It all comes down to logic. If you're familiar with the use of flowcharts for programming and then take a look to the diagram of something like this it doesn't take long before you start to see the similarities. tl;dr: game design is hard and jank knows no boundaries.
@@ObsoleteVodkaYT My friends and I once soft locked a board game. Mad Magazine put out a board game and one of the squares you can land on says stay here until another player passes you. All three of us landed on that square. Since there were no other players, the game couldn't continue.
@@BrotherAlpha That's astounding. …also, the fact that it was made by Mad Magazine makes me think that a) they definitely had enough resources to come across that in playtesting and 2) deliberately chose not to.
@@BrotherAlpha I would have interpreted it as "when another player lands here, the player that was originally in the spot can leave", as you're technically "passing" them.
The funny thing though, these electromechanical things are basically primitive mechanical computers. The "CPU" is logic circuitry, the "memory" is physical switches. It can in a way be considered code.
Liking this comment just for the words "Krakow Pinball museum". OMG I need to fing a occasion to visit your town and get there! _browsing Krakow opera schedule_
Is it loaded with Eastern Block games? I've seen a few youtube videos of arcade games from the CCCP. It's amazing how far behind they were from the West. I cannot find much in English about the various models of Spectrum computers from the post CCCP era, but from what little I have seen, they do not adhere to any real standard, let alone the original ZX Spectrum. But that these were a source of at home arcade fun in the 90s.
I have responded to a fire caused by a pinball machine. The genius decided he wasn't gonna replace fuses anymore. Replaced all the fast blow fuses with slow blow automatic reset breakers. The slow blow allowed the noids to overheat and kept resetting allowing them to catch fire. Took out a really nice game room with a few video game cabinets, pool table, and a few pinball machines. He had modded them that morning and left for a 1 week vacation. We were paged out about 2 am to put his house out. The volunteer firefighter in me is gonna tell you if you have stuff like that turn it off before you leave. The full time electrician in me is gonna tell ya don't mod stuff you have no clue about.
I never had much exposure to pinball machines, so I never really considered that there is a list of things that you are 'supposed to do'. Frankly, I had a hard enough time just keeping the ball in play.
Most casual players only care about table flow. If I put in a credit, does the ball remain in play for a fair time, and did it do some cool things before it ended. Only "pinball enthusiasts" even read the rules.
You can pretty much search the most insignificant thing that hits your eye during the day, and you'll find a whole passionate community around it, with deep debates, and an insane depth of lore. So I'm not surprised there's so much to know about pinball.
I was a relatively small kid in 1976, but before video games, this is one of the things young people did. While there were technically video games in 76, they were few and far between. There are a TON of electromechanical games going back to the 30s. You think a light gun was invented in 1983 with Nintendo? They go back to the 40s at least. There was a plane game which projected a plane flying across the projection screen that had a machine light gun in the early 40s. Even earlier games were played entirely with steel balls. There was a pretty famous baseball game from the 30s that used steel balls. But it goes back even further than the 30s. Coin operated device go back thousands of years. Ancient Greece had coin operated mechanisms, usually involved in worship.
@@christo930 I remember playing one of those early light-gun games at a fairground as a kid in the 80s. It was already at least 30 years old then, and was there well in to the 90s. It was a rifle with a big ass cable attached, there was a big screen about 3-5 meters away that had a landscape over which "UFOs" (blips of light really) would fly. I think it was a real rifle that was just stripped of everything, and a sensor shoved in the barrell. The thing was needlessly heavy for a kid, just a hunk of steel and wood :)
Pinball tables are really rare here in Sweden, because in the 1980s our government decided that they were gambling machines, and ruled that you needed to get a gambling license if you wanted to house one of them in your establishment. This was also applied to arcade machines, so you very rarely ever see these things. Insane to think that a Pac-Man cabinet has the same legal status here as a "One-Armed Bandit" (slot machine), but that's just how it is here.
You explaining the flippers reminds me that people don't realize that the pinball can move 70-100 miles per hour depending on the flipper and the rebound mechanisms. Those heavy steel balls moving at that speed will just not be fun to handle with mechanical flippers.
Yet another reason why Jurassic Park (Data East) is my favourite table: the raptor pit kicks the ball back at you at a ludicrous speed. Sometimes it then ricochets against the glass with a loud TCHAK sound that scares the hell out of you.
Where did you get 70 to 100 MPH? Because that is way off. Modern games max out at about 5 MPH, that Aztec I would guess 3 to 4. Just a little math to back it up: 100 MPH is 1760 Inches/second. The rough length of a large orbit (basically the ball looping from 1 flipper all the way around the top of the playfield to the other flipper) is about 80 inches. At 100 MPH you would complete this loop 22 times in 1 second. (1760 in/s divided by 80 in).
Regarding 'analog flippers', the difference is regarding the actuation time between button press and flipper bat actuation. On an EM machine or machine that does not have a control board/logic controlling the flipper, you are more easily able to perform a tap pass from one flipper to the other via a quick button tap. Papa pinball's channel has a great example of that technique.
