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Chalk up, Lion Man

BlahCade Pinball Podcast·podcast_episode·41m 31s·analyzed·Mar 6, 2017
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claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.028

TL;DR

Blockade Podcast: data woes, creative challenges, Swords of Fury announced for TPA, arcade venue updates, and machine restoration advice.

Summary

The Blockade Podcast hosts Chris Frebus and Jared Morgan discuss personal tech frustrations (data usage), a creative band-naming challenge from social media, pinball arcade news including Swords of Fury's announcement for Pinball Arcade and Pro Pinball Arcade updates, venue events at Netherworld arcade, and Chris's upcoming Eight Ball Deluxe machine purchase and restoration plans.

Key Claims

  • Swords of Fury will be the final table for Pinball Arcade Season 6

    high confidence · Chris and Jared discussing Pinball Arcade newsletter announcement

  • Swords of Fury was produced in 2,700 units in 1988

    high confidence · Jared providing production year and unit count details

  • Ghostbusters for Stern Pinball Arcade was announced via Kickstarter and tweeted about

    medium confidence · Chris stating 'I think they did announce that Ghostbusters' with rumor language

  • Ghostbusters pinball machines exist in both Spike and older Stern mainboard versions

    high confidence · Jared explaining hybrid hardware transition in Ghostbusters production

  • Pro Pinball Arcade and Silver Castle Pinball's Time Shock are separate products with different features

    high confidence · Direct quote from Pro Pinball Arcade newsletter response

  • Netherworld arcade is hosting an 18-hour non-stop pinball marathon in April with elimination tournaments

    high confidence · Jared describing Netherworld's April event details and pricing

  • Eight Ball Deluxe Chris is purchasing has a non-functioning soundboard but otherwise good playfield condition

    high confidence · Chris describing machine inspection findings with Mike Levitt consultation

Notable Quotes

  • “You walk away, you walk away. It's like a poker machine that you don't put the 'I'm coming back' sign on. It's like you walk away, the credits are negotiable.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~12:00 — Humorous commentary on arcade etiquette and his Swords of Fury memory

  • “I created a total of five albums for Misery Griffins, and I created an entire history for them. They are a late 90s grunge and ska band.”

    Chris Frebus @ ~8:00 — Description of creative band-naming challenge engagement

  • “Because Spike is going to be a challenge from an emulation perspective just because it's all distributed—all the logic is stored on the little daughter boards all around the play field rather than on one main board.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~28:00 — Technical insight into Spike architecture emulation challenges for Ghostbusters

  • “At the very worst, your soundboard needs to be replaced, which by the sounds of it it doesn't, because I was getting the proper lights on it at least according to him.”

    Chris Frebus @ ~48:00 — Mike Levitt's diagnostic assessment of Eight Ball Deluxe soundboard issue

  • “You know how to clear coat something? You depopulate the playfield and then you give it to Wizard Amusements because clear coating is not something you want to mess around with. It will kill you if you don't do it right.”

    Jared Morgan @ ~54:00 — Safety warning about automotive clear coat restoration hazards

Entities

Chris FrebuspersonJared MorganpersonMike LevittpersonPinball ArcadeproductSwords of FurygameGhostbustersgameStar TrekgamePro Pinball Arcadeproduct

Signals

  • ?

    event_signal: Netherworld hosting Arcade Armageddon three-day video game event March 24-26 with Twin Galaxies high score attempts

    high · Jared details event with Donkey Kong masterclass, free entry, projector gameplay, Galaga/Donkey Kong/Pac-Man competitions

  • ?

    event_signal: Netherworld arcade hosting 18-hour non-stop pinball marathon in April with elimination tournaments and merchandise

    high · Jared describes April event: 9:30 AM start, $100 entry with free drink, continuous tournaments over 18 hours

  • ?

    licensing_signal: Possible Williams/Farsight licensing issue resolution with Swords of Fury appearance after Gottlieb-dominated season

    medium · Jared speculates 'Maybe Farsight finally fixed whatever issue they were having with their license' noting only Gottliebs in recent releases

  • ?

    community_signal: Mike Levitt of Wizard Amusements providing restoration consultation and on-site support for Eight Ball Deluxe repair

    high · Chris consulting Mike on soundboard diagnosis; Mike offering worst-case replacement cost of $80-100 and potential on-site inspection

  • ?

    announcement: Swords of Fury officially announced as final table for Pinball Arcade Season 6

    high · Newsletter from Pinball Arcade confirmed Swords of Fury with clue hint; 1988 Williams System 11 with 2,700 units produced

  • ?

