Pinball In Lockdown
Well, we have all of Aotearoa in Level 4 lockdown. That’s as tight as we get under NZ law. Tighter than we have seen overseas. I’m not here to discuss my opinion on the lockdown, and I hope you are doing well in your respective bubbles. Let’s talk pinball during this time.
I’ll put a link to this on the Facebook page and feel free to comment underneath.
Those of us with a pinball at home, can play, clean, restore, perhaps investigate and fix that annoying little fault you have put up with for so long…maybe even stream pinball over Twitch if you’ve gotten super smart and that floats your boat. I’ll write a blog entry. I don’t really write any, maybe this might start something more frequent if any of you want to read them?
At present at home I have two working games that I can play (Supersonic and Medusa), and seven dead ones. The Supersonic I bought from Dave Peck in Auckland (who has the best Bally solid state collection anywhere).
The Medusa came from a friend here in Wellington. He had really done a number on it. Rescreened the cabinet, and even re-painted the playfield by hand. Yes you heard right. Hand painted the whole playfield. Sounds wild, you wouldn’t know it from looking. Maybe that could be another blog entry down the track.
So these two working ones have the afore-mentioned niggly faults. The Supersonic loses the sound effects occasionally and reverts to chimes. The Medusa has a sticky left flipper. I have chosen to ignore them thus far. I know how to fix them, but slight procrastination and prioritising are my friends at the moment.
But I’m rarely playing these two machines anyway. I am nearly finished a Roadshow restore for a friend. Not far to go, I have all the parts I need. When I say restore, I mean playfield and mechanical. Stripping, cleaning, new rubbers, new LED lighting, electronic and mechanical repair. Plus flipper rebuilds of course.
Usually I start any pinball restore with getting the major mechanical and electrical faults sorted first. Before any cosmetic stuff. This way when I am dismantling to clean and re-rubber I know what needs attention at the same time.
Cabinet is fine as it is, and the legs and levellers are new. One of the joys for me is to get a game looking smart, and dialed in so it plays like a dream. I want no credit dots (a credit dot is a fullstop after the credit or free play indicator that denotes an error message with the game. It could be as simple as a switch that has not been activated in 30 plays, or something more problematic).
In my opinion Roadshow is a great game, but suffered from code that was not fully fleshed out. In 1994 I think it was rushed to a deadline of an AMOA trade show and the design team probably didn’t get to do all that they wanted. Designer Pat Lawlor wanted the game to have more dialogue with the player, just as Rudy taunts the player on Funhouse.
Also the game strategy is linear, with the journey going from East to West coast USA, so from the beginning the same three modes come up a lot. Damn that taxi cab! There is a new eprom available to randomise all the modes and I have it but it’s not installed yet. I do wonder how this will affect the story-telling nature of the game, insofar as the object is to travel as far as you can to Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle.
US country singer Carlene Carter provides the voice of Red, and she debuted her new song of the time “Every Little Thing” on the jackpot shot within multiball. Pretty cool!
Roadshow is one of the 7 wide body titles of 1993/94.
It references Pat’s previous titles: Earthshaker, Whirlwind and Twilight Zone, as well as the obvious Funhouse with the claim that “two heads are better than one”.
Once the Roadshow is done, I will move on to a Flintstones, which I am really looking forward to.
I love playing pinball, sure, but equally I love bringing them up to spec.
So with Covid, site pinball can’t be played unless we are in Level 1. Some sites with other operators run them at Level 2 but the games should be cleaned regularly and buttons sanitized and to be honest, in practice I’m not sure many places do this. I just instruct my sites to keep the machines switched off and then there is no problem with it.
When we get back to mingling, there will be more pinball get togethers, and here in Wellington we have a comp set for 25 Sept, if we are in Level 1 at that stage. Who knows? We shall keep a watch.
So if you have a pinball at home, what are you enjoying playing or working on?
I was recently given by friend Mike Davidson a scan of an amusing letter. He was helping go through some of the late Yee Fong’s pinball related belongings and found something written by Roger Newman. I have inserted this below his podcast on this site and it’s a great read.