As someone who has almost never played pinball, I'd love a vid on Theater of Magic! It's fascinating to learn about all this - different control logic, and just learning about a hobby I've never personally explored.
Regarding the flipper switches...I grew up with a Bally machine (Big Betty's Truck Stop), it has two flippers on each side. One at the bottom of the playing field and another about midway up. If you push the flipper button, both flippers on that side activate. However, if you push the button halfway, only the bottom flipper activates. It gives you the ability to catch the ball in the bottom flipper and then lob it straight up and catch it on the top flipper where it's much easier to hit the targets.
Thanks for another very interesting video. All the pinball content on your channel has been brilliant and I’d love to see a detailed video on Theater Of Magic! As someone interested in audio (who also really enjoys pinball) one of the things I find interesting about Williams machines from the 90’s is their use of the DCS (Digital Compression System) sound boards. These were one of the first arcade sound boards capable of playing full soundtracks of 16-bit digital audio, using a proprietary lossy audio format that was created in-house by Williams/Midway and was only ever used in these games. When it was launched in 1993, pretty much all other arcade/pinball games relied on FM Synthesis for their music, so to have proper recorded music in (relatively) high quality was a pretty big breakthrough at the time. The board would receive commands on what to play (as well as information about volume, looping etc.) from the main CPU board and could play up to 4 channels at a time. However, due to the limited storage space available on the rom chips, the audio engineers at Williams often had to lower the sample rate of some audio files (usually the speech callouts or sound effects) and cut certain parts of the music up into repeatable “chunks” to make the soundtrack seem longer than it actually is (I believe the DCS board could only hold around 10 mins of audio at 32khz, the highest sample rate the format could support). Still, despite the lower quality files having some noticeable compression artifacts (though they probably wouldn’t be too obvious in a busy arcade), DSC still sounds pretty good even today and it’s quite impressive what they were able to accomplish given the hardware limitations of the time.
Never tired of pinball! I have a couple of machines myself (Xenon and Raven). I was invited to someone's secret basement arcade once, all the machines were off. I suspect it was a basic "are you a real pinball fan" test, but I knew where the power switch was so I guess I passed that one.
This, EXACTLY! There are MANY newer games that I’ve played that there’s at least a 1/2 a second sometimes between me hitting the flipper button, and the flipper actually flipping. It’s SO Annoying!!!
I know how to train nudging: do it all the time, keep the machine "floating", so that you move the table constantly just a tiny bit. It is like opposite of how people play, you keep it steady only when it needs to be steady and keep the table alive, moving. "One with the table you must become" would be the Yodaist view of things..
I came here to find this comment. Assembly, including tools Factory space rent Shipping (can't be easy to transport these) Warranty Also, they are money-making devices to bars and arcades.
Ive found the sunlight leds from comet pinball are really really good at reproducing the incandescent look, the reduced heat and stress on the already battered and abused plastics and backglass paint is worth upsetting the purists, especially if its on location and on all day.
1:01:35 The bigger reason seprate switches are used is then you don't need diodes. If you link two seprate functions to the same switch those two functions will always trigger together as they are now connected in parallel via the switch contact. If either function is triggered via any other source; they both trigger.
My memories about coining up while playing and other stuff - adding a coin adds a credit but doesn't start anything - if you press start : one player - pressing start before points are scored : adds players - pressing start after player 1 scores points : don't remember - playing a ball and no points scored : the ball gets kicked back and can be played again
The whole series about the pinball machine and the series about the jukebox just really satisfied the nerd in me. I've built a few electronics projects including a 12 hour digital clock w seconds display and alarm function, and I've built many redstone circuits in the game Minecraft. A lot of the terminology and concepts talked about in these videos also apply to digital electronics and to Minecraft redstone. I've built basically every type of digital electronic circuit in Minecraft except for a computer, but I plan on doing that that someday. Keep making these kinds of videos, they just awesome.
I love all of the pinball content. always been a fan of them and I love how much life the older games have. its a game with a wonderful work of mechanical art attached to it
about the switch stack, I'm pretty sure the question was about why not have each cam pulse a separate relay which then actuates a switch bank. That would make the motor unit interchangeable and let you put the that additional relay bank anywhere else. Though it would mean an extra relay bank to deal with.
I have ZERO interest in pinball machines and I know very little about electronics in general, but the simplicity and ingenuity of electromechanical stuff is fascinating and I always enjoy your content and I very much look forward to more pinball vids in the future.
If you want to get your body English on, put your dominant foot toward the table and press your hip / pelvis against it. Every time you *need* a nudge, your lower-body muscles will go. Nudge sideways when the ball meets that rubber-banded post to "save".
Have a whole new appreciation for these videos after getting a modern Stern for my birthday this year. These EM machines make the wiring in mine look friendly and inviting; looking at those electrical diagrams gives me anxiety lol.
The analog flippers give you more control because you can directly control the flipper and not have a middle man power it for you. One example is to underpower a flipper by quickly tapping/smacking the button once called a Tap Pass. The flipper will barely move at all and the ball will hop to opposite flipper. Games that have digital fliptronic controls typically have a minimum ON time that forces the flipper to at least make an attempt to get to the full extended position.