Transcript

groq_whisper · $0.125

0:00
This is a Blockade Podcast with your hosts, Chris and Jared. You are listening to The Blockade Podcast. I'm your host, Chris Frebus, aka Shut Your Trap. Joining me as always halfway across the world, Jared Morgan.
0:38
Hey there, Chris. How are things going? They're going swimmingly well. How about that? Oh, that's pretty good. Yeah. Same here. Same here for me.
0:50
You ever run out of data on your phone? Yeah, plenty of times. Yeah, that's good times right there. So eight days before my cycle re-ups, I got the dreaded notice, you only have 10% or it wasn't even 10% left.
1:13
No, I guess it was. It was 10% left of your data plan. And I thought, oh, okay, fine. I just won't look at any websites.
1:21
But then it turns out that all your text messaging, rather than going to the messaging service, it figures, oh, I'll just use the data. It's faster. And it goes through that. And anytime I'd get notifications, it would go through that. And next thing I know, I check my thing. It's all, you have 0.2% left. I'm like, no.
1:39
So I had to turn off data on my phone because I was like, I'm not even using it. And it's still using up data. And go back to the stone ages.
Time Shock
game
Netherworldorganization
Eight Ball Deluxegame
Batman '66game
Ghostbustersgame
Firepowergame
Silver Castle Pinballcompany
Wizard Amusementscompany
The Blockade Podcastorganization
Farsight Studioscompany
Pinball Magazineorganization

product_strategy: Pro Pinball Arcade Time Shock is forked product separate from Silver Castle Pinball's physical Time Shock with distinct features

high · Pro Pinball Arcade newsletter response: 'Our Time Shock product is separate and unique' with arcade-specific lighting and metrics features

  • ?

    product_strategy: Ghostbusters queued for Stern Pinball Arcade with uncertainty on hybrid hardware approach

    medium · Chris mentions Ghostbusters rumor via tweet; Jared discusses technical challenges of hybrid Spike/mainboard versions

  • ?

    technology_signal: Spike hardware architecture presents emulation challenges for Stern Pinball Arcade conversions due to distributed daughter board logic

    high · Jared explains timing and synchronization challenges of distributed Spike architecture vs. traditional mainboard systems for Ghostbusters emulation

