The Pinball Diaries (what did you do today?)

[WARLOCK]

That was some of my finer "cheese" prose fo sho.

 

[spiroagnew]

Datenight with the wife at the local Cineplex here in Burlington. Had a Metallica in the arcade area, two tokens per play. Fifteen tokens for five bucks. Seemed reasonable. Replay set really low and match percentage really high, so I still had a pocket full of tokens when I walked away, and left three credits on the game for a *very* appreciative kid. It was the first time I played MET...felt really solid, semi-impressive build quality...I know, I know, I harp on Stern’s build quality a lot on the forums (ever since playing Avengers), but MET and ST really seemed to turn a corner for the company. Dot animation looked great, but that DMD man, it just looks so small, confining and tired...Stern really needs to make the leap to an LED screen real soon. The custom speech by the band seemed a bit stilted and out of place on the soundtrack. Art was amazing. Most of this stuff has already been said about this pin, but I though I’d post anyhow, because its not often you are able to get acquainted with a machine in the wild anymore.

 

[WARLOCK]

No Fear #2 has returned to me.
No Fear #1 is off to a better home.
Volley #1 is off to a new home as well.
Lightning #2 will come home soon-ish.

Many thanks to Ancient Games for the driving.
Thanks Mike.

Time to get ready to get the next round shuffled.
Supersonic #2 is on it's way soon,
Coupled with Volley #3 as well.
Jungle Lord #2 will be off too.

Whew. This is all just the warm-up for the trip
to Montreal on Feb.21 Drano and I are taking.

Oh, and big vid cab. came today for my 412-1
mame to be housed in. Thanks again AG -Mike!

 

[Grauwulf]

Spent some more time working on my spare boards I've been hoarding for years, trying to get things back up and running so they can all find new homes. Got a couple of Stern -200 MPU"s repaired and a couple Bally -35's and a Solenoid driver board. Beed puzzling through a power supply problem so I can get my test bench up and running to fully test everything. Finished the repairs on a client's DR Who this week as well.

 

[Ancient Games]

Played some pins last night! Imagine that! Did alot of driving too. Trailer running lights died just as it was getting dark. Spent 1/2hr under the truck trying to trace the issue but I was cold. Atleast the hazards,brakes and blinkers worked. The issue is not the trailer, rather from the main vehicle harness to the trailer adapter. Didn't slow me down though! I had pins to play!!!!!!! WOOT!

 

[DRANO]

There are always pins in play for pals bro.
You already know that all though.
We don't like selling pins yo.
We let go, to upgrade "o"!

Send a PM, go.
Cheerio.

Scott,
You're quickly becoming our resident 'Leaping Lanny Poffo' :lol:

 

[WARLOCK]

A wrestler who wrote limmericks later in life?
Younger brother of Randy "Macho Man Savage"?
Didn't they both defeat the Hulkster at various times ?
Funny though bro! lmfao.

I guess I should perhaps start quoting Blake more often.

 

[spiroagnew]

You're quickly becoming our resident 'Leaping Lanny Poffo' :lol:

"Leaping" Lanny Poffo...what a gimmick. A good-guy jobber who lost to the stars and read poems written on frisbees which he then threw into the crowd. Saw him wrestle many times at Maple Leaf Gardens--jobbers (Poffo, Barry O, Iron Mike Sharpe, etc.) were used often at these Toronto shows to put over mid-card wrestlers and marginal stars. Poffo wrestled Outlaw Ron Bass one evening when I attended, it was a rather forgettable match, and I can still recite the poem he read that night (I was able to videotape segments of that event weeks later on Wrestling Cavalcade and watched it ad naseum for years afterwards, thus, I can remember the poem word for word)...

"Here we have the Outlaw, with his handlebar moustache,
He may be much more powerful, but I've got more panache.
Who will be the better man, we'll have to wait and see,
The biggest joke I've seen tonight is Lucious Johnny V !!!"
(Manager Johnny V was doing colour commentary ringside that evening with Gorilla Monsoon)

Now back to pinball...phew.

 

[Vengeance]

So 2014 has been a good competitive year thus far....

 

[tim.sanderson]

While it wasn't actually today, my R911 was bought and picked up on Saturday.

Time to start thinking about project #3!

