For Amusement Only Em And Bingo Pinball Podcast

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 schematic!

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 player-unfriendly machine. That said, I'd still play it. 

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 Lite-A-Line, which was designed in 1961!

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 bingo market.

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 able to choose a spotted card by landing in the 'Joker' hole (in the center of the playfield, similar to #16 on a Bally bingo).

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 Jack's Wizard of Oz - simply astounding!   I'm looking forward to spending a lot more time on a solid state bingo in the future, and part of the fun of any machine, for me, is knowing how they work. 

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 listener also wanted to know if there were any bingo collectors in the Southern California area.  The only folks in CA I know that have bingos readily available for play are the Pacific Pinball Museum.

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 I try to describe the circuits involved! Big thank you to Tim for suggesting the topic and bonus points for sending a schematic snippet!

A listener writes in with a question about cleaning their 1932 Ballyhoo pinball playfield. The short answer of how to do this is 'carefully'.  Ensure that you are not accidentally removing the artwork from the playfield as you remove the dirt. The second question involves how to shore up the cabinet. Thanks Mike!

Bingo serial numbers are shrouded in mystery. Rod McLarge, aka CreditDotPinball asks how one may find the serials, their location, and any interesting information about them. I do my best to answer these questions, and ask that anyone post their serials to ipsnd.net, and bingo owners, also contact Danny at danny.cdyn.com as he is collecting bingo serials as well. Check out Rod's site at creditdotpinball.com to read some really fascinating articles about the hobby we love.

Did a  lot of pinball-related stuff this weekend, in preparation for York. Has new siderails put on the Night Club and have been playing it like crazy. Unfortunately, the replays would never score - didn't matter if I had three, four or five in a line, or whether the winners were in the magic squares units or elsewhere! So, it's time to bust out the schematic.  Follow along with me by reading the schema on bingo.cdyn.com as I fix this issue.

Jeffrey Lawton is the premier bingo technician - we initially chatted on air on episode 54 with Steve Smith. Jeffrey wrote the books Bally Bingo Pinball Machines and The Bingo Pinball War, both excellent books still in print today. We discuss the York show, his involvement, parts and a little technical chat, some of his recollections of working for two different amusement vendors, and some in-depth gameplay discussions on a couple of games. We also announce the contest for the Bingo Row at York: Make a 4 or 5 in a line on _any_ of the awesome bingos in the row, and you'll win your choice of an autographed Bally Bingo Pinball Machines or The Bingo Pinball War by Jeffrey Lawton! I've got a case of books to give away, so I want to see some smiling new bingo players! I am more than happy to explain these excellent games in depth to anyone that would like a tutorial. What more can you ask for? I'm excited to see everyone at the show!

United made this conversion game during World War II for the game Sky Blazer. A sequence game - you try to unlight all 12 bumpers on the playfield, which will light super special at the bottom kickout hole. There are two bumpers near the ball arch in an unusual arrangement. A very fun game - if this was the game that I played... I forget!