I loved Theatre of Magic and Funhouse and all them. Addam's Family was my favorite. Now they got Pinball FX3, which I believe 3D scanned the play areas.
You might have a miss adjusted switch on the player unit mechanism it should only allow 4 players then trigger the coin door. Also there are blinking lights on some relays in the bottom of the machine that are used as timers in early pinballs
9:00, I feel like there is a way to do a high score all mechanically but that it would've just added a bunch of complexity for a non-major feature. When it became easier it could be a selling point but not when it would've taken a whole assembly just for something that people could do with a marker on the glass.
I think i know the logic behind coins resetting the game after ball 1! It's in the case someone leave the game halfway through! Imagine you play a ball or 2, don't like the machine/parent take you home/go to do something else, now the machine is waiting for ball 2/3 to go into play and it can't reset on it own since no timer. Second person cones up, sure they could play 1-2 balls for free, or stick a quarter in and reset it to have a full game! If you want to do multiplayer you be doing it before or during the first ball anyway, so anything after if just reset the game so if a machine get abandoned half way through it won't stop other people from playing it.
I want to disagree with "can't" in regards to timers. There were definitely electromechanical timers at the time. And they could have been integrated into this machine such that if you lost your ball before the timer had lapsed, it would give you an extra ball. But that wasn't part of the design of this machine, and that is why it doesn't have that feature. They could add it no problem, but this machine is complex enough as it is already and such a timer is just another point of failure.
I knew I saw your pinball machines before. Hershey Park, I practically grew up there, had them in the early 2000's at the arcade by the Big Bear coaster. They had Aztec and Theater of Magic. Aztec was still a Quarter and Magic i think 50 and Hercules which used a skeet ball a dollar.
24:20 Maybe it's not asking about "holding the flipper at halfway" but other games that have upper playfield flippers that don't activate at the exact same time as the ones at the drain. An example of this is on Jersey Jack's Willy Wonka machine. A slight press triggers the lower flippers, a full press activates the upper ones. Also it's a purely electric connection, instead of breaking leaf switches you're directly joining them. You can see the mechanism quite well at about 7:05 of the SlowMo guys pinball vid that you mentioned in the very first part of this series.
41:25 ish: with as much wiring as there is in that machine is the BOM price really a good indication of what it cost the manufacturer to make? How much work did each one take?
Ok, Ledtronics is one of the first and best sources for alllllll kinds of "indicator" replacement lamps which are essentially what's in pinball machines. And I mean every type. Wedge, bayonet, telephone, mini twist, etc. etc.. And now with the advancements in the white LED range you can probably find the right tungsten temp so nobody would ever know the diff. Because for real one of the best parts of pinball machines is the warm inviting glow. You could probably reduce the standby draw to 25W or less. Also, yeah, mechanical input buffers are incredibly complicated. No waiting in line when multiple sequences are triggered at the same time. MULT-III-BALLL!
from someone that played alot of pinball in the 1970s.. re: magnet on the glass..operators watched for that plus when the ball would slam into the glass from the magnet it made a distinct loud sound which would alert the operator.. the most common "cheat" was to wear steel toed boots and lift the machine up and place it on your toes as long as the tilt was not super sensitive..this would slow the play down and was not easily noticeable by operators... as for cheating the coin mech since it only "weighed" the coin at the time either dime or quarter (10c for 1 credit and 25c for 3 credits) slugs were used alot just had to get the weight roughly right ..some machines had magnet slug rejectors..some people i "heard" had scales for measuring natural green leafy substance which would work to get the slug weight right...one more was drill a hole into a quarter and tie a piece of fishing line to it.. once the credit was given you could pull it back out...
@13:50ish, it's also how most every machine I've played on so far. Except you have to push the start button, but if you have a credit on a ball that isn't 1, pressing start ends the game and starts again on the new credit. Handy for machines on freeplay when you absolutely stuff your first ball.
regarding more control with analog flippers... I wonder if it's just a tactile thing. Having a better feel for the actuation point. I mean, that's why clicky keyboards are so popular.
I have a Twilight Zone was once said to be the most complex rule set and in the top rankings of pinball machines for playability or addictability as I like to call it. It's a complex machine for its age on par and similar to The Adamms Family another very good and popular machine. It's somewhat unreliable with lots of opto devices instead of mechanical switches , early nineties electronics luckily new emulation boards are availible for most of the electronics if it fails and original parts unavailable. I love this machine it never gets boring even after 12 years or ownership.
Free Play: Hide a leaf switch or microswitch behind the coin reject plunger on the coin door. Tie it to the coin drop credit, and then you have near perfect realism to walk up to the game, press the plunger to mimic putting in the coin, then press start. All hidden without any damage to the cabinet or coin door, easily removable.