    • 1:48
    Oh. You know? You know, when your phone is only a phone, it's kind of a bummer. It is. It's so boring. is just the phone, isn't it?
    1:59
    Well, you can still play some games on it and stuff, but that's, you know, you can't check tweets, you can't check Facebook, you can't look at any new sites, and you don't realize how long. Look at those things. Even today, I was out and about, we were dumping off some tin cans to get recycled,
    2:17
    and me and Jared basically start the show every day at the same time, or every day, every week at the same time, And I'm looking at my watch and I'm like, oh, no, I'm not going to be back home in time to do the podcast on time. I was like, oh, that's no problem. We'll just shoot Jared and beg. Oh, no, I can't do that. Oh, no, it doesn't. I was going, huh, I wonder where Chris is today. It's not like he normally, I'm the one that he's waiting for me normally to actually start the show. Because I'm normally like finishing up breakfast here or wrangling a kid or doing something or, you know, any number of things can delay me actually starting the show. But today it was like, yeah, did I miss a memo or something like that? Yeah.
    2:59
    So I've still got, well, Sunday, that won't be a problem because I'll be at home for the most part, so I got my Wi-Fi. But Monday and I believe Tuesday, I still got to hold out. Got to hold out. Yeah, because we see me and my wife share, although when I say share, it's me using 99% of it, the data plan of a whopping four gigabytes per month. Full gig. Wow. Four gigs. And usually it's not an issue because I just use Wi-Fi pretty much all at home.
    3:35
    And usually at work they have Wi-Fi. Well, there was an issue with the Wi-Fi on our set constantly being exceedingly slow. And the upstairs office was getting ticked off. It was taking forever to get anything. and so they decided it must be all the crew using bandwidth so they changed the password and said no more Wi-Fi for you away went the Wi-Fi and that's why I'm suddenly chewing up data right yeah that's always a pain when that happens I remember before I got onto the plan I'm on at the moment which has a whopping 1.5 gig of data I was on telco with basically it was a very budget plan it wasn't even a plan it was prepaid and I think I had 80 megabytes of data for 90 days so basically you sneeze at a website and you lose your basically so that was like I don't even know like now that I have 1.5 gig, I wouldn't even know what 80 megabytes would feel like.
    4:56
    80 megabytes would be like maybe two days on Twitter. Right. Uploading a couple of photos. It was just terrible. And the cost of the plan was about the same as the plan I'm on now, but with, you know, 1.5 gig of data and unlimited calls and $90 a month, which is what I'm paying now, which is nothing for like 1.5 gig and that type of plan. I rarely use my call entitlement. In fact, I think in some ways I'd like to roll over all my calls basically into data and just have extra data. That's really what I want. Data with like the ability to send a text or two here and there.
    5:35
    Well, I'm with Verizon and they just announced their unlimited data plan, but unfortunately it's rather expensive. Yeah, it's funny that. Go figure. data is a little bit costly yeah yeah um and it doesn't help that the the day that i got my notification or actually it was the day after i got my notification it didn't help that uh what i was doing at work all day and uh i'll let you you people in on it um you can check it out on my instagram account uh i'm shut your traps on instagram so go ahead and look me up or you can look up chris freebiss either way they'll both pop up um but anyway we we came up with a challenge that was you go to Wikipedia and you push random article and the first article that pops up, that is the name of your band.
    6:24
    Then you go to wiki quotes and you do random quotes and you select the last three to five words of a quote and that's the name of your album title. Then you go to, they were saying go to Flickr, but I also just used Google and typed in random images and you pick the fifth image and that's the album art for your album. And then you're supposed to use a photo editor of your choice and put it together. And then that's your, you know, create an album. So I wound up, we were having some fun doing that. And I think that might've used up a lot of my data because of all sorts of things. But I, my, my name that popped, up was Missouri Western Griffins. And I went, okay, that's kind of not really a band name, but I went Missouri, Missouri, dropped out the Western, and now my band name became Misery Griffins. That sounded like a band. Misery Griffins. Yes.
    7:28
    And so then I had a great deal. I created one album, and I went searching to go do another one, and I was like, I'm not done yet with this band. I think I could do more with this band. And so I created a total of, let's see, one, two,
    7:43
    a total of five albums for Misery Griffiths and I created an entire history for them. They are a late 90s grunge and ska band.
    7:56
    Grunge ska. Well, I call it scrunge because nothing combines better together than ska and grunge. And I and created this whole little history for them. So anyway, I posted it to Instagram, posted it to Facebook, but I won't accept you people as Facebook friends anyway, so don't worry about that.
    8:17
