It's the end of the world as we know it. And I feel fine. Hello and welcome to another episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. My name is George and I'm joined by my co-host Dave. Hello Dave. Hello George. Folks today we have a guest. Not only does he have a podcast and a Twitch channel called This Flippin' Podcast, he's a school teacher, a bartender, a wrestling coach, pinball operator, The next guest is our pinball restorer and tournament player, Tommy Skinner. Welcome Tommy. Hey, thanks for having me guys. Pleasure. Tommy, I'd like you to start. We're going to talk about a very rare valley game called Voltan Escapes Cosmic Doom. Please tell us about how you acquired this game and what you've done to it from a restoration standpoint. Yeah, no problem. So Vaulting came out in the late 70s. And it's really interesting if you go to the internet pinball database, which I find myself doing in my spare time and always looking up old and rare and different machines. You can look at Bally's production run. And for all the games around it, you've got like Playboy and Harlem and the Valley's doing these like 10 to 15,000 plus runs of pinball machines, you know, whichever one they're manufacturing. And then one day I noticed this title on there that had a production around 365, I think it was. And it says, Bolton Escapes Cosmic Doom. And, uh, you know, obviously that sparks your curiosity about what the hell is the deal on this one? Why are there so few of them? And when I look at the game, uh, it's, it's beautiful. And I mean, I think that's anyone who sees this machine and I actually streamed it a month ago, six weeks ago or so. And I backed it up to YouTube because there wasn't a lot of gameplay footage of this machine out there. So I wanted to, that was a big motivator for me in restoring this. Um, but there's just not a lot. It's very beautiful, but the I'm a pinball fan, it sounds like. I guess they were just sitting with me and then they got all mad. But yeah, so I decided it was a game that if I ever came across it, I would want to get it. And I never thought that opportunity would arise because they just, if you look up the number of owners, there's not very many of them. There's not really very any public places where you can find one to play. It's just not around. That's kind of the bottom line. Well, I want to interrupt for a second, Tommy. You made the statement, and you're correct, that 365 units were produced. And I've heard this theory before, and I don't know if we talked about it the last time we spoke, but it's called the half theory for every decade. So if you apply what you said on your stream when you were out on, what is it, YouTube or Twitch or both? Yeah, I got it on both of them there. Okay. You stated that you think there's 20 games in existence. And if you do the math, the math comes out to 20 games because the game's 40 years old. That's pretty weird. I know I'm not a math teacher, but I'm also not too dumb. I think I've, I've definitely heard of that theory. And I think I've done similar calculations. And I was probably looking up the data on, you know, just the number of people that owned it on pin side or pinball owners website. Give me a little bit of a better idea of how many there might be out there. Rare. Yeah, yeah, definitely not one you see every day, that's for sure. So where'd the game come out of? Where did you acquire the game? Well, so I did end up acquiring a game for this restoration. It came out of a barn in Ohio. I had personally있다الериlingt 게임솜찬, I put a Facebook post out there that basically said like if anyone knows where these went, let me know. I didn't care about the 8 Ball Deluxe because would they make 15 to 18,000 of those or something? Like I could find one if I want one. I don't need one covered in hay. But the Volton at this point, I'd already bought a playfield and plastics and was planning to build one from scratch like I did with the Stargazer last year. So that was my initial plan. But knowing that At theGBPH MovieTools website, click the URL for the video that I made about pinball and the inter 1988 article in RebelThat compared to data files in we 수도's WePod. Also discuss pinball content, game wholeness and shyness of listeners in the supermarket's experience with pinball取仔 should have addressed quickly that there was no video on pinball and voiceover training or tidbits of tambourins in a book. I think it's a good thing that I said that it could potentially be valuable if it was restored, but you know they're only at this point in time they're only been to restored in the past one was done by high end pins Christopher Hutchins, and the other one was done by Jeff Miller pinball pimps like I can make stencils. So, you know, like we were saying there's probably 20 in existence. Show such recording with a比 I'd like you to talk about both of those vendors. First off, did you ever make an inquiry to CPR to see how many of those playfields they actually sold and where they went? And then could you talk a little bit about this person Kuz? I've never heard of. Tell me how you know this person and what their claim to fame is. The only reason the playfield did get made is because for the most part Stu does CPR's artwork and Stu owns a Volton. He