Some EM machines definitely did have the ball saver feature (no points, don't advance the ball count). Some also had the ability to have "memory" using dual-coil set/reset relays. Often, those that had such features, would not reset the the feature between players so player 1 could collect 90% of the required targets to get a bonus but lose the ball so player 2 only had 10% left to hit. Or, if a multi ball machine, (e.g. 4 million BC) subsequent players could benefit of previous players getting balls into their spots in the field. Some, even more clever, could keep track of things like drop-targets by player. As late as "Wizard" you could have 100,000pt lights to address "what if you rollover 99,999?" As in the even more olden days, it is just a light so if you were able to somehow get to over 200,000...there was no way to tally that.
I wonder if whoever was talking about analog flappers was thinking that the newer ones have perceived lag, that isn't to say that there is or isn't lag, just that might be the perception.
Wait wait wait - there's no TV behind that background storage unit. Did you move the entire storage unit to this set, or build a whole 2nd storage unit filled with interesting things for this set?
I wonder if by "analog" they mean lower (or at least more consistent) latency. As you said, in the older games you're directly closing the switch that powers the solenoid - there's nothing that could delay that. But in a newer game where is has to go through the (digital) control board there are things that might add just a hair of processing delay or a tiny fraction extra wait for something else to finish -- and even the perception that this might happen could make players favor the direct switch method.
@3750 Relays and Switches are rated for different types of "duty". Resistive / heater, capacitive, inductive, Motor, Pilot; These, in ascending order, targets of the switch or relay take more Inrush current, produces more lead / lag of current, and cause greater wear on the contacts. "Pilot Duty" Relays and Switches are those whose work is OTHER Relay Coils or Solenoids; because it is purely inductive load, it has a huge current lag and thus wears out the fastest. Powering multiple Contactors or Solenoids from a single switch is considered a BAD idea, for this reason, and hence multipl;e switches or relays are used to do it. I think that's how that works.
re: wire fire hazard. These look pretty on par with what I've seen for asbestos insulated wires. This would help with the heat, no so much with the cancer. Even then though, very low risk of exposure.
37:00 Power use. While 100 watts isn't much, if you have a machine plugged in in like your game room or whatever and is virtually always on, that certainly adds up. Probably around $90-120 per year per machine. Have a few machines in your game room and you might be talking about a decent pile of cash.
I'd like to see how an old mechanical Slot Machine works. My dad had an old Nickel One Arm Bandit while I was growing up and still don't know how it works. We still have that slot machine after my dad past back in 2008 but it's jammed so it's in storage for now but I would love to get it working. I remember as a kid putting a nickel in it and getting 20 back. Guess what I did with those 20 nickel? That's right I played 20 more games and didnt' win a single one. Now that I think about it I wonder how much is still in it.
So, a thing I wish existed is: A speedrunning community for pinball. Why the hell isn't that a thing!? (I'd love to find out that I'm wrong and that there are some new Twitch channels I should be following ...)
27:56 i mean... you could POSSIBLY make a case that its faster? not having to rely on a computer to process the request, kindof like how CRT displays have no delay, but i feel that would be so minuscule to not be a issue.
You REALLY need to do a Theater of Magic pinball video! Be sure to checkout Todd Tuckey's videos at TNT amusements on pinball. He's been making videos on pinball since the 80s! :)
Its so weird to see a large youtuber talk about pinball its such a niche im not used to it getting exposure. Also my local arcade has a very much working bronco!!!!
![DDG & G Herbo - Nosey [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/I9Ra0Zc2NlQ/mqdefault.jpg)
there's something so delightful about the existence of a glitch leading to a softlock, in an entirely physical mechanical game
It all comes down to logic. If you're familiar with the use of flowcharts for programming and then take a look to the diagram of something like this it doesn't take long before you start to see the similarities.
tl;dr: game design is hard and jank knows no boundaries.
@@ObsoleteVodkaYT My friends and I once soft locked a board game. Mad Magazine put out a board game and one of the squares you can land on says stay here until another player passes you. All three of us landed on that square. Since there were no other players, the game couldn't continue.
@@BrotherAlpha That's astounding. …also, the fact that it was made by Mad Magazine makes me think that a) they definitely had enough resources to come across that in playtesting and 2) deliberately chose not to.
@@BrotherAlpha I would have interpreted it as "when another player lands here, the player that was originally in the spot can leave", as you're technically "passing" them.
The funny thing though, these electromechanical things are basically primitive mechanical computers. The "CPU" is logic circuitry, the "memory" is physical switches. It can in a way be considered code.
Dude if you ever find yourself in Poland I implore you to visit the Krakow Pinball museum. Its phenominal.
Liking this comment just for the word implore. Great word
Ah damn I was just recently in Krakow!
Didn't know about the museum but its a lovely city and I throughly recommend it
I was there last year! Great find and place to visit!
Liking this comment just for the words "Krakow Pinball museum". OMG I need to fing a occasion to visit your town and get there! _browsing Krakow opera schedule_
Is it loaded with Eastern Block games? I've seen a few youtube videos of arcade games from the CCCP. It's amazing how far behind they were from the West.
I cannot find much in English about the various models of Spectrum computers from the post CCCP era, but from what little I have seen, they do not adhere to any real standard, let alone the original ZX Spectrum. But that these were a source of at home arcade fun in the 90s.
I have responded to a fire caused by a pinball machine. The genius decided he wasn't gonna replace fuses anymore. Replaced all the fast blow fuses with slow blow automatic reset breakers.