    I did actually see this on Facebook, so I know what you're talking about. I actually have a name and an album cover of my own. I'm just about to send you a link to the fifth image on Google Images random search. Okay, I'm clicking on this. It's a baby owl with a straw hat on. alright that's the picture that you have to put in your mind I don't know why this is a thing on the internet but this is what it is so my album the band name is Ensirian Maya which is the first thing that came up on Wikipedia the album name is from the only quote for the random quote that I got was the last five words were writing, rhythm and melodic style wow yeah and the album cover is a owl with a hat on very good so i think um my album is um it's a it's a math core album uh it's a math core album and uh because it's all about writing rhythm and melodic style so yeah it's math core um and i think that uh the the little mascot here wearing a straw hat pretty much sums up the type of music which is kind of cute very weird and a little bit sort of random so there you go that's what my album is all about it's a fun challenge if people want to join in on this challenge please do it is a blast it's kind of fun to see and it's best if you create little backstories rather than just posting the album too but if you do why don't you go ahead and either hit me up on Instagram or hit us up on Twitter you can hit me up at ShutYourTraps Jared is at JaredMorgz or you can do it to the site itself or the Blockade site which is at Blockade post us a link and we take a look at it We have some fun Yeah that right Or at least we will Once I get my data back up uh, we'll, we'll have some fun after Wednesday, us time. Yes, exactly.
    10:36
    Yeah. Um, other news that is, uh, yeah, cause all that was news. Um, talk about the newsletter from pinball arcade came out as did the official release of Cactus Jacks. And within that newsletter, of course, they always give the hint for the next table.
    10:57
    And after not having to search your brain very hard, the next table is Sword to Fury. I know. Pretty good. I don't know how the ballerina played into that clue. Which they got it wrong because it's Williams.
    11:13
    So bad. Oh dear. Okay, yeah, that's cool. Swords of Fury has been one that I know everyone has wanted for a very long time, right? Yeah, and I got to play it last year, and it was one of those that I thought... I don't know how deep of gameplay it is or how much fun it's going to be in TPA over a long run, but what I liked about it was that it was a different playfield layout, something unique and different than anything that we've had in Pinball Arcade so far. so on that reason alone plus it being a system 11 i was like sign it up put it in yep totally it's uh got the recipe for an awesome game and it is an awesome game i remember very vaguely unfortunately because it was probably the only time i ever got to see it when i was around 12 or 13 um this game was down the local bowling alley and uh there was some credits on it um and these two guys boys were playing it as well and they walked away and i thought oh i'll take the credits and start playing. They came back and obviously weren't finished with the game and I got into a bit of trouble for doing that.
    12:22
    Hey, you walk away, you walk away. I was going to say it's like a poker machine that you don't put the I'm coming back sign on.
    12:30
    It's like you walk away, the credits are negotiable. It's a negotiable medium, just like cash. So yeah, you walk away, you forfeit them. But yeah, they didn't see the logic in that. So you know what they did? Mid-game they turned the machine off on me. So if they weren't going to get it, no one was going to get it. Why? So that's why I remember Swords of Fury the way I do. But it's not a bad memory because it's a fun game. It's got a lot of stuff to do on it. And for the time, you know, compared to today's games, no, it's just a System 11. But it's fun. It's a good layout. It's great. I'm looking forward to it. What is it, 87, 88, something like that? I think so, yeah. Yeah. it's not that era you know the classic system 11 era so yeah um yeah it's going to be a good fun i reckon yeah i'm definitely looking forward to it especially after the uh godly premiere onslaught that we've been suffering through the other good news i hope i don't know but i hope is hey look it's a williams table back in tpa maybe farsight finally fixed whatever issue they were having with their license, maybe? I don't know. If they were having an issue at all. We never got an official word out of them as to why we were suddenly having nothing but Gottliebs and weren't seeing any Williams.
    13:51
    Yeah. You know, it is actually a 1988 game. 88, okay. Yeah, 2,700 units produced. Yeah, so same year as Earthshaker, I believe, came out that same year. Yeah.
    14:05
    In terms of, it's not Funhaus, which would be your late System 11. This is your earliest System 11. That's right, because I think this one is... I don't know if it's actually alphanumeric. I'm just having a quick look at the... Yes, it's... Oh, or if it's just numbers? I think it's alphanumeric.
    14:25
    It is alphanumeric? I'm looking at the panels here. I'm only seeing very burned in... Oh, hang on. There's a cabinet full shot. I'm just going to have a look at that now. It looks like it is... No, it is alphanumeric, too. That's what I thought.
    14:44
    Yeah, it is. I kind of thought that all the System 11s were alphanumeric. Yeah, I think this one is. Or at least the top row is. This one's a pick of a German machine. It's got Spieler 1, which means ball one, I think, or player one. Right. So that suggests it's alphanumeric, unless they're just doing a real good hack job on that eight-character numbers. But, yeah, it's a really nice art package on this. I like it a lot. It's got that little upper play field too, which is quite nice. So anyway, there you go, folks.
    15:14
