around World War II You know that's When the bodies started changing In the 40s When the cabinets started changing Okay And so they got bigger And got to basically a standard size Yeah They're smaller than You know your typical Metal rail Cab but you know but they're still pins? they're still pins yeah okay so not like a baffle ball but no no they have a backbox and cool and all that yeah well yeah it sounds like we gotta get you out here to Richmond so yeah not a lot of you know pre-19 pre-World War II stuff in New Mexico well so yeah you'll never see American James Piekarz out in Albuquerque key. Really? Unless they're picking stuff from the 60s, yeah. I know absolutely nothing about New Mexico. So what's on your plate right now? You mentioned you're shopping a game for a customer? Yeah, I'm working on a Playmatics base gambler, which when they told me, oh, my buddy's got a space gambler he wants you to work on, I was like, oh, you mean Alien Poker? I said, no, I think it's called Space Gambler. It's like, is it Annie and the, what is it, Annie and the Astronaut? Annie and the Aliens? What is that game? Annie and the Asteroids. Annie and the Asteroids, yeah. Nope, it's Space Gambler. Sure enough, it's, you've probably seen it in articles about Star Wars knockoffs, because there is a C-3PO and R2-D2 knockoffs and TIE Fighter knockoffs on the art. it wants to work but it just doesn't I don't know it'll add credits but I can't get it to start the game and all the displays are a mystery right now there's numbers on them but they don't seem to make any sense what does numbers mean? I don't think they're diagnostic numbers although there is some interesting diagnostic stuff in it like it has its own test lead mounted to the board, which is pretty weird. I went through the manual for one of those early Playmatic solid states recently, and I was surprised at how much stuff they had. Yeah. And this was their first game, so I don't know if it got easier down the road, or if I'm just not getting it. I honestly haven't spent that much time digging into it. And beyond that, when does this episode go up? at some point in the future. If it beats ours, I actually just got a Capcom Breakshot, which I had not set on our podcast. But yeah, it's really cool. It's obviously an EM-style layout, but it's a solid-state game. I feel that it feels more like a solid-state game, but the rules are definitely more EME. And I love it. It plays great. yeah, the flippers feel really good. It's still really challenging. The whole game wants you to center drain really badly, but we've been having a good time with it. And it's weird seeing it in the lineup, like Metallica and Rocho and stuff. And then it's built like an EM, like the cabinet head is lower than the other games. The cabinet is flat, sort of like an EM. It's not tilted up, you know, like a Stern, a modern Stern or anything. It looks out of place where it is. So I'm going to freak out the league guys. None of the league guys know I got it either. But they're going to come here and be challenged to play it. There you go. Yes. Put it in a bank of EMs. Yeah. They already complained enough about, why are we going to play Roadshow again? I don't know that game well. You know, that's one that I had only played a handful of times before they just released it on that Pinball Arcade app, and now I can't get enough of it. I mean, I like that one quite a bit. Yeah, it's underrated. Just a dog theme. Or, I don't know, not a dog, but not that special either. Not super appealing to most people. No. If it was like Crazy Carnival or something, Funhouse 2, it probably would have a different place in history, but that's okay. Yeah. That's one we love, and everyone in League hates it because nobody knows how to play it. But now that it's on Pinball Arcade, we'll see what happens. Everyone will know, yeah. Yeah. It could get messy. You'll have competition. Mm-hmm. So, Don, I completely skipped over this, but how old are you? I am 34. Congratulations on 34 years. Thank you. Made it this far, yeah. And what is the first game that you remember playing pinball machine? I think it might be T2. I know I've been playing pinball a lot before that, but that's the first one I remember. I remember it being on Entertainment Tonight. They talked about it because it had speech from Arnold and it had the D&D was basically a new thing at that time. So it made me seek it out. and of course Adam Stanley was around that same time but when I was a kid I'd always played a lot of pinball everywhere we went and I wish I could go back and remember what games they were but I don't I know for sure I'd played Funhouse because I recognized Rudy when I got into the hobby again and I want to say I played Firepower but something I do remember as a kid is I saw an adult playing pinball and he would pull the plunger back and then push the barrel spring all the way forward and then let go of the plunger. And so from age 8 to, like, 25, I thought that's, like, the cool way to play. So I would always do that when I played pinball, which doesn't do anything, I think. It seems kind of proper, though, doesn't it? Yeah, it was just impressionable. It seemed like he knew what he was doing. You go to Rocky Mountain Pinball Showdown every year. Is that right? Yes. I didn't go last year, but I went the five or six years before that. What I meant is every year except last year. Right, yeah. Taking one-year-olds wasn't a good idea. Yeah, I wouldn't imagine. No. So you took your kids this year? No, we got a sitter this year. Oh, okay. Last year, everyone was too afraid to babysit two one-year-olds as well. Yeah. But they'll probably go next year. I think three. Three is a good age to at least do a couple hours of pinball here and there throughout the weekend. You going to start them on the scoregasm? They probably would like it. Have them shake the table? Teach them math, yeah. Yeah. No, they like playing. They like plunging the ball, but they don't pay attention enough to the flippers. They like flipping when the ball goes into the in lane and then flipping when the ball's in the drain, but not when the ball's actually touching the flipper. my kids they play the bingos and the youngest one really loves Mario but she hasn't quite pieced together what happens when you do certain things in it so I'm excited for that day I got multi-balled how old is your younger one? she's like 6 or so almost 5 she turns 5 in about 15 days well she gets multiball that's pretty good oh yeah yep yep she knows what she's doing she just you know isn't reading all that well yet so that doesn't help but repair so yes I know that you repair a lot of solid state games you talk about shopping out many a game on the Pinball Podcast, but how do you feel about shopping at an EM? Scared? I don't mind shopping them out. If they don't work, I'm a little more gun-shy. Typically, I get a lot of phone calls about fixing games, and if it's an EM, I always ask if it has what the displays look like, because most people don't even know what game they have. And if it's an EM, there's another guy in town I usually refer them to. but I don't mind going with him and learning a bit more. I've done that in the past. I do want to become proficient at them, and I shouldn't be scared, but I have that mental block where it's just over my head still. Well, you know, get the ones in your home working, and that will get you a long way towards it. figuring out how the schematics interact with the game. It's a lot more direct with an EM than with a solid state machine where you have a manual that kind of gives you the theory of operation. Yeah. Unless you're talking about a later EM. So. I forgot to mention on that Hawaii bingo, we did have all the schematics. We had the manual and these huge, like, blueprint-type rolls of schematics. Yep. We're a big help for David, not so much for me. Oh, yes. It's almost, I mean, for me, I enjoy using schematics and figuring out how to fix stuff through those. But for me, I have to have them in order to work on pretty much anything. And I'm pretty terrible about needing the paper. So if all that's available is a digital schematic, I tend to be pretty bad. I'm the same way. I want that physical thing there to be able to reference. It makes sense for some reason. It does, yeah. I don't know. I think Stern forced my hand there because the Stern manuals are only online, and they're really hard to get, and they're really difficult to read. And so it just made me, like, comfortable with the nice Williams manual in my hands. I know what I'm doing. Yeah, and those bingos were some of the first games with the manual and a schematic. So you had both. Nice. It's helpful. Yeah, I can't imagine. Can you imagine being the dude that had to write that schematic on a bingo? Smart guy. Well, you probably could. Yeah, smart guy. No, not me. But, yeah, the guy who did that, who designed most of the bingos, was an incredibly smart guy. And, yeah, just quaint the thinker. Was it just one guy? It was mostly just one guy for Valley. And United, it was mostly just one guy there, too. Wow. Yeah. Are they still around? No, they both passed. Both passed. but yeah well Don thank you very much for coming on and if anyone hasn't for whatever reason listened to the pinball podcast and they listened to me I highly recommend that you check them out it's Don and his buddy Jeff and they talk mostly modern but occasionally they slip in to me and talk especially when it's a quiet up bedroom. That's right. Um, Don, what's the, uh, the website, uh, the pinball podcast.com, the pinball podcast.com. So hard to remember. Um, and I know, yeah, well, thank you again. And, um, I look forward to talking with you more soon. Yeah. Thank you, Nick. Thanks for all you're doing, uh, for that side of the hobby. huge help over there, huge asset. So thanks for sharing your knowledge. Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Don. Talk to you soon. All right, take care. Bye. I want to thank my guest, Don Walton. Thank you again for listening. My name again is Nicholas Baldridge. You can reach me at 4amusementonlypodcast at gmail.com. You can listen to us on iTunes, Stitcher, Pocket Cast, via RSS, on Facebook, on Twitter, at Bingo Podcast. And you can find me on Instagram at nbaldridge. you can also listen to us on our website which is for amusement only dot libsyn dot com thanks very much for listening and I'll talk to you next time