Pinball Repair Ninja

Remember back in repair#270 when Ninja got that free 1976 Gottlieb Sure Shot pinball? Well a couple things… First when you get a game for free, keep the expectations low. Really low. And second, when something is free, there’s usually a reason for that. OK glad we got that out in the open. Because WOW what a mess this game was. Ninja was excited to have the game though. There’s never been a Sure Shot in the Ninja-game stable before. Ninja had repaired Sure Shot and Bank Shot (the add-a-ball cousin) machines before, and liked the game. So there was some anticipation here in repairing the game.

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Ninja tells people that the three most complicated pinballs ever made were Twilight Zone, Indiana Jones and the 1993 Williams Star Trek Next Generation pinball. Really no kidding. There’s a lot of stuff going on with these games. But man they are fun. Just if you own them, and you want them to work right, expect some repairs now and then.

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Another milestone here at the Pinball Blog repair webzine. Three hundred documented repairs in 8 months. That’s pretty good. Still trying for the 500 in a year, and with Xmas coming (the height of repair demand), there’s a chance the Ninja might make it. But anywho, we need to talk about the 1994 Bally Corvette pinball we’re repairing today. This was an odd case. The guy was a local operator, been doing it for nearly 25 years. But he couldn’t fix two big problems on this game. And he had 3 other repair ninjas try and fail. So the Pinball Ninja was called in to give it a whirl. There were two problems – a constant blowing coil fuse, and the classic Bally/Williams WPC reset problem.

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The Ninja doesn’t fix a lot of video games. But if there’s one present, and asked, Ninja will give it a whirl. Ninja isn’t too bad at fixing the 1980 Midway Pacman and Ms.Pacman videos, but hates fixing monitors… But that’s another story. Anyway, original Pacman and Ms.Pacman video games are out there in large numbers, so it’s good for a Ninja to have some basic video game repair skills.

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Sometimes Ninja wonders about EM pinball themes. Like where do the designers come up with this stuff? Ninja guesses the theme for the 1974 Gottlieb Sky Jump isn’t that wacky, but what does it have to do with pinball? And where are the chicks on the backglass? Why, when the market is males 16 to 35, wouldn’t you have that covered in chicks? Well besides all that stuff, Sky Jump is a pretty decent game. It’s a good playing drop target wedgehead pinball. But ya gotta wonder how much better it would be if it was called “Big Hooters” instead of “Sky Jump”

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We’ve visited this game recently, and we’re back again with some new and old problems. This 1995 Bally Theater of Magic pinball was bought on ebay. Ninja doesn’t really recommend doing that unless you can see the game before forking out the do-ray-me. Just don’t trust these ebay pinball sellers. And you’ll see what Ninja means in a minute.

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Sometimes Ninja meets people and wonders how they got to where they got. This was one such day. Ninja (and his assistant) knock on the door of a very nice house. A house on a lake. Now Ninja knows that pretty much *any* house on *any* lake isn’t cheap these days, even given the bad housing market. Water is water, tranquil, calming, biological… it makes you feel good just looking at the water. One has to pay for these subtle good things in life, they ain’t free. And luck won’t get you to these places either, you have to work for it. But once you’re there, you may just take for granted what you have earned… Ok enough with this philosophical B.S., what about the pinball? Well it’s a 1979 Bally Harlem Globetrotters pinball. Did Ninja mention it was in the game room, which overlooks the lake? *Sigh*

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Sometimes the Pinball Ninja gets called to repair games that, well, Ninja doesn’t really want to repair. Chicago Coin pinballs from the 1970s are such animals. Ninja tells people that pinballs were designed with a 5 year obsolescence window. That is, no manufacturer wanted their game to last more than 5 years, because that would inhibit sales of new games. The good news is Gottlieb, Williams and Bally didn’t take this to heart. But CCM, well, Ninja thinks they really did have this in their plan, as fixing a Chicago Coin pinball from the 1970s is always way much of a challenge. And this 1976 Chicago Coin Machine “Hollywood” pinball was no exception to this rule.

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The Ninja will say one thing about Williams when they were doing pinballs during the 1980s/1990s, they were vicious business people. Williams bought Bally around 1988 after Bally screwed up and wasn’t doing well. (How you can take a pinball company that was AWESOME and selling lots of games, and drive it into the ground, well, that’s another story.) But anyway Williams bought Bally Pinball and then proceeded to dissect it. All Wms wanted was the “Bally” name. They didn’t care about anything else. And the 1990 Bally Pool Sharks was a reflection of that. Yes it’s a Williams system11 pinball, but it bears the “Bally” name.

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Generally speaking people love Pat Lawlor designed pin games. Banzai Run was his first one, and the 1989 Williams Earthshaker was his first “normal” pinball. It’s a pretty cool, