For Amusement Only Em And Bingo Pinball Podcast

Adam is one of the hosts of the One and Done Pinball Podcast, and picked up his first EM a few months ago, a Williams Grand Prix.   We talk about what was needed to bring it back to life, gameplay, bingos, and general pinball.

A couple of quick techniques for figuring out wire colors when they are faded or covered with goo/junk.

Plus and Minus is another Gottlieb payout game from 1935! This game features the same Liberty Bell graphic on the playfield, and liberty bell mint vendor on the front of the cab, which led to confusion about the title of the game. Plus and Minus has multiple trap holes, each of which is labeled with a picture and a point value - either positive or negative!

Gottlieb's Liberty Bell was a good study in 'firsts'.  This was Gottlieb's first game with a mint vendor attached (to skirt the illegality of payout pinball), and also was the beginning of the 'Liberty Bell' series that Gottlieb used to describe other payout games.

Match play is a payout game (Gottlieb's first EM payout game) that had an intriguing concept: fire one ball into a special playfield, then match the value of that ball on a special lower playfield with your second ball.   If the values match, the game will pay out!  Based on the point value matched, you will earn up to 20 coins!

Gottlieb made a variety of payout games from 1932-1947.  Today's sample is their first payout game - 1932's Cloverleaf. Cloverleaf has a neat looping playfield design - shooting a marble around this playfield, your goal is to shake the ball into a center trough at the bottom.   Doing so will pay you some number of pennies. Cool!

Baffle Card is a bingo-esque game from Gottlieb, made in October of the year before flippers were added to Humpty Dumpty. You light one of four cards on the backglass, and then attempt to get the largest set of numbers to earn special and extra specials via rollovers.   One intriguing aspect is the concept of 'points' on this game.  There are 5 point values, two of which are the same, and I suspect these would pay off.  I've seen pics of the game and don't see any payout mechanism, but quite interesting.  The head appears to have a knock off button mounted on the side, so it's possible that this would pay out nickels based on the number of points accrued per game. This is all high speculation, though!  If anyone has any idea, please let me know.

Frolics is a uniquely interesting six card bingo - it has both advancing odds and the extra ball feature! Looks incredibly challenging to earn a significant number of replays, as max payout without this game's unique feature (the superscore) is only 50 replays. With the superscore, your maximum for a 5 in a row hit is 200.

Special guest host, Fake Nick Baldridge, returns to the For Amusement Only airwaves to discuss a little known pingame manufacturer and their first release.  Thanks again, FNB!

Bally's Palm Beach was the follow-on to Atlantic City.  It brought back pick-a-play, advancing odds, and added rollover buttons. The rollovers would spot up to five numbers, and you could also earn spotted numbers through red or yellow button play. Between the five spotted numbers and three extra balls, you had the ability to light up to 13 different numbers on the bingo card! A single card bingo, this was also the first game to feature super cards - the super card is a 3x3 grid, where a 3-in-a-line scores the 4-in-a-line odds.

Atlantic City was Bally's fourth production game, following Bright Lights, Coney Island, and Spot-Lite. Atlantic City was a slightly simpler game than Spot-Lite - a three card bingo with spotted numbers, extra balls, nice artwork and fixed payouts make this an interesting early bingo.

I missed uploading this in the correct order (first time that's happened in almost 300 episodes, I think I am doing ok ;-)), so apologies if you just noticed that the episodes jumped from 267 back to 264. Zodiac is a 20 hole Mystic Lines bingo themed after the astrological signs of the zodiac (as one might guess). Some player-friendly features like mystery awarded score doubling or tripling in one color, along with the excellent red letter game and Star Zone play. Zodiac has some fantastic backglass artwork, and a neat cabinet stencil.

This was actually the second Bally bingo produced - but it was either only made as samples or for a very limited run. The true second bingo Bally produced was Coney Island (see a previous episode for info on that excellent game). Same straightforward gameplay as Bright Lights, however, only a single card instead of six. This game also contains the same excellent artwork as Bright Lights, except for the backglass. Gorgeous early bingo!

Bally's Bright Lights was the first production Bingo by Bally in the post-1940s one ball horse race game world. Bright Lights is a straightforward six card bingo with no additional features.  It has gorgeous artwork, a manual ball lift, and fixed payouts that are different than the standard Bally six card payouts.

United's Brazil has an interesting feature: the ability to spot up to three different numbers on three different rows! This game also features extra ball play, a single set of advancing odds, the United style of extended time tree, corners scoring, Lite-a-name (for an instant 5-in-a-line winner!), and the Pennant feature for earning your first extra ball automatically. With so many ways to win, why does this look like such a fun game?  Because of how the features work together - I'm sure that most wins are just out of reach, even with all of the help shown above. Beautiful Molentin artwork.

I finally found it!  The game I've been trying to remember for almost 1/2 of a year! This is the first example of a game with player-controlled kicking rubbers (or slingshots). Fun basketball theme, with some interesting ideas in the artwork as well as the gameplay.

We get a call on the bingos line - a listener wants to know how to safely work on a machine that has no on/off toggle switch, and how you can identify these machines.

In 1951, Chicago Coin created a game around a hit record 'The Thing'.  Roy Parker created a fantastic art package with great integration of the theme. Every aspect of the song is found in the artwork and gameplay.  The backglass tells the entire story from the song, while the playfield tasks you with collecting the 'thing' by shooting a box in the center of the playfield. One of the best ideas is the special noise that the pops make as the score motor rotates at intervals - Boom... Boom Boom.   Thanks to Bruce Zamost for permission to use portions of his writeup and his photos - photos to be found on our Facebook or Instagram pages.   One version of the song on which this game is based can be found on Youtube.   Happy 'Thing'sgiving!

Super-Zeta was a rehash of the earlier Zeta with the addition of a backbox.  Super-Zeta is another proto-bingo with the roulette style tub.  This looks less appealing to play as the ball doesn't travel around the playfield, nor is the bumper in the center a pop, merely a spring bumper.

Oklahoma is a conversion game by United.  Flipperless sequence game with a super special kickout at the bottom center of the playfield. Beautiful backglass artwork and interesting bumper orientation make this a fun looking game!