Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Part 1: 1985 Pinstar Gamatron Project! RARE Mini flight 2000 conversion kit & Grasley Garage bonus!

Pinball Shenanigans·video·21m 26s·analyzed·Aug 14, 2025
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.021

TL;DR

Mike acquires rare 1985 Gammatron conversion kit; documents restoration challenges and cosmetic conditions.

Summary

Mike Dimas from Pinball Shenanigans documents the acquisition of a 1985 Pinstar Gammatron—a Flight 2000 conversion kit—from collector Paul Dewar. The machine arrives with significant restoration challenges including deteriorating cabinet head, non-functional boards, and mysterious custom electronics, alongside bonus Bobby Orr parts. A bonus segment features Kevin and Dutch Pinball acquiring two Flintstones and a Paragon machine.

Key Claims

  • Gammatron is a Flight 2000 conversion kit sold when 1982 Bally machines stopped making money, converting Playboy machines with new playfield, back glass, and decals

    high confidence · Mike Dimas explains the conversion kit concept at the start of video

  • Paul Dewar has owned the Gammatron for approximately 25 years

    high confidence · Paul Dewar verbally confirms '25 years' when asked how long he's had the Bobby Orr cabinet

  • The Gammatron playfield shows immaculate condition with zero visible wear on inserts despite being stored for decades

    high confidence · Mike examines playfield in detail, noting pristine insert condition and minimal wear

  • The cabinet head is severely deteriorated and likely beyond economical repair, with the front edge beveled piece being particularly complex and expensive to remake

    high confidence · Mike physically inspects head and discusses replacement costs with reference to Kevin's recent head work

  • Mike played a Flight 2000 Gammatron at Beast 2024 in Buffalo that belonged to Bruce Nightingale and described it as fast, furious, deadly, and fun

    high confidence · Mike recalls tournament experience with Gammatron machine

  • The conversion kit includes a spinner on one side but the other side's spinner bracket is missing, with the existing bracket appearing custom

    high confidence · Mike inspects both sides of playfield during detailed examination

  • Mike has a spare Bobby Orr playfield and back glass which allows him to potentially build a second Gammatron for resale

    high confidence · Mike discusses using extra parts from Paul's collection to potentially sell a Gammatron project

  • Kevin (Grazley Garage) recently completed custom front edge work on a machine similar to the Gammatron and estimates 20 minutes of work was mentioned

    medium confidence · Mike mentions Paul said Kevin might need about 20 minutes on the head, though context suggests more extensive work needed

Notable Quotes

  • “Gammatron is a conversion kit. When your old Bally machine from 1982 stopped making money, you buy this conversion kit. It comes with a playfield, back glass, and decals for the cabinet. You pull out your old Bally Playboy playfield and back glass. you pop this in and you convert yourself Gammatron.”

    Mike Dimas@ 3:24 — Explains the core business model of conversion kits in early 1980s pinball industry

  • “This playfield is in immaculate condition. I wonder if this conversion kit, if they did something different with the playfield or if it was just standard procedures.”

    Mike Dimas@ 5:43 — Expresses surprise at playfield preservation despite decades of storage

  • “I don't want this to cost me $10,000 when it's all said and done. But the fact that I have a spare playfield and back glass means that I can actually cut down my costs by selling off what I don't need.”

    Mike Dimas@ 9:46 — Shows restoration cost concerns and strategy to offset expenses through parts sales

  • “This wood. Oh, my God. Is just peeling apart.”

    Mike Dimas@ 12:58 — Dramatic reaction to cabinet head deterioration condition

  • “It might be better to start with a brand new donor head. I'll send a photo to Kevin and let him know how awesome this head is.”

    Mike Dimas@ 16:11 — Decision to potentially source replacement head rather than restore original

  • “I played it. It was at... I think it was at the Beast 2024 in Buffalo. I think it was Bruce Nightingale's machine. And it was beautiful. And it was a fun game. It played fast and furious and deadly. But I loved it.”