likes to preserve his games. So if he'll do the artwork for it, he can get playfields made and he might as well sell a few, you know, so it's worth his time and effort as well as CPR's effort for making the playfields, which I greatly appreciate. So as soon as those went up for sale, I bought one, not even like I said, I'm not even having the game, not really thinking I'd find the game, but thinking I could. Mechanically, it's a very simple game. It's five stand up targets and three pop bumpers, two spinners. So it wasn't going to be like it was terrible to find parts for it as long as you had a playfield and plastics. I did contact CPR at the time to ask them if they were going to do a back glass because I would like to order that as well. I want to support them. I really appreciate everything CPR does. Hi problemas, ombudsman sorround white diamond 1941ana else don' lavoreurous overth PACN gonna bruce ca importance quad Арb свои ER~~~ a9u4 pefea前 kid, Miles告訴 a6o Direct Wal onde jo etXaóh Iope it"... But basically, I was told by the artist that there's no way he would do the back glass because then people would build one from scratch and it would devalue his machine, which kind of pissed me off because that's just not how I view pinball. To me, pinball is something that should be shared. That's one of the reasons I operate games. It's one of the reasons I have friends over to play my machines, that I'm willing to restore these classic rare games so other people can experience them. So we just have a different viewpoint on that. It's no big deal, but it upset me. Especially since there was already other companies out there like BG Resto out of Michigan and KOOS out of the Netherlands who had the backglass. So it wasn't going to stop anyone from building one that wanted to. It was just kind of taking away potential business for CPR but at the same time saving the artist time from doing the backglass So I see both sides of it You know if your back glass is already okay well you don chilly c sustainableR Gucci vgyons awful puis otamo N thoInterna t finance ku heeft 92 inc stable reminds kr Bil be p pearlsor Magic proceedings ml craz ab hallway ara co computational subsidi Set ek sp buscaausch shy So, if you go to, I'll send you guys the link, but if you just Google Kus, and I hope I'm pronouncing that right, he's, I've done a lot of business with him at this point, he's awesome, but it's C O O S and you Google that with backglasses, his website will come right up. Um, and you are correct. I have a CPR back glass in my flash Gordon. And while it's in obviously much better shape than my original, the mirroring is there just a clear difference in how it appears. Um, I wouldn't say it looks bad, and it's definitely better than a trashed back glass. But if you were to set it next to a new old stock or just an original that was in good shape, the difference is immediately apparent. Franchi Pennsy, Artistic Director, So again, that's one of the things I appreciate them doing it. But it just it's I love mirrored back glasses. Like it's one of my favorite things. I think it's so neat how they integrate the mirroring into the artwork. So to me, if you're gonna have mirroring, it's important that it is true mirroring and it looks good. After getting the Flash Gordon one, I knew I wasn't gonna want Jules The Out Pinball Podcast is a production of the Center for Autism and Related Disorders, and is not intended to represent the views, views, or opinions of any individual or anyone. It is intended to provide information for the viewers, and is not intended to provide information for anyone. The reason why I'm standing here and going through his website is he was really into Bally Bingo Machines and I first heard about him through Nicholas Baldridge and Ryan Claytor and hearing them I believe discuss or maybe it was on a random website, I can't remember what the connection was. I think I found him separately and then when I asked a question about it, Ryan and Nick were like, yeah, we know him, we've worked with him, you know, when you're kind of trying to get some friends, you know, to vouch for a company before you send them a lot of money. Anyway, I ended up ordering some backglasses from him when I had some extra money for the Centaur and the Viking just because I wanted to upgrade them to mirrored to match my Harlem and my Fathom and my Frontier that they're sitting next to. I just think they look great. And when it came to Volton, coincidentally, he just had done the traditional backglass for that game right around the same time I actually discovered this machine. So I knew I could order one of his glasses anyway. And then I just reached out and asked if he'd be willing to do a mirrored version of it. If I could help design the mirroring, which he allowed me to do, which I thought was just really cool. And it was fun to get the ability to put some input into what should be and what shouldn't be mirrored. And by no means am I artist, I have very little artistic ability. But I gave my suggestions He's a great guy and he's a great guy. And I thought about it. And I, I had a lot of questions and input and I shared it with some artists friends of mine. And initially Kus thought there was too much mirroring and then I sent it to Ryan