 

[DRANO]

Well, I had a little 'pin-sum' gathering this Saturday for some local (and not-so local) friends. I was fortunate to find a West end alternative for our regular late night post pinball dim-sum; Tremendous Chinese Restaurant in Mississauga. It was a good time.
But the gathering date was pretty much set by this baby! She was the star of the night.

Banzai Run has long been a game I wanted to own. They're not very easy to find and I settled for a project that was far beyond my capabilities to repair.
But, thanks to a little trading of services, BZR is now back home and alive! Thanks Corey



It still needs a lot of love and adjustment, but I'm super stoked to have this game in my lineup.
Maybe one day I'll find a nicer example or restore this one, but, for now, I'll just enjoy it!

 

[mwong168]

So 2014 has been a good competitive year thus far....

Congrats Adam!

I got a whole bunch of parts from Brock and Rob this past Saturday as well as my Uncle Lester for my TAF. I installed whatever plastic protectors that were easily accessible on DM, JM and TOM over the weekend.

I also swapped out all the rubbers on my JM from black to white and the game is much more bouncier now. Thanks again guys for letting me tag onto your existing orders from pinbits and PDI.

 

[REVOLUTION]

Sent a HUGE box of repro Shadow parts to Planetary Pinball yesterday.

 

[Menace]

Well, after almost a year of sitting in my shop on their backs I finally had a couple of spare minutes to do this...



I've now got them unwrapped, and I spent about 30 mins snapping a bunch of pics as I will be starting a full featured post in my section on everything it's going to take to get these games from their current state to playing like champs.

D

 

[DRANO]

Mmmmmmmm... ZAC goodness

As simple as they are, I am quickly developing a love for these Italian beauties.

 

[mwong168]

Looks great Doug and know how long you have been wanting a ROBOT. I can't wait to try them out once you have them dialed in and working 100%.

 

[Grauwulf]

Lookin good Doug! It's about time you set those bad boys up!

I've been puttering away on some boards, rebuilt a SYS80 power supply, repaired the power supply for my Bally/Stern test bench (thanks for the parts Cooke!), and finished repairing the SDB and harness for the test bench. Finally managed to get everything up and running so I can test and repair some boards I have.

Next up, mpu and a driver board from a Twilight Zone.

 

[Chris Bardon]

Played a bunch of X-men, and spent some time troubleshooting the Nightcrawler popups. They'll very often pop up, and then drop immediately during gameplay, especially during Rogue. In trying to get them to stay up though, I got the left one to the point where the latch wouldn't drop it at the start of a game (at least not on the first try). I managed to adjust the mech so it drops the way it's supposed to, but it seems like a bad design. It's fairly simple (coil pops up NC, spring pulls latch under the plunger, plunger rests on latch), but I think that the problem is that the weight of the target is such that the coil has to pull the latch out from underneath, overcoming the full weight of the whole target. Either the coil is underpowered for the job, or the friction on the bottom of the plunger is too high. I thought that adjusting it so that the latch was inset further on the bottom of the plunger might help the targets stay up, but this caused my earlier problem, so now it's back to just barely resting on the edge of the latch.

Anyway, working now. Still haven't managed to get to Dark Phoenix, but I did actually finish 3 Villain modes last night, which was my best yet.

 

[DRANO]

Still haven't managed to get to Dark Phoenix, but I did actually finish 3 Villain modes last night, which was my best yet.

It's such a tough game!
Definitley the type of pin that'll make you a better player... in time.

I see these guys posting half a billion points on Pinside and I have to wonder. I'll bet they've got the game set up to stack everything. It's already hard to keep track of what you're doing on XM. Hero stacking would be a hot mess IMO.
I think my best showing was 4 villains terminated (before this code update). I haven't come close to that yet in the last few days.

 

[Chris Bardon]

I have things at the defaults (1 of each), and it's hectic enough. I like the idea of hero stacking in theory, but as-is it's a little too easy to start. Villain stacking would also be pretty easy depending on how progression to relight works. For mode stacking, I like how something like TZ or TSPP work-X-Men is way more chaotic, and you can start heroes without intending to (at least villain modes are scoop shots).

I've topped out around 68M so far with the new code, and less than 20 combos.