Entities

Mike DimaspersonPaul DewarpersonKevinpersonBruce NightingalepersonDutch PinballpersonGammatrongameBobby OrrgameThe Flintstonesgame

Signals

  • ?

    community_signal: Documentation of machine acquisition and community collaboration with local technicians (Kevin, Dutch Pinball) demonstrates active restoration network and knowledge-sharing within pinball community

    high · Multiple references to consulting with Kevin on restoration work and collaborative acquisition efforts

  • ?

    event_signal: Beast 2024 tournament in Buffalo featured Flight 2000/Gammatron variant machine, indicating availability of conversion kit machines in competitive tournament circuit

    high · Mike directly references playing Bruce Nightingale's machine at Beast 2024 and describes positive gameplay experience

  • $

    market_signal: Acquisition of rare Gammatron conversion kit indicates continued collector interest in Flight 2000 variants and willingness to invest in complex restoration projects despite high potential costs

    medium · Mike's significant cash offer and commitment to multi-stage restoration project despite $10,000+ cost concerns

  • ?

    product_concern: Significant cabinet deterioration (disintegrating head, peeling wood, moisture damage) despite decades of storage suggests environmental storage issues and preservation challenges for conversion kit era machines

    high · Detailed documentation of head decay, humidity spots, and structural wood degradation throughout inspection sequence

  • ?

    technology_signal: Discussion of custom boards and mysterious electronics on Gammatron suggests non-standard modifications and aftermarket upgrades typical of conversion kit era machines

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.064

0:00
Gamitron, Gamitron, do-do-do-do-do, Gamitron, uh-huh, ugh. I'm Mike Dimas, and this is Pinball Shenanigans.
0:18
Alright, I'm on my way to close a deal on a friggin' Gamitron, which is super exciting. I kind of just had to rush out the door here because I'm meeting my buddy Paul Dewar he said he was going to be there at the storage unit at 7 15 but it is 6 57 and he said he's already on my street so I had to jump out and jump in the car and get my butt on the road I thought I was going to have a couple minutes to kind of explain how this whole deal came to be I'll see if I can do it in rapid fire fashion.
0:57
Okay, Paul Dewar I've known for like 15 years since the beginning of London Ontario Pinball League. I know he has some cool titles in his collection, but he's not really been known to ever sell anything. I caught wind not that long ago that he had a friggin' Gammatron sitting in storage, and I wanted it. And he doesn't really like to let go of anything.
1:18
So I tried the trade offer, and I said, I have a future spot. I'll trade you straight up for that. And it actually got him thinking, which surprised me. And then later, a couple, few days later, he sent me a photo of the machine, which is at his cottage in Grand Bend. And I was like, well, that's pretty cool. And I didn't know that the wheels were turning, that the deal was, I guess, potentially happening. and I said, okay, no, then just today, he says, there's more parts and pieces that I'm missing for the full story, but basically just today he said, oh, well, I got the machine in the back of my truck. Like, oh, okay. Do I come check it out? What's going on? And I texted him back. I said, Yeah, I know we were kind of, you know, talking about this future spa trade potential, but I literally just sold that today.

Mike Dimas@ 11:40 — Personal tournament experience with Flight 2000/Gammatron variant, describing gameplay characteristics

Paragon
game
Pinstarcompany
Future Spagame
Beast 2024event
London Ontario Pinball Leagueorganization
Grazley Garagecompany

medium · Mike discovers unfamiliar custom board during inspection and references need for potential board repair/replacement