The slow blow allowed the noids to overheat and kept resetting allowing them to catch fire. Took out a really nice game room with a few video game cabinets, pool table, and a few pinball machines.
He had modded them that morning and left for a 1 week vacation. We were paged out about 2 am to put his house out. The volunteer firefighter in me is gonna tell you if you have stuff like that turn it off before you leave. The full time electrician in me is gonna tell ya don't mod stuff you have no clue about.
How did they catch fire if they weren't being played?
I never had much exposure to pinball machines, so I never really considered that there is a list of things that you are 'supposed to do'. Frankly, I had a hard enough time just keeping the ball in play.
Most casual players only care about table flow. If I put in a credit, does the ball remain in play for a fair time, and did it do some cool things before it ended. Only "pinball enthusiasts" even read the rules.
You can pretty much search the most insignificant thing that hits your eye during the day, and you'll find a whole passionate community around it, with deep debates, and an insane depth of lore. So I'm not surprised there's so much to know about pinball.
I was a relatively small kid in 1976, but before video games, this is one of the things young people did. While there were technically video games in 76, they were few and far between.
There are a TON of electromechanical games going back to the 30s. You think a light gun was invented in 1983 with Nintendo? They go back to the 40s at least. There was a plane game which projected a plane flying across the projection screen that had a machine light gun in the early 40s. Even earlier games were played entirely with steel balls. There was a pretty famous baseball game from the 30s that used steel balls. But it goes back even further than the 30s. Coin operated device go back thousands of years. Ancient Greece had coin operated mechanisms, usually involved in worship.
@@christo930 I remember playing one of those early light-gun games at a fairground as a kid in the 80s. It was already at least 30 years old then, and was there well in to the 90s.
It was a rifle with a big ass cable attached, there was a big screen about 3-5 meters away that had a landscape over which "UFOs" (blips of light really) would fly.
I think it was a real rifle that was just stripped of everything, and a sensor shoved in the barrell. The thing was needlessly heavy for a kid, just a hunk of steel and wood :)
Pinball tables are really rare here in Sweden, because in the 1980s our government decided that they were gambling machines, and ruled that you needed to get a gambling license if you wanted to house one of them in your establishment. This was also applied to arcade machines, so you very rarely ever see these things.
Insane to think that a Pac-Man cabinet has the same legal status here as a "One-Armed Bandit" (slot machine), but that's just how it is here.
You explaining the flippers reminds me that people don't realize that the pinball can move 70-100 miles per hour depending on the flipper and the rebound mechanisms. Those heavy steel balls moving at that speed will just not be fun to handle with mechanical flippers.
Yet another reason why Jurassic Park (Data East) is my favourite table: the raptor pit kicks the ball back at you at a ludicrous speed. Sometimes it then ricochets against the glass with a loud TCHAK sound that scares the hell out of you.
Where did you get 70 to 100 MPH? Because that is way off. Modern games max out at about 5 MPH, that Aztec I would guess 3 to 4. Just a little math to back it up: 100 MPH is 1760 Inches/second. The rough length of a large orbit (basically the ball looping from 1 flipper all the way around the top of the playfield to the other flipper) is about 80 inches. At 100 MPH you would complete this loop 22 times in 1 second. (1760 in/s divided by 80 in).
Regarding 'analog flippers', the difference is regarding the actuation time between button press and flipper bat actuation. On an EM machine or machine that does not have a control board/logic controlling the flipper, you are more easily able to perform a tap pass from one flipper to the other via a quick button tap. Papa pinball's channel has a great example of that technique.
As someone who has almost never played pinball, I'd love a vid on Theater of Magic! It's fascinating to learn about all this - different control logic, and just learning about a hobby I've never personally explored.
Regarding the flipper switches...I grew up with a Bally machine (Big Betty's Truck Stop), it has two flippers on each side. One at the bottom of the playing field and another about midway up. If you push the flipper button, both flippers on that side activate. However, if you push the button halfway, only the bottom flipper activates. It gives you the ability to catch the ball in the bottom flipper and then lob it straight up and catch it on the top flipper where it's much easier to hit the targets.
Thanks for another very interesting video. All the pinball content on your channel has been brilliant and I’d love to see a detailed video on Theater Of Magic! As someone interested in audio (who also really enjoys pinball) one of the things I find interesting about Williams machines from the 90’s is their use of the DCS (Digital Compression System) sound boards. These were one of the first arcade sound boards capable of playing full soundtracks of 16-bit digital audio, using a proprietary lossy audio format that was created in-house by Williams/Midway and was only ever used in these games. When it was launched in 1993, pretty much all other arcade/pinball games relied on FM Synthesis for their music, so to have proper recorded music in (relatively) high quality was a pretty big breakthrough at the time. The board would receive commands on what to play (as well as information about volume, looping etc.) from the main CPU board and could play up to 4 channels at a time. However, due to the limited storage space available on the rom chips, the audio engineers at Williams often had to lower the sample rate of some audio files (usually the speech callouts or sound effects) and cut certain parts of the music up into repeatable “chunks” to make the soundtrack seem longer than it actually is (I believe the DCS board could only hold around 10 mins of audio at 32khz, the highest sample rate the format could support). Still, despite the lower quality files having some noticeable compression artifacts (though they probably wouldn’t be too obvious in a busy arcade), DSC still sounds pretty good even today and it’s quite impressive what they were able to accomplish given the hardware limitations of the time.
