Las Vegas Pinball Hall of Fame

On Sunday Jess, Chap, and I went to the Pinball Hall of Fame, located in sunny Las Vegas, Nevada. It is, in a word, Awesome. “Over 200 games,” about half electro-mechanical, half more modern solid state.

Photos: here.

The selection was incredible, as you can imagine/see, and after coming here for five years now, it was really the most fun I’ve had in Las Vegas. Where else can you spend three hours and less than twenty bucks for this much fun? (For two people, no less!)

It was really interesting to see the progression of pins over the years. From the barely-inclined, graceful motion of the EM’s (electro-mechanical, from the 50’s thru the 70’s), to the latest sound-and-graphics-laden non-sense. And fortunately, my favorites (the solid state machines of the 80’s-early 90’s) in between.

Even more-so it was a thrill to be able to play pins that I’ve been reading about lately, most notably Pin*bot, Dark Knight, F-14 Tomcat, Black Knight, Black Hole, The Addams Family, Twilight Zone, and Whirlwind. (Remember, I haven’t spent more than a few bucks in pins over the prior 28 years!) My two favorites were Pin*bot and Whirlwind. Pin*bot was fun and remarkably rewarding for as simple as it seemed (on the surface?). I can see why it’s become such a classic.

I was pretty proud of my final Pin*bot score: 3,918,410. Very respectable, I’d say.

Whirlwind, on the other hand, really stole our hearts, if I can say such a thing about a pin. It was fun and simple enough to feel like you were getting someplace, and it also gave a sense that there was some depth to the gameplay: that even though we were scoring points and making things happen (blinking lights are good!), you got the feeling there were still a few more layers to be exposed in time. Plus, while the weather outside was remarkably chilly, the Hall of Fame was a bit on the warm side (a few thousand lamps, anyone?), so the occasional fanning of the backbox header (a fan, pointed at the player, could be activated by accomplishing a certain goal in the game) was a real highlight.

The Hall of Fame also made us value our own Police Force that much more. There were a lot of games there that, well, just weren’t all that much fun at all. Maybe there was something we were missing, but several of them were remarkably “Eh” for all of the effort that must have gone into making them. Then there were those that were oddly painful to play. Fortunately there was only one: Buggs Bunny’s Birthday Ball. We’d pumped $1.00 into it (3 credits), and I actually didn’t want to play the last round. I can’t quite put my finger on what the problem was. Perhaps the bizarre pit in the playfield. A ball would last you quite a while (there are no side drains), but this wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Twilight Zone had a lot of neat gadgets, and Addams Family was fun, but they just didn’t seem fun.

Given the way we went about it, we’re very lucky to have bought a pin that we really enjoy playing.

I’m planning on going back sometime later in the week to turn a portrait of Andrew Jackson into quarters. It’s sad to think that there’s nothing like this (that I know of) in Atlanta.

Weasel Update

Thursday evening I opened up the playfield and had a good look at the Weasel’s drop target assembly and opto board. After giving it a good look and fiddling with the targets in switch test mode, as well as doing a good bit of reading (Clay’s guide, for one), I think I’ve determined that I killed the LM339 (quad comparator IC) on the opto board while unscrewing one of the lamps. (Moral: Turn the machine off before poking a screwdriver around any circuit boards.) The middle target would intermittently fire not just itself, but all three drop target switches, thus the constant Weasel-capturing. I am a little uncertain because I think one of the opto board power supply wires was acting rather flaky, but I don’t think that would result in that behavior exactly.

For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about (if you do, skip this paragraph): The drop targets work using a simple spring mechanism and an optical sensor that detects whether the target is up or down. When up, each target has a plastic piece that breaks an optical path between an LED and a sensor. When the ball pushes the target back, the target slips off of a ledge of sorts and the spring pulls it down. This allows the optical sensor to ’see’ the LED, which completes the circuit. An IC (integrated circuit) and some resistors provide the logic to make this circuit work for all three targets. When the machine decides to reset the targets, a solenoid fires that lifts all three targets back up onto their ledges, ready to be knocked down again.

This will be my first soldering operation on the machine. My plan is to install a 14-pin socket for the LM339 chip so that, if it goes bad again (and apparently they often do), it can be easily replaced.

I have a lot of improvements in mind for our Police Force. While it’ll be satisfying to me to work on, in some way I wonder if this work will be reflected in the machine’s value. I don’t see pins as a way to make money, really, but I guess I’d like my work (and learning) to be appreciated in some way. Maybe it’ll just have to be good karma.

In other news, as I over-saturate myself with pinball knowledge (including this article on flame polishing ramps — don’t think I’ll be trying that any time soon, although our ramp could use some shine), I’m becoming increasingly aware of just how filthy our Police Force is. It looked pretty clean, if used, to me when we got it. Novus cleaner and mill wax are en route.