2:21
So, you know, I can maybe pay you cash or we can work out some other trade. I'll try and muster up some other options.
2:31
And he's like, oh, shit, man, I had the future spa. Like I had a deal for a buddy of mine to take the future spa. So I'm like, oh, I might have lost the deal. I might have screwed up here, but he didn't exactly say yes Let's do this trade hold it for me. It just kind of Happened either way we worked something out. I gave him an exorbitant amount of cash It's right here It is probably too much cash It's a lot of $50 Canadian bills but the deal is happening in like three minutes. Gamatron is coming home, and it's going to be in my next project. Oh, and if you don't know anything about it, Gamatron is a conversion kit. When your old Bally machine in 1982 stopped making money, you buy this conversion kit. It comes with a playfield, back glass, and decals for the cabinet. You pull out your old Bally Playboy playfield and back glass. you pop this in and you got yourself Gamitron which is flight 2000 slim body anyway I gotta go I'll talk to you in a minute I can't really go it's a red light all right here with Mr. Doer the do what have you brought me here so this is an old Bobby Orr you said play uh cabinet Bobby Orr cabinet look at this okay what do you you said Kevin need to do some work on this cabinet or something on the head yeah just on the head so there's the backlash this is the one's cracked but the other one is not other ones oh it's plexi right i did read about that oh and there's another play field sweet really just another play field oh so we so i'm gonna have extra parts if needed and there's parts been taken off it for other stuff because when i had this and i was working on this a little bit yeah and i was working on other stuff parts were hard to find a you know 25 years ago they were or weren't oh yeah you had to get them at starburst and right you know so because we got an extra play field and an extra back though you could if you really wanted to you could make two gametrons eh there you go well maybe i might do that make one nice one and then sell a gametron project to someone else but you see the thing is that's why i brought everything that was involved with it that's awesome okay we're gonna unload this and uh get a closer look Okay, well we're looking at this playfield. Do you remember where you got this from or how long you've had it? Yeah We talking like a few decades I guess. Oh
5:14
The playfield looks good 25 years 25 years Wow How when is last time you sold a pinball machine because you don let things go too often do you did i crack the seal i know you got some uh some stuff you got to clear out maybe i can help you clear out some more stuff all right paul is just leaving the building now and i'm gonna have a little peek at what i have got myself into before packing up and heading home. This playfield is in immaculate condition. I wonder if this conversion kit, if they did something different with the playfield or if it was just standard procedures. It looks all wood. It doesn't look like a small layer of plexi, but just judging by the condition of it you'd almost think it had a plexi layer on top but no
6:19
look look at the inserts how is there zero wear maybe there is gonna have to investigate further you think we might have a little bit of ball hop on these rails that one for sure but it's pretty sweet that it has the original apron cards shooter gauge i've never seen that before the apron's in nice shape with the pinstar ink logo this is exciting we got slingshot plastics are intact that plastic is intact i should look through the camera so we can it's just better that way i find and then i otherwise i get i go astray there's the uh ball walker mech but i'm really not actually seeing any playfield wear which is amazing there is mylar under the pop bumper so that makes me think it's got to be wood because why would they try and protect plexi it's got some humidity spots from being stored in a basement for who knows how long but i think this is going to clean up very nice got a lot of cleaning to be doing but from what i'm seeing so far i'm very happy okay so the decals that you get with the conversion kit.
8:00
You just slap them on the side. And I think I saw some staples. I guess you staple it as well. Don't imagine it goes under the side rail because that would be too much of a pain for the operator to have to remove the side rail. So probably just the edges here. I was reading the flyer before I came. I'll show you the flyer later, but it says you should buy this conversion kit and start making more money you don't even need a soldering iron but there you can see a bit of the mildewy spots and there is
8:41
bobby orr cabinet so if i want to just hack this up lip it up i could just paint that area black so I guess this is pin star logo which is cool but you can see the front the decal is pretty much gone you know it'd be cool to have a someone make me this pin star logo in a diamond fashion so I can put a pin star logo instead of Bally on the front.
9:21
Here's another plastic. And then this side. See, the star itself is in good shape, so I could get away with probably just painting that stuff black. I mean, I just don't know that I can afford or that this machine can afford a Grazely treatment because I don't want this to cost me $10,000 when it's all said and done.
9:57
But the fact that I have a spare playfield and back glass means that I can actually cut down my costs by selling off what I don't need. I can totally sell a playfield and then I'll sell this cracked back glass.
10:20
Guaranteed someone will want to piece together another Gamitron, even if they have only those two pieces, which is really all you need. That's basically the conversion kit minus the decals. Decals are simple enough. and this looks pretty pretty complete so yeah you may have to borrow a thing or two off of this Look at, this is like game plan style coils there.
