For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast

Magic Screen Units, when misaligned, exhibit certain symptoms which will help you diagnose (and correct) the problem.

Exhibit's Mystery is a beautiful sequence game. A masquerade theme, with mystery kick out awards. Complete sequences 1-4, 5-8 and 9-12 to light three different playfield specials. Gorgeous backglass and playfield artwork with fantastic lightboard design and a great stencil round out the package.

Magic Squares units are a really neat moving numbers feature. After working on a few games with this feature, I really appreciate their simplicity in design.

You've got the whole thing apart... now what? Follow these instructions and you'll get it back together quicker than you might think.

Now that you have the thing apart, you should be able to clean it! Be very careful of what and how you apply cleaning agents to the reels, the numbers like to move with the cleaner. Tomorrow we'll talk about how to put the whole thing back together.

Disassembly and cleaning of the replay register is very important for correct operation of any multi-replay game (such as a bingo or upright arcade/slot). There are many small pieces to keep track of on this unit. Pay attention to the direction from which you remove the main shaft! Only one reel is keyed and you will break the reel if you are not paying attention.

United's Jones Plug design is fairly unique in the world of pin games. The parallel rows of male pins are replaced by a single inline package, with pins that wrap around the edge of the plate. Cool! And infuriating!

An interesting idea for a new feature on a bingo is incorporated in this 20 hole game: by earning a 'Gate' feature, the player can swing the rebound rubber out of the way and get to the second row of holes easily. The rest of the game does not look incredibly appealing - it is low-scoring and has no extra ball feature, and no Red Letter game.

Pretty self-explanatory - don't use Vaseline on any motor on an EM. Was used during World War II to keep games going, but hardens into cement! If your game has Vaseline on any motor, it will need to be removed.

Adam from the One and Done Pinball Podcast calls in to ask a question about how to determine if a spring needs to be replaced and how to know what kind of spring to order. Parts catalogs are invaluable for EM games.

York show quick recap Day 3.

York show quick recap, Day 2.

York show quick recap, Day 1 of 3.

Hugh Kown is a master restoration expert on bingos, and a master repair technician. He is also known as the 'Old Binger' and ran an incredibly popular bingo pinball forum several years ago. His site, oldbinger.com, lists some of the beautiful restoration work he has completed. Hugh recounts some of his early bingo memories, and provides a really fascinating way to look at troubleshooting using a s...

Pamco's Baby Lite-A-Line is actually a completely different game to the full size Lite-A-Line released the year before. This game actually looks like a lot more fun than the full size. Single card with a unique playfield layout. Looks very challenging.

Pamco experimented with the bingo format one other time in the 1930s - Roto Lite is a bingo-esque game that came out in 1935. Your goal is to land in the upper hole via skill shot and spin discs or lamps in the backbox to light three in a row. I like the mixture of bingo and traditional pinball.

Springs are incredibly important for successful operation of your game. I attempt to discuss how to diagnose a spring problem and how to address - both correctly and incorrectly.

Line-Up was Bally's first attempt at a bingo-style pinball machine. 25 holes arranged in a grid on the playfield in the same arrangement as the card on the backglass (1-5, 6-10, etc). Due to the extreme spacing between numbers, it looks very difficult to actually win on this machine. Couple that with the fact that balls do not return to the player when they reach the bottom, and you've got a very...

In 1934, Pacific Amusement Company made a three card bingo, almost 17 years before Bally's first bingo machine. Each card is bought with its own coin slide. Cool deco stylings, with especially neat wooden legs. The 25 hole playfield uses a roulette wheel style tub like United's first bingo, ABC, but without the pop bumper in the center. Oddly enough, there may be a tie between this and Bally's Lit...

Quick tech tip for tonight - pull on wires in order to expose problems in wiring or solder joints. This will save you hours of frustration. Don't go crazy - just a gentle, yet firm tug on each wire in question.

In 1963, Ted Zale designed a fascinating game called '3-in-line', based off of the bingo gameplay, but in a flipper package. Ther eis a 9-digit bingo card in the playfield and backglass that lights as you hit various targets on the playfield. Some neat swinging gates allow entry to the left and right pops. I love that the flipper division made a game marketed to bingo players at the height of the...

Continuing to browse Danny's site at danny.cdyn.com, I found another oddity: Williams Yukon. This game allows for winning up to 100 replays based on the cards that you hit on a bingo-style playfield. I am interested in seeing one of these one day - this game is not in IPDB, so I'm not sure when it was made, but I'm guessing in the 1950s or early 1960s. It looks like a lot of fun, since you are abl...

A divergence into solid state. While browsing Danny's site at danny.cdyn.com, I noticed he had some photos of the internals of the Magic Screen bingo manufactured by Sirmo in Belgium in 2005. This is a solid state bingo with a very interesting boardset - using what appears to be PC hardware in a pinball machine, including multiple LED and an LCD monitor, manufactured almost a decade before Jersey...

A listener writes in with a writeup on their grail machine: 1954's Hawaiian Beauty by Gottlieb. This machine has a very unique layout that looks like it is very challenging and a lot of fun. Wide flipper spacing, with three palm tree pop bumpers near the bottom, multiple lower exits from the playfield, and gobble holes all make this sequence-driven game look incredibly fun and difficult. This list...

Listener Tim writes in with a note on how the Williams multiplayer games have a superior method for letting the player know they have another ball. The Same Player Shoots Again lamp does not go off until you score a point on your extra ball. This is completely different behavior to Gottlieb and Bally games, that would turn the lamp off as soon as the ball was served to the shooter lane. Listen as...