Never tired of pinball! I have a couple of machines myself (Xenon and Raven). I was invited to someone's secret basement arcade once, all the machines were off. I suspect it was a basic "are you a real pinball fan" test, but I knew where the power switch was so I guess I passed that one.
Why would anyone ever get tired of pinball content? Particularly antique pinball content? Ill never understand.
Machine repair....😄
29:18 It's that the digital flippers have more latency between the button press and the flipper energizing
This, EXACTLY! There are MANY newer games that I’ve played that there’s at least a 1/2 a second sometimes between me hitting the flipper button, and the flipper actually flipping. It’s SO Annoying!!!
I know how to train nudging: do it all the time, keep the machine "floating", so that you move the table constantly just a tiny bit. It is like opposite of how people play, you keep it steady only when it needs to be steady and keep the table alive, moving. "One with the table you must become" would be the Yodaist view of things..
Regarding Bill Of Materials vs Price and calculating the profit, I think you forgot to take into account the wages of the people assembling them.
I came here to find this comment.
Assembly, including tools
Factory space rent
Shipping (can't be easy to transport these)
Warranty
Also, they are money-making devices to bars and arcades.
Anyone want to count the number of solder points?
Ive found the sunlight leds from comet pinball are really really good at reproducing the incandescent look, the reduced heat and stress on the already battered and abused plastics and backglass paint is worth upsetting the purists, especially if its on location and on all day.
1:01:35
The bigger reason seprate switches are used is then you don't need diodes.
If you link two seprate functions to the same switch those two functions will always trigger together as they are now connected in parallel via the switch contact. If either function is triggered via any other source; they both trigger.
My memories about coining up while playing and other stuff
- adding a coin adds a credit but doesn't start anything
- if you press start : one player
- pressing start before points are scored : adds players
- pressing start after player 1 scores points : don't remember
- playing a ball and no points scored : the ball gets kicked back and can be played again
The whole series about the pinball machine and the series about the jukebox just really satisfied the nerd in me. I've built a few electronics projects including a 12 hour digital clock w seconds display and alarm function, and I've built many redstone circuits in the game Minecraft. A lot of the terminology and concepts talked about in these videos also apply to digital electronics and to Minecraft redstone. I've built basically every type of digital electronic circuit in Minecraft except for a computer, but I plan on doing that that someday.
Keep making these kinds of videos, they just awesome.
I love all of the pinball content. always been a fan of them and I love how much life the older games have. its a game with a wonderful work of mechanical art attached to it
about the switch stack, I'm pretty sure the question was about why not have each cam pulse a separate relay which then actuates a switch bank. That would make the motor unit interchangeable and let you put the that additional relay bank anywhere else. Though it would mean an extra relay bank to deal with.
I never thought I'd enjoy watching someone talk about pinball for an hour rather than playing pinball. There's a good reason I never thought that.
I have ZERO interest in pinball machines and I know very little about electronics in general, but the simplicity and ingenuity of electromechanical stuff is fascinating and I always enjoy your content and I very much look forward to more pinball vids in the future.
I love this cabinet. First saw it at the Seattle Pinball Museum, but it's just a classic.
If you want to get your body English on, put your dominant foot toward the table and press your hip / pelvis against it. Every time you *need* a nudge, your lower-body muscles will go.
Nudge sideways when the ball meets that rubber-banded post to "save".
I'm not tired of the Pinball content, I love these videos!
Have a whole new appreciation for these videos after getting a modern Stern for my birthday this year. These EM machines make the wiring in mine look friendly and inviting; looking at those electrical diagrams gives me anxiety lol.
Never get tired of pinball content
ohhh, I am excited for sights and sounds video as well as a play through with strategy.
The analog flippers give you more control because you can directly control the flipper and not have a middle man power it for you. One example is to underpower a flipper by quickly tapping/smacking the button once called a Tap Pass. The flipper will barely move at all and the ball will hop to opposite flipper. Games that have digital fliptronic controls typically have a minimum ON time that forces the flipper to at least make an attempt to get to the full extended position.
Awesome! Thanks so much for taking the time on this video!
wow I can listen to this for hours and hours :D
Great video. I have loved this series! Thank you.
I loved Theatre of Magic and Funhouse and all them. Addam's Family was my favorite. Now they got Pinball FX3, which I believe 3D scanned the play areas.
You might have a miss adjusted switch on the player unit mechanism it should only allow 4 players then trigger the coin door.
Also there are blinking lights on some relays in the bottom of the machine that are used as timers in early pinballs
9:00, I feel like there is a way to do a high score all mechanically but that it would've just added a bunch of complexity for a non-major feature.
When it became easier it could be a selling point but not when it would've taken a whole assembly just for something that people could do with a marker on the glass.