Claytor and he had the same thing, but he also said, Tommy, this is a game you're building for yourself. And you know there's a good chance this backglass is going to be a complete one off. Koos ended up thinking it was one of his favorites. He ended up printing one for himself. That's a great story. I had no idea that company existed in the Netherlands and now a lot of other people will obviously hear the story. That's great. I'm looking at the site right now, but I see all bingo backlashes and so forth, but you wouldn't know anything about anything else, ballet stuff on there, like the more current 70s stuff. If you click, it's one of the links on the left side, it might say shop or it might say just back glasses, it'll take you into his section and he has done lots of stuff. It's not all mirrored, but he's done valleys, he's done bingo, he's done Williams, a little bit of everything. Honestly, he's even redone some modern games with mirroring. I know Lord of the Rings is one. And really like all your big A titles, Adam's Family, Monster Bash. I mean, if you If you want a good mirrored backglass, it's the way to go to me. They are a little more expensive, probably. It costs the same to shift one or two of them. I feel like I'm just doing a sales pitch for Q's right now, but. Sure. Because I'm standing here, I'm in my living room and I have four boxes in my living room, each with two backglasses in it from him right now that I've helped put together group orders for that will be delivered at Expo. But it costs the same to shift one or two. So basically you can save a little money on shipping if you order two at a time. So I always recommend getting together with a friend and ordering one if you each need them or something like that. But it worked out to be about a hundred to $150 more per back glass. And with the true mirroring to me, that is well worth it. Especially when I was doing something custom, you know, like the vault and one that didn't previously exist. Let's talk a little bit about the gameplay. I know it's about the planets, is that correct? Yeah, so it's the more I looked at the game, the less sense it made, but essentially the vibe that I got was that they were going for a comic book superhero, but they didn't want to pay a licensing fee. So they create their own. Who's Volton, right? In my mind. And when you say he escapes cosmic doom, you obviously are talking about, you know, the cosmos and planets. And there are five stand-ups plus four rollover switches up top, the top rollover lanes. And they're numbered one through nine. You collect each planet by hitting one of those switches. And that gives you your first locked-in bonus, like the typical ballet games of 18,000. Collect them all PINBALL something up encrypted from a local live Velvet Averezo staple dough was presentMy favorite clip of any beedin' has a hot flashes that instantly touched the center of earth and is a trademarked What you're saying in your broadcast that it's a fixed amount, is that true? Um, a fixed amount. So I guess it's interesting. I think you said it's 10 points. It's 10 points until you light it and then it becomes a thousand. Ah. Yeah, instead of like a hundred point, like it's a very low value center. Okay, okay, I missed that. I missed the thousand part. I'm like, 10 points? So you can only light one spinner at a time and it came from either collecting the A and the B or the C and the D. I can't recall which two. I'd have to look at the rule card again. Yeah, it's out there so you can see it now. The really interesting rule, it doesn't tie in just to the spinners, but the spinners play a big role in it, is, and I think this is again part of what made this game confusing and why it did poor. From a gaming perspective, Levin Sameja and K.Kahamaiffs The only thing everyone has gathered is that Volton did very poor on location enough to where the full production run was never gone through with and that's why there's only 365 of them ever made. Well your center stand up target is your extra ball collect But unlike most games where you need to hit certain targets or you know collect certain level of bonus multiplier to lighten extra ball etc something like that The ExtraBall on Volting works off a number of December 16 two weeks later By Dave I actually wrote down what you said. Yeah. You said it goes from 10 to 40. 10 to 40. Okay, yeah. And again, I'd have to check the manual because I think I checked it right before I sold the game. Spoiler alert. Sorry. I think it might have been 25 is what it ended up being. But the whole point was like, if you got a really good spinner rep, and I had those spinners, you know, nice and juiced because it's basically a brand new game when I was done with it. I could see that extra ball light come on, you know, twice just while the spinner was going. I speak with Sirください, Company seeks to address the Yeah, absolutely. I really enjoyed it once I understood it. And I appreciated how valuable that made the extra ball. You know, it'd be bouncing around the pops and it hits a pop, the light comes on and the ball is exiting and you're like, Oh, God, please don't hit a swing, a slingshot while you're falling down or don't go through the in lane. I need you to cover the flipper. And instead, you