Restoration, Weird Weasel

Cliffy’s Pinbot Restoration (via Ryan’s Pinball Blog) is very, very impressive. It’s also made me more aware of the ways in which our Police Force pin isn’t in immaculate condition. It is, however, in good enough working condition that I don’t think I’d want to mess with it too much right now. Instead, I’ll fantasize about picking up a project pin to clean up myself.

In last night’s playing I noticed that the diamond weasel drop-target goal seems to be acting up. Perhaps a switch under the playfield needs adjustment? I was fiddling around near it while replacing a bulb yesterday morning, but I didn’t think I bumped anything. A few times it triggered, telling me that I’d captured the weasel (done by hitting all three drop-targets) at improbable times. When the ball was being popped into the shooter lane, for example. Hmm.

New High Score!

Last night I went home from work, fired up the pinball, and proceeded to whoop ass. Five games or so, none of them with scores below 2M, most above 3M! My first game, first ball ended up lasting about 4 balls as I miraculously managed to rake in the Extra Balls. I must have been living right yesterday. My best was just above 4M, which was a mere 300k above Colin’s 4th place score. Almost!

Then Jessica called to see what I wanted from Popeye’s. I cradled the ball in the flipper and began to worry about burning up the coil (does that even happen?), opting to try to juggle it into the other flipper for a moment. I’m not sure what gave me the idea that I was skilled enough to do this. The ball quickly slipped down the drain and I was free to walk around. After we hung up the streak proved to be over: crap scores from there on out (each less than 300k) until I saw her pulling into the driveway. Somehow the planets aligned and I managed to pull a score a hair above 5M. It was just enough to slide me onto the scoreboard in 4th place. Hooray!

It now occurs to me that it would be incredibly cool to “web-enable” the pinball. RSS high scores, record each scoring event for review, etc. To my knowledge the Williams System 11 board is, shall we say, “pre-web.” I suppose we’ll have to resort to a computer vision system to record this information…

The rest of the night’s playing was, frankly, abysmal. Remarkable that I can be doing so well and then play so terribly from then on out.

Introduction

After years and years of fascination with pinball machines (and startlingly little actual playtime — I generally preferred peering at pinballs to actually playing them), my wife and I purchased a 1989 Williams Police Force. Here’s a shot of the upper playfield:

I was shocked by the size when it arrived; the backbox loomed tall and the cabinet itself was larger than I’d anticipated. It was in 100% working condition, the seller said, which turned out to be mostly true. I found myself giddy and rather bashful about it when we plugged it in and the seller insisted we play a few games. I’ve literally lost no more than $3.00 in pinball coin slots over my 28 years, and now we’d gone and bought a whole machine. The glow and flicker of the lights when we plugged it in seemed proof enough that it was working, and though we had no idea how to play Police Force, we stumbled through a few quick games.

Our only resources when picking the game out were the photographs supplied by the seller, a few Google searches, and reading the reviews on the Internet Pinball Database. Rather haphazard when you consider that this is a pretty big purchase to be making blind, but we liked the artwork, the moving police car looked cool, and it had a very respectable number of ramps. This was a device that had more moving parts than our entire house!

The configuration options seemed limitless and fascinating. After a few days we applied the Easy preset; the next day my brother in law quickly set an impressive high score in his second game on the thing. Apparently playing a lot of video games, and probably a few pinballs too, makes you a formidable opponent. By the end of the evening my wife had captured the jackpot and held the top high score. I had been knocked off the Top 4.

Earlier that day we had opened up the machine and taken inventory of burnt-out bulbs. (The game was 100% functional, except for about 3 lamps.) We determined what we needed and went to the local hardware store (a whole ‘nother story) and bought all of their #47 bulbs and one #555 equivalent for what I would later find out was not a good price. Once home we successfully replaced one bulb; the other two wouldn’t work. Subsequent testing with our new multi-meter told us that we had one dead diode and one possibly faulty lamp socket. Without a soldering iron and a new diode, we were stuck.

Over the next couple weeks I played quite a bit, and now consider my skill to have improved remarkably, although I still haven’t worked my way back onto the high score list. Even with four bulbs out (we found two more a day or so ago), Police Force is a lot of fun to play. So much that it makes me want another pinball. Or maybe a project/fixer-upper.

That nearly brings us up to date. I started this blog to chronicle my experiences with Police Force, as well as record what I learn so that other newbs might find it informative. I called it Solenoid because, in my readings thus far, the word seems to be used remarkably infrequently, and to me it describes exactly what makes 95% of a pinball move. Enjoy!