MOAR PINBALL PLZ
You could swap the bulbs for LEDs. They will run cooler, will not melt plastics and will lower the operation power costs of the pinball.
I think i know the logic behind coins resetting the game after ball 1! It's in the case someone leave the game halfway through! Imagine you play a ball or 2, don't like the machine/parent take you home/go to do something else, now the machine is waiting for ball 2/3 to go into play and it can't reset on it own since no timer.
Second person cones up, sure they could play 1-2 balls for free, or stick a quarter in and reset it to have a full game! If you want to do multiplayer you be doing it before or during the first ball anyway, so anything after if just reset the game so if a machine get abandoned half way through it won't stop other people from playing it.
I want to disagree with "can't" in regards to timers.
There were definitely electromechanical timers at the time. And they could have been integrated into this machine such that if you lost your ball before the timer had lapsed, it would give you an extra ball.
But that wasn't part of the design of this machine, and that is why it doesn't have that feature.
They could add it no problem, but this machine is complex enough as it is already and such a timer is just another point of failure.
I like that he suggests soldering things to bridge them instead of just throwing on some alligator clips.
I don't think alligator clips are a great idea when there's so much vibration.
I knew I saw your pinball machines before. Hershey Park, I practically grew up there, had them in the early 2000's at the arcade by the Big Bear coaster. They had Aztec and Theater of Magic. Aztec was still a Quarter and Magic i think 50 and Hercules which used a skeet ball a dollar.
24:20 Maybe it's not asking about "holding the flipper at halfway" but other games that have upper playfield flippers that don't activate at the exact same time as the ones at the drain. An example of this is on Jersey Jack's Willy Wonka machine. A slight press triggers the lower flippers, a full press activates the upper ones. Also it's a purely electric connection, instead of breaking leaf switches you're directly joining them. You can see the mechanism quite well at about 7:05 of the SlowMo guys pinball vid that you mentioned in the very first part of this series.
2 stage control halfway only hit's one switch and full does 2 switches.
That was my thought, too.
41:25 ish: with as much wiring as there is in that machine is the BOM price really a good indication of what it cost the manufacturer to make? How much work did each one take?
I loved the Adams Family 😍 back in the day
You're looking good.
You should look into Abe Flips' tutorials if you're interested in improving your nudging!
Top shelf of the far right column still
What is it?
I love these videos!
Ok, Ledtronics is one of the first and best sources for alllllll kinds of "indicator" replacement lamps which are essentially what's in pinball machines. And I mean every type. Wedge, bayonet, telephone, mini twist, etc. etc.. And now with the advancements in the white LED range you can probably find the right tungsten temp so nobody would ever know the diff. Because for real one of the best parts of pinball machines is the warm inviting glow. You could probably reduce the standby draw to 25W or less.
Also, yeah, mechanical input buffers are incredibly complicated. No waiting in line when multiple sequences are triggered at the same time. MULT-III-BALLL!
from someone that played alot of pinball in the 1970s.. re: magnet on the glass..operators watched for that plus when the ball would slam into the glass from the magnet it made a distinct loud sound which would alert the operator..
the most common "cheat" was to wear steel toed boots and lift the machine up and place it on your toes as long as the tilt was not super sensitive..this would slow the play down and was not easily noticeable by operators...
as for cheating the coin mech since it only "weighed" the coin at the time either dime or quarter (10c for 1 credit and 25c for 3 credits) slugs were used alot just had to get the weight roughly right ..some machines had magnet slug rejectors..some people i "heard" had scales for measuring natural green leafy substance which would work to get the slug weight right...one more was drill a hole into a quarter and tie a piece of fishing line to it.. once the credit was given you could pull it back out...
@13:50ish, it's also how most every machine I've played on so far. Except you have to push the start button, but if you have a credit on a ball that isn't 1, pressing start ends the game and starts again on the new credit. Handy for machines on freeplay when you absolutely stuff your first ball.
To steal from magic the gathering: reading the card explains the card.
This is just plain great content.
What’s the highest score you’ve gotten on this machine
There were some electromechanical machines that used a flasher bulb as a crude timer.
regarding more control with analog flippers... I wonder if it's just a tactile thing. Having a better feel for the actuation point. I mean, that's why clicky keyboards are so popular.
Fun fact on the pinball size - 1-1/16" is almost precisely 27mm. (26.99, no further digits.)
My Dad installed a door bell button on the bottom of our pinball, old pinball machines and every time you hit the button, you got a credit.
I have a Twilight Zone was once said to be the most complex rule set and in the top rankings of pinball machines for playability or addictability as I like to call it. It's a complex machine for its age on par and similar to The Adamms Family another very good and popular machine. It's somewhat unreliable with lots of opto devices instead of mechanical switches , early nineties electronics luckily new emulation boards are availible for most of the electronics if it fails and original parts unavailable. I love this machine it never gets boring even after 12 years or ownership.
I'm not tired of pinball machines
Lethal weapon 3 is one of my favorite machines.
Thank you for what you do!!