know, it hits a switch and your extra ball is gone. It was interesting for sure. And I just like, you know, we think people The game was a game that definitely added some charm to Bolton for sure. After having played it a lot more. I ended up, I think I owned, not owned but I had the game in my house for roughly a month. After having finished it. I've had my, my restored centaur in my house since last December or January. I'm a fan of the game, and I think I've played like 50 games on it roughly. I'm not loving the gameplay of Centaur I've learned. It's beautiful, and I'm glad I have a Centaur, but I just don't have a ton of fun when I play it. I only had Volton for a month and I think I put over 400 games on it. The Ball Times are, the games are faster on it, it's very brutal, but I was just very, it was, I wanted to break a million points so bad and it just kept bringing me back in because it definitely had that one more game feel like, oh, I was so close to locking in that second level of bonus. I, I almost had it multiplied. That was another unique feature of the game is it only had one multiplier and it, for your bonus and it was 3X. So you had to collect, I think, I think it was all for the ABCD or whatever the rule was for that and it just went to 3x and that was it. There was no 2x, it skipped right over that. It went to 3x and that was all you could do. Again, just kind of an odd, odd rule to put into a game but again, it gave it some uniqueness. And then I think what I determined was probably really confusing for players and probably contributed to the games. Even people today had, you know, when I talked about this in the past, wanting this game, everybody would just say, well, it's just a looker. It's just a good art package. You know, I ended up being really impressed with the gameplay, but I think it came largely just from changing this one setting. The factory default setting has switches tied together. So essentially, let's say you roll over the top roll over lane. It's, I can't remember how the numbers were spread out, but say it's number one. Community Tonlea first up, tricky Hi. на Webỏi, Jose Fernandez Alonso Franchi David Pineda Acquired star, I'm not sure what the quote I'm trying to think of it basically comes down to because I could. Thanks to Andrew's NVRAM Weebly boards that he makes. Great stuff, great product. Yeah, I literally just had a new rectifier board delivered for this white 2000 I picked up this week. Yesterday it arrived, I'm planning to put that together tonight. Love his stuff, but his newest version of the MPU that he makes for Ballet and Cerns has a seven digit conversion adapter built into the board. So I was already going to be building new displays, I think seven digit displays are maybe $10 more than a six digit display. All it was going to require me to do was a little bit of extra wiring. And I figured why the hell not? You know, you might as well I'm already adding a mirrored back glass to this cabinet, it's going on Lineар u 후면스� laundryians It was one of those things where I really wish that score was there. So in my mind with Volton being right in that that range of ages for the games in my brain without having played it very much because again it's not like you just see a Volton on location somewhere to play. It's not like there's a lot of collectors with it. I figured I better put in the seven digit because if I ever do roll the score, I really want to have that saved on there. I think my best game ended up being before I sold it� allergic to SA, fbe inara, i thank others for людейlalt, i site anyways. enjoor estoy perma. a Coming soon to the I was playing at a tournament a couple years ago up at Pinball at the Zoo and I know at least three or four players rolled it in the tournament when I had it set with, I mean, a really tight tilt and set as steep as you could get. I added extra tall leg levelers to it. So it's not that that's a bad thing. It just should have been built with that scoring in mind. That's all. Yeah, that's true. Again, I have another question for you about the restoration when you did this, the Voltan. A lot of ballets from this time frame, not all of them, but a lot of them, even other manufacturers, when they did their switch stacks in there for switches, a lot of them were backwards. So instead of two nice gold flash plates hitting each other, you had the back of the rivet hitting the other plate. Did you find that on this one too? Did you notice that when you were going over it? No, I didn't notice that actually. So I think this one I either got lucky on or I'm just really unobservant. I went through with a carbon fiber brush on my dremel and polished all the switch stacks and I didn't see any of that. So I think I just got lucky. And a lot of times I doing an 8 Deluxe another 8 Deluxe Restore This is like my third one right now And I don know someone had a problem years ago with this thing or at some point and they decided I just gonna take a file out and file down these these gold flash contacts which is good I mean, crazy nice arcing in there. No, no, no. Called it's called like, you know, you clean them and then about 10 plays later they don't work again. You clean them again because that gold plating keeps them clean. Case Closed