    Enjoy your Cactus Jacks for the month, if you will, and just look forward to Sword to Fury. And that'll be the final table for Season 6. Yes, it is. It will be closing out Season 6, which is going to be good, I think, because, you know, Season 7, I think that we might start seeing more Belly Williams in it. I think they might start picking that up again. I hope so. I'm just disappointed we didn't get our Season of Sports.
    15:44
    Maybe Season 7 will be Season of Sports. You never know. I don't know. What was I going to say? Oh, that's right. I think what would be really cool with Swords of Fury, if they put the same lighting tech on mobile as they did on Cactus Jacks, using the GI illumination on and off trick that they did, Because that really impressed me in Cactus Jacks on mobile. It really changed the way the game felt for me.
    16:16
    And, yeah, I think that featuring will be a big win, I think. Well, I can't imagine that they wouldn't continue doing that. Once they figured it out for mobile, it was just a matter of implementing it each time. That's right. it's funny I've seen the upper ramp on the swords of fury and it reminds me so much of an inverted F14 tomcat you know how the rails go off and there's like three little diverters on the ramp yeah it looks almost exactly like that except on the right hand side of the playfield so yeah interesting to see how the themes these game sort of themes flow through the games of the era but yeah this is going to be fun this game I'm very much looking forward to it yeah me too because apart from my one contact with it at the pinball arcade expo last year I never played it I don't believe I ever played it in visual pinball I don't believe I played it prior in real life so it'll be one of those it's like oh cool game that I don't have really any knowledge to and just let it grow on me.
    17:33
    That's right. It's got great sound. Yeah, that's what everybody says. Yeah, the sound is a good package. Yeah. Anyway. Sweet. That's that piece of pinball-related news.
    17:46
    Yeah. What else is happening in pinball, I was going to say? Is there any other digital stuff happening?
    17:53
    Not that I am aware of. There's nothing from Zen, and we haven't heard anything from Stern Pinball Arcade with when or what the next table coming out for that is going to be. No. I think rumor had it that it was going to be Ghostbusters, but I'm not sure.
    18:15
    But yeah, you're right. Nothing really confirmed. I mean, that would make sense because wasn't that initially going to be... That was announced with the Kickstarter, wasn't it? Yeah, I think they did announce that Ghostbusters, they actually tweeted about that Ghostbusters was going to be out, but it's going to be interesting because from what I understand, Ghostbusters is one of those hybrid hardware tables that some of them were produced with Spike and some of them were, like the early ones of them, were actually produced using the old Stern mainboard system. So it's like one of those ones that was just transitioning over to the new. so it's going to be interesting to see what challenges that that has for for farsight as far as converting over i'd say they'd probably my gut feel it would be they'd probably err on the side of using the old main board system um and and going down that path just to give them a little bit more time to work out the finer points of spike because i think spike is going to be a challenge from an emulation perspective just because it's all distributed um all the logic is stored on the little daughter boards all around the play field rather than on one main board and getting that timing right um is going to be yeah i'd say a bit of a challenge for him but um we'll see how that pans out i guess uh related to stern pinball app i was messing around a bit with it and was playing with the Star Trek table. And I was noticing that on the lower play field during certain mission there was these floating dots and I can only imagine that's the laser being used.
    19:57
    Oh, okay. If somebody can correct me, I don't know. I've only had my hands on the real thing a couple of times and the one thing I do remember is the laser I thought was brighter, but I think that's what it was doing. It kind of puts a field of dots that are kind of floating down to the bottom of the playfield. I couldn't figure out anything else that would have been that there was this floating pattern.
    20:24
    Oh, yeah, it must have been. That's really weird, eh? It's one of those tables that you really wish had some fog so you could see the laser projected. Yeah, that'd be pretty cool. Yeah, seeing the actual laser beams coming out would be weird. Yeah, that'd be pretty cool. I was going to say I did read something about Pro Pinball Arcuda which actually wasn from Arcuda itself It was actually through the newsletter from Pimble magazine
    20:54
    So it might have been covered sort of in part by us, perhaps in the speculation, but I think this has sort of confirmed it now.
    21:05
    I think we asked the question when we were debating Arcuda and what the pro pinball news meant for the platform was that there's disparity between the Barnstorm Games software version and the physical table version.
    21:25
    I think Pinball Magazine kind of had the same question, and this is what they say in their newsletter. When asked whether there is any correlation between this new iteration of Time Shock and the physical game that Silver Castle Pinball is developing, Arcuda responded as follows. Our Time Shock product is separate and unique to what Silver Castle Pinball is doing. Silver Castle Pinball is working on a dedicated standalone machine, whilst the work we are doing with Time Shock is to make it an arcade edition version, which will form part of the software library on our Arcuda video pinball machines.