11:00
These brown ones, looks like game plan. What does this say? Oh, pin star wrappings on them. Neat. But yeah, I want to at some point talk a little bit more about the history of this game and how it came to be. We'll look at the Internet Pinball database, maybe pin side. There's a bit of a crack there on that slingshot. Because this is just a really cool piece of pinball history. Narrow Body Flight 2000. I played it.
11:37
It was at, where was it? I think it was at the Beast 2024 in Buffalo. I think it was Bruce Nightingale's machine.
11:47
And it was beautiful. And it was a fun game. It played fast and furious and deadly. But I loved it. Hey, wait. Is there no spinner here?
12:03
Oh, we're missing a spinner here. we got the spinner here oh we're missing that whole bracket oh you know what
12:11
that's a very custom looking bracket ah but we got it on this side thank god and it looks like pinstar logo as well so yeah anyway the head here this is uh
12:29
this is what i'm a little bit worried about this might be beyond my capacity Wow, it is disintegrating as I touch it.
12:44
Whoa. This used to be a head. Oh, my God. What I think, I think Paul said, oh, your buddy Kevin might have to spend about 20 minutes on this thing. This wood.
13:01
Oh, my God. Is just peeling apart. Okay then, well, let's just set that there. That needs to dry out. Okay, good news is we got four out of the five displays and these lights I think were added because there's no player indicator lights that weren't for that whoa holy crap what the hell is this board this thing is just falling apart as I move it is that wow I've never seen that board before I didn't realize there was any custom boards on this thing hmm well it looks like this I'm hoping that this thing works otherwise I'm gonna have to send it out for repair and then we got power supply over here Paul said he left me with circuit board somewhere by the way this smells amazing so there was where did they put it oh here look at this i got a bag of goodies
14:32
uh goodies might be low might not be the correct term to use for this we might have to go new Weebly board.
14:48
Standard lamp driver, no biggie. Standard solenoid driver that has been through a mud storm. That's probably repairable. Although this and this and this have already been replaced.
15:08
Okay, wow. I got myself a project. How is this transformer looking? It's hard to see. Okay. I might start thinking about a donor head because I don't know if it's worth it to get Kevin to replace this. It's got this whole front edge. Kevin just did one of these front edges for a machine. And this piece of wood alone is like beveled into the bottom piece. It's got this arch. It's got a curve. It's like a royal pain in the butt to remake this piece alone. This piece is not so bad.
15:57
But it has the head decals on it I don know Wow I going to have to figure something out It might be better to start with a brand new donor head. I'll send a photo to Kevin and let him know how awesome this head is.
16:21
Okay. Got the back glass. it looks like kind of like transformers meets star wars i like this dude though we need a t-shirt we need this as a t-shirt it's got to have been done already i do like this logo that's cool okay got some legs
16:54
Three of them look similar. One looks a little different, but whatever. Might be doing some powder coating, we'll see. Okay. Anyway, so, Gamitron adventure begins. It'll be a little bit before I get this... I gotta move some crap around in the basement. So I'll need a little bit of time before I can move this down there. But here it is. Gametron. It's happening. All right, here's a little bonus footage because while I was out getting a Gametron yesterday, Kevin and Dutch were out getting these guys. You don't really have a whole lot of space to be buying pinball machines, man. But yeah, so it was a pretty decent deal so they couldn't help themselves and the last Flintstones they got was kind of crappy. But this one, according to Dutch, is a million times better. And look, it's got like little mods. Oh, cute little Flintstones mobile there. Drop target decals. cool you said there was an extra character or something in the coin box I don't know who that is that Bam Bam Bam Bam Dutch was like there's another character we don't know who it is in the coin box. Paragon. Oh, right, they power on and even does this thing even work too? That's a good looking Paragon. Yeah.
19:03
Cool. That's all right. Always something going on. Oh, this is what you're talking about. It looks like an atom trap, doesn't it? Dinosaurs lit up.
19:14
Buildings are lit up. Pretty cool, pretty cool. Nice score, guys. Thanks to you. Now you just need some space to put them. Yeah, that's what I need too. That's today's job, is trying to figure out what to do. Bye, big fella. Bye-bye, big boy.
19:33
Ten seconds before we got to go. Oh, look how amazing that looks. Wow. Oh, my God. Oh, time's ticking. Time's ticking. That's all you get. Oh, eight. I thought we had eight, seven, six.
19:50
Turned out amazing. Wow. Anyway, we got to bang some balls. We're hitting the golf course. so wow that is just beautiful it's not actually the fonts hey ray said i got another 10 seconds
20:12
let's play one ball of paragon it's got a sensitive pop bumper it's doing some resetting the beast layer is extra beastie okay touch be my left flipper oh wait hold on It wasn't this bad yesterday. Oh, here comes Ray. We gotta go.
20:32
I want a flip. One flip. Yes, one drop target. Alright. We gotta go. We need to shut up. This is a little precarious situation here.
20:50
Oh, shit. I think you're right. I saw a little peek of the ball. You can do it! In for a penny. Oh, fuck, he's still in there. Just throw it! Just throw it! You shouldn't have done that. My ice cubes are shaped a little funny.
21:18
You want to try and have a sip? Bye!