Great job Alec. Are you going to expo? 40th year🎉
Free Play: Hide a leaf switch or microswitch behind the coin reject plunger on the coin door. Tie it to the coin drop credit, and then you have near perfect realism to walk up to the game, press the plunger to mimic putting in the coin, then press start. All hidden without any damage to the cabinet or coin door, easily removable.
I'd love to see Theatre of Magic :)
Umm Not tired of pinball content. Do you plan on attending Pinball Expo this year? If so, perhaps I’ll run into you.
Great video. Very interesting. Cheers.
Might not be his most headphone-friendly video.
Some EM machines definitely did have the ball saver feature (no points, don't advance the ball count). Some also had the ability to have "memory" using dual-coil set/reset relays. Often, those that had such features, would not reset the the feature between players so player 1 could collect 90% of the required targets to get a bonus but lose the ball so player 2 only had 10% left to hit. Or, if a multi ball machine, (e.g. 4 million BC) subsequent players could benefit of previous players getting balls into their spots in the field. Some, even more clever, could keep track of things like drop-targets by player.
As late as "Wizard" you could have 100,000pt lights to address "what if you rollover 99,999?" As in the even more olden days, it is just a light so if you were able to somehow get to over 200,000...there was no way to tally that.
I wonder if whoever was talking about analog flappers was thinking that the newer ones have perceived lag, that isn't to say that there is or isn't lag, just that might be the perception.
“My more recent games” (@ 28:48). Does that foreshadow a whole series?
Love pinball, but got to watch this on tv.
Wait wait wait - there's no TV behind that background storage unit. Did you move the entire storage unit to this set, or build a whole 2nd storage unit filled with interesting things for this set?
Oh boy a brand new connextra
I wonder if by "analog" they mean lower (or at least more consistent) latency. As you said, in the older games you're directly closing the switch that powers the solenoid - there's nothing that could delay that. But in a newer game where is has to go through the (digital) control board there are things that might add just a hair of processing delay or a tiny fraction extra wait for something else to finish -- and even the perception that this might happen could make players favor the direct switch method.
@3750 Relays and Switches are rated for different types of "duty". Resistive / heater, capacitive, inductive, Motor, Pilot; These, in ascending order, targets of the switch or relay take more Inrush current, produces more lead / lag of current, and cause greater wear on the contacts. "Pilot Duty" Relays and Switches are those whose work is OTHER Relay Coils or Solenoids; because it is purely inductive load, it has a huge current lag and thus wears out the fastest. Powering multiple Contactors or Solenoids from a single switch is considered a BAD idea, for this reason, and hence multipl;e switches or relays are used to do it.
I think that's how that works.
re: wire fire hazard. These look pretty on par with what I've seen for asbestos insulated wires. This would help with the heat, no so much with the cancer. Even then though, very low risk of exposure.
I would love to see under the playfield of Theatre of Magic!
16:01 Okay. Now I wanna see you add that functionality.
37:00 Power use. While 100 watts isn't much, if you have a machine plugged in in like your game room or whatever and is virtually always on, that certainly adds up. Probably around $90-120 per year per machine. Have a few machines in your game room and you might be talking about a decent pile of cash.
My favorite is Lost World by Bally
When you moved it to the office, did you move it in your car, and/or, does it fit in the Ioniq5?
23:03 It might sound crazy but it is insanely close to 27mm. Like .0125mm away from 27 mm.
I briefly thought he was going to teach magic on his next video
41:08 But bill of materials I don't think includes labour and there would be a lot of labour to put these together.
3:41 "The extra ball is a binary. You either get one or you don't."
Who do you think you are, some kind of pinball wizard?
I'd like to see how an old mechanical Slot Machine works. My dad had an old Nickel One Arm Bandit while I was growing up and still don't know how it works. We still have that slot machine after my dad past back in 2008 but it's jammed so it's in storage for now but I would love to get it working. I remember as a kid putting a nickel in it and getting 20 back. Guess what I did with those 20 nickel? That's right I played 20 more games and didnt' win a single one. Now that I think about it I wonder how much is still in it.
So, a thing I wish existed is: A speedrunning community for pinball. Why the hell isn't that a thing!? (I'd love to find out that I'm wrong and that there are some new Twitch channels I should be following ...)
1 1/16th Inch = 27.00 mm
27:56 i mean... you could POSSIBLY make a case that its faster? not having to rely on a computer to process the request, kindof like how CRT displays have no delay, but i feel that would be so minuscule to not be a issue.
the only 'ball saver' was if you don't get any score before the ball drops, it will kick the ball back
Maybe resetting the game with a new quarter was meant to avoid confusing new players if someone had abandoned the table mid game.
I would love to have those pinball machine samples to do some music!!! can you make them accesible?
You know we want Corgar.
❤
I want to see a euro motor in an American machine
That was my question! I demand credit!
You REALLY need to do a Theater of Magic pinball video! Be sure to checkout Todd Tuckey's videos at TNT amusements on pinball. He's been making videos on pinball since the 80s! :)
Its so weird to see a large youtuber talk about pinball its such a niche im not used to it getting exposure. Also my local arcade has a very much working bronco!!!!