    22:01
    They go on to say the arcade edition will have many new features added so that software interacts with our cabinet, allowing lighting call metrics and et cetera, which we already discussed.
    22:13
    So they also point out that in the Pinball Magazine number four, they've actually got a big expose from the artist about all the art for the Silvercastle Pinball version of Time Shop. So if you've got that magazine, if you're listening, it'd be really cool to see, maybe just take a photo of some of the pages and just send us an email with them so we could see what the sort of art looks like.
    22:39
    Cause it sounds very interesting. Yeah. So that's, that's sort of the, the update from them, I guess on that. So yeah, definitely it's, it's a separate thing and they're, they're almost forking the product. So Arcuda makes their own version of it, I guess. Yeah.
    22:58
    Yeah. And, and for, For our non-Australian listeners, he did say forking. Forking. Yeah. As not in meet the fuckers. Right. It's forking. Yes. Like what you do when you clone a GitHub repository. You fork it.
    23:19
    Yeah. You've been playing any physical pinball again? I did, actually. I have been using any excuse I can get basically to head back down to Netherworld and, you know, darken their doorstep and try and play some more, some games. And yeah, I have been down there again a couple of times when I've been trying to meet up with people for lunch and stuff and go, yeah, let's go to Netherworld and meet there, have a beer, have some food.
    23:51
    So yeah, I've been playing away again on Batman 66 and I've, it's growing on me. I'm getting that, um, that shot, um, a lot better now that left, um, loop shot. It's not breaking as much for me anymore. So I think it's just dialing in, um,
    24:09
    so yeah, that's fine. Um, and so the, I had another go, uh, ghostbusters and, ah, kind of tanked at it really bad, actually. I think, I think I used all my luck in my tournament that day, but, um, It's still a captivating game for me. I love it. So, yeah. I was going to mention, you know, Netherworld have actually got, as part of their sort of thing, they do all these events. And they've got this calendar up where they sort of plug in all the events that they're going to have for March and for April.
    24:44
    And they're pretty good. They don't just sort of do pinball events. They do a whole lot of, like, video gaming events as well and the vintage machines. and they even do like movie theme related things as well, which is kind of cool. I think there's one really big event coming up in the end of March called Arcade Armageddon. It actually runs over three days, which is pretty huge. They're pretty much taking over the bar.
    25:17
    And, yeah, it's going to be pretty huge there. it's not a pinball event but it's more video game they're doing all the vintage stuff so they'll be doing I'm just reading the post now they're doing they're even putting some of the games up on the big projector they're going actually for Twin Galaxies high score attempts throughout the day they're doing it on Galaga Donkey Kong, Pac-Man and there's going to be a few others that they're yet to announce as well they're actually even doing a Donkey Kong masterclass at 10am or night yeah so they're really making an event of it and it doesn't cost you anything to get in you just like rock up and start playing and enjoying the event so that'd be fun they do say that if you want to post a Twin Galaxies high school you're going to need to verify yourself for Twin Galaxies but it doesn't sound like it's hard to do and so that one's on March 24th at 12 and it goes to March 26th until 8pm. So every day, not like, they're not like staying open for 72 hours, but which would be pretty intense. But there is actually coming up in April, something that for pinheads is going to be pretty amazing.
    26:39
    And I think that I'm having trouble getting up their April calendar, but I know that it is coming up. they're going to be locking on the Easter weekend they're going to be locking down the arcade and bar for 18 hours of non-stop pinball going for a world record I don't think it's a world record I think it's more just well yeah we're just going to do this big marathon basically and it's going to be pretty intense because it's they're going to just be doing constant tournaments throughout that time so it'll be like a elimination style um tournament but you i think it costs a fair bit to enter it's like about 100 bucks but you get a free drink and all your games are included in that price um for the 18 hours so if you think about it there you can get a fair few games in um in that time and also you know so that's pretty fair enough um they're actually advertising their um Little Monsters events too, which is where you can bring your kidlets along and play.
    27:52
    Their artist that does their posters is pretty cool. I'll have to share some of the artwork that they've done because it's quite funny.
    28:04
    Anyhow, yeah, so from 9.30 to 11, you can bring your kids along and get them flipping away. and I think they even, again, they're sort of trying to train you up so you actually become an addict. I mean, a fan of our kids. So they'll actually, like, there's pinheads that can actually teach kids how to play properly and give them techniques and stuff like that. So it's got a little bit of destruction to it, but not enough that makes it boring, I guess. So there you go. Book your airline tickets now, folks. Yeah, come on down. It's proving to be pretty popular. So apparently I was talking to the owner and one of the co-owners just said Saturdays is just, it's bedlam. Like it's so busy. So that makes me very happy to hear that. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I have a bit of news for myself personally. Oh, yeah. Oh, what's going on? I'm about to be the owner of another pinball machine. Oh, so you were talking last week about this eight ball deluxe that came into your, came into your sights. So that's moved forward, has it? It has moved forward. I went and checked the machine out and talked to the guy and tried to ask him how much he wanted for it, and he wouldn't say.