offense Tables criminals I used to paint my pinball pins with a brush and then I polished the pins with a carbon fiber brush and that's been my strategy. Okay, so what I do with those is I use the Wrights Brass Polish, like Brasso. Uh huh, yeah, I've got some of that. It's works great, it cleans up those gold contacts really well and without taking anything off them, you know. But I never tried the carbon fiber brush it's something new too, I'm going to add it to the trick bag. That one came to me from Nick Schell of Roanoke Pinball Museum when he was doing his cross country tour and he was showing, he stopped by my house for a few days and showed me how to work on EMs. That was his trick. Just a carbon fiber brush and a Dremel and a little bit of rubbing alcohol and they're clean in about two seconds. Hmm, okay. Cool. Yeah, it's always good to pick up some tips and tricks while you're doing these sort of things. Oh yeah, yeah, this is such great, you know, knowledge of the brain trust out there. People doing restorations and everybody does a little differently, but it's such a great idea. People can ping off each other and, you know, and learn. I'm always learning this stuff. It's great. Yeah, this was the first playfield swap where I used Ron Kruseman, who's well known for his playfield clear coating. Oh yeah. He sells a little install kit which just has a bunch of different dremel bits and drill bits for going through the clear, basically prepping all the holes in the playfield before you install the hardware, the screws, the post, etc. This is the first time where I had his kit on hand to use as I was going and it really did make a big difference in, you know, not seeing any issues with my clear coat being damaged. and that's quizblast p��� NFD out NSFanav, La치 plz take care jio político. ex sued arnya for aculation. GoERND is all the away holes Bl happily! to zelveda bol 그러니까 well often all of those players Franchi], quiñones Sulucke bitase, CUC's videO, spiritually Un erect Polished, and bitteminalbetas Awards to titan decks, maisoha, morewolسمigw, I'm not a perfectionist as a human by any means, but when I was doing a game this rare, I don't know, I took a lot of time on it. I wanted it to last for a long time. I wanted other people to get to see it. So that I cared a little more. How did you, so it's a CPR playfield. How did you attack the rollover at the top of Cosmic Doom, Volt on there? God, those rollovers are the worst. I know. So, what is it? A flex, a flex stone, right? That's the right term I'm thinking of. Yeah. Yeah, it's like a sandpaper cardboard. And some sore fingers. I use a little bit of that and I use an X-Acto knife very cautiously. Painful. Painful. Yeah, it's, they are the worst. Absolutely. minim deed persis responible Andập Way to go. Yeah, no problem. Yeah, those are, it was funny because like when they put those back in the Walking Dead or the modern Stern machine, I was like so excited. And then when I did my first playfield swap, it was skateball. And after like eight hours of trying to get these Star Rollers to work, I was like, I completely understand why they don't put Star Rollers in modern pinball machines. I get why they did it back then before clear coat like yeah now it totally makes sense but once you add clear coat into the image like oh it's just the worst but here's here's the deal here's the thing that i don't know why cpr is missing this but my buddy uh bill davis who does my clear coat jobs these days or forever has been doing for me as uh these these inserts these star roller inserts when you buy them they come with an with a dummy insert inside them yeah that's and so you're supposed to put them all in your field Son, Ann, The issue and the labor having human error issue because you drop one of those inserts as you push it out into the clear and yeah, you're just gonna have to redo the whole thing anyway. So I can see how it would be a pain in the butt for sure. And that concludes this episode of Volton escapes cosmic doom. I was having technical difficulties connecting into the meeting with both Tommy and Dave. Therefore, I ended my participation. But Dave and Tommy continued for about another hour. So in part two, which will be released in about a week, you'll hear the conclusion of that conversation. Stay tuned for the next episode of the Classic Pinball Podcast. Hasta la vista, baby. Dave! Who? Dave! D-A-V-E! Yeah, Dave! Dave! Right! Dave? Dave's not here. Has your ship not come in? No, I mean literally. Is your pinball manufacturer backordered because they can't get the parts to build your game? How about a NASCAR Dale Jr.? For more information and an up-to-date list, contact Dave at Dr. Dave's Pinball Restorations. Your ship hasn't sailed, it just hasn't come in. Dr. Dave's Pinball Restorations Electricity is one of our most faithful servants. It gives us light, it cooks and refrigerates our food. These represent few of the innumerable applications of electricity. Electricity at work. But what is electricity? What is electricity? What, what, what is electricity? Let's go! Circus closed voltage there current flows power everywhere Use AC in factories and homes because we can't control it High voltage transmits the loss of low voltages but we're safe here én