    29:23
    That makes it hard to try and buy a machine. It does make it very difficult. So I turned it on, and the first thing we noticed was no sound.
    29:32
    Oh, yeah, okay. And that was news to him. He hadn't turned the machine on in about a year, though. and so that was news to him he wasn't aware that suddenly the sound had gone out and I thought well that's kind of odd not knowing repair at all it was like I don't even know what to diagnose but the rest of the machine it played very well the flippers were nice and strong so there was no problem hitting shots all the drop targets worked, all the stand ups worked everything functioned as should It was dirty.
    30:09
    And the dirty and the paint here on the cabinet and stuff. It's not in terrible shape at all. The play field itself was nice and smooth. There was no wood showing. The only paint that was pretty much was in the center of the play field with the balls.
    30:33
    There was more cracking going on, but none of the paint was flaky. It was just paint cracking, which I've got to imagine is pretty standard for a table that old. Yeah.
    30:46
    And all the inserts were perfectly flat except for one, which had sungan, but that's not too difficult to tab back into place and put a little glue on it and be done with it there. That's right.
    31:01
    The back glass is near perfect, so that a big big plus totally yeah so anyway I phoned phoned up our friend Mike Levitt who is the person responsible for Wizard Amusements that you hear the advertisement for at the beginning and end of our podcast. And I was like, Mike, you do pinball restoration, right? And he was like, yeah. So I asked him a bit about it and asked him about the soundboard and what would I be getting myself into. And he was like, look, at the worst, the connectors just need a little contact cleaner sprayed on them and reconnect them and boom, good to go. He goes, after that, it's a matter of maybe some of the capacitors have been blown or whatever. And he goes, again, those are $20 total to replace. For a full set. Right. And you're good to go on there. And he goes, at the very worst, your soundboard needs to be replaced. which by the sounds of it it doesn't because I was getting the proper lights on it at least according to him again I didn't know what I was looking at so I was just purely telling him by memory the status lights on the board it was green and constant well that's a good sign probably it's just connectors then yeah but anyway he was like at the worst it needs a new soundboard in which case that's like 80 bucks 80 to 100 bucks so he said once I get it Just give him a call and maybe he'll come over and, you know, give it a once over, take a look at it. I reckon that would be a good idea to do that because a lot of the time, particularly on things like the power conversion board and stuff like that, the capacitors on a machine that age are pretty much, the electrolyte gel inside them is pretty much dried out. Yeah. So that's usually the cause of bad voltage. And you want your voltage to be good in pinball machines because if you don't, you're going to get other components failing in line.
    32:59
    So it's almost, I know that when TNT amusements refurbish your machine, they always say, yeah, we replaced all the capacitors basically on the power supply to make sure you're getting clean power again. It's always the first thing they do. And it's usually the cause of most faults in pinball machines, dirty power. for myself the problem is I just look and all I see is wires and things on boards that I don't know any of that I don't even have a soldering iron it's a problem if you don't have a soldering iron you're probably going to be getting one in your near future yeah so you might want to do that I'd recommend you get one so anyway it's one of those things where if I can get him to come over then maybe I can also have him take a look at the Firepower and give me some advice as to where to how to do, because he was like, when he asked about the playfield on Able Deluxe and I mentioned it, he was like oh, that sounds fine. He's like, yeah, you know, just clear coat it. And I was like, well, that's where I'm at with Firepower, so I'm not doing any tearing apart until I actually for one spray, you know, find out how to do that and if I can bring Firepower back up, then I would attempt anything of that nature, but this thing works and it's I just want the sound back, that's all. yeah you know you know how to clear code something you depopulate the play field and then you give it to wizard amusements because clear coding is not something you want to muck around with it will kill you if you don't do it right quite literally why i have not done it because i just i have zero experience with it and i don't want to mess it up and that's one of those things where man once you spray it you you're committed so yeah it's not so much messing up the play field it's it's quite literally dying because the automotive clear coat will actually adhere to your lungs if you don't have the right breathing apparatus. Oh, well, hey, YouTube videos show you how to do that.
    34:52
    It's easy. You go buy a respirator, which are fairly cheap at the hardware store. Make sure you've got some goggles on, and you're good to go. Except for the one video I watched of a dude who was in New Jersey in his single-car garage, and he had the garage door down except for a foot up and had no respirator, no eye protection whatsoever and was like, oh, yeah, so you just clear coat like this, start spraying, you can see the cloud just rising. I'm like going, dude. Oh, dude, you are going to die. Yeah.
    35:25
    This is actually his death video. Yeah, the death video, exactly. The final moments of his life. Yeah, that's bad. so anyway I wound up it was funny Mike asked me if I could lowball the guy and I was like well I don't want to do that necessarily but he told me what the machine is actually worth that's the hardest part is you know you go on pin side and you go what are these tables worth and they kind of go on the high side but then when you talk to anybody that purchases tables and you're like well how the heck did you get it for so cheap because they're always advertising at this other price and so I feel like the price I offered was low but fair because knowing this has not been a restored table, and it has not been touched maintenance-wise in the 15 years he's had it.
    36:22
    I think he had a business card for somebody that came in and replaced the rubbers and gave it a once-over, and that's about the extent of it. So, yeah, it would need some TLC on the circuit boards, I would think. Certainly replacing the capacitors at a minimum would be what I'd recommend doing. Right. So, again, I'm going to have Mike take a look and maybe you can teach me a thing or two. And then I can take care of some of this stuff that's easy without having to put it into shape. Because basically, this is my birthday present from my wife, who is awesome for giving it to me. So, yes, now the problem is transporting it. because I don't have a pickup truck.
    37:01
    That's a problem. Yeah. And it's not, no, it's, it's only a couple of miles away. Um, but the problem is that with, uh, this era of machine, the head doesn't just fold down. You have to, if you want to take the head off or fold it down, you have to remove bolts. Oh yeah. Um, and drop it down that way. So it's better to, I imagine, just leave it all in place. throw it on a pickup truck and drive to my house. It's dangerous transporting a game with the head attached still but yeah, it might be better just to take the head off and just number all the plugs and then you'll be able to reconnect everything pretty easily. There should be a big main connector that plugs all the things in together and you should just be able to get it off that way.
    37:50
    So anyway, I'll have to reach for him. Take the back glass out. Oh yeah, that I know. You know, yeah. but you'll be right. You'll find a way. Yep. I just did. Well, I texted him asking when I can go pick it up and I haven't received a, a text back. So until I get that, I can't go pay for it and pick it up. But anyway, I'm excited. It'll be fun to, uh, fun to play. It will be. It sounds like it's ready to play right now. It is ready to play. I mean, like I said, I played a little bit on it. Um, you know, some things that it was already, it was set to five ball, which I'm like, nah, no, three ball, baby. Uh, three, but five balls is cheating, according to Nate Shevers. Yeah. Five ball games just seem to take forever. Yeah. I mean, even if you're draining quickly, they just seem to take forever. So unless I'm playing an EM, especially one of those old school that didn't have the motor to kick the ball back up in the slot, it had the two plungers. Oh, the elevator, yeah, the ball elevator. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Those five balls definitely. Five balls seems fine on that. Yeah, definitely. Yes. but anything that's like if it's solid state definitely no that'll be the first thing that I'll need to do is figure out the switch patterns because I don't know if he has the manual or not in the back box it had all the had cards of all the switch positions and stuff or you know what to how many clicks to get into that mode so yep I'll definitely be having to learn that. But anyway, we'll see. Hopefully,
    39:29
    seeing as how I haven't got notified by it for this weekend, hopefully next week they'll be able to pick that up and then maybe be able to report a little bit about that. Who knows? We'll see. Yeah, that'll be good. Very cool.
    39:42
    On that note, there hasn't been much pinball, so we're going to wrap things up early. Yeah. Seems legit. Seems legit indeed. Hey, why don't you check out our website? it is blockadepinball.com go there then you can find all of our past episodes as long as well as show notes and timings if you want to fast forward to your favorite moment of a podcast because we know you do, you guys study these religiously I'm sure why we don't have a fan website for our blockade podcast, I don't know yeah and like we said go ahead and check us out on Twitter or you can check me out on Instagram where you can see the album art that I created and laugh along yeah I've seen it it's funny okay so until next time Mahalo goodbye
    40:50
    The Standard Ball Plunger, with something themed to your specific table, installs in less than five minutes with no custom tools. Even if you don't own the table, it looks great as a pimple memento to admire. Prices start at $39, but mention Blockade Podcast and receive 10% off your order. WizardAmusement.com. Sales, restoration, customization.
    41:12
    Don't forget to leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast hosting service that Blockade is delivered to. We can't prove unless you tell us how. Now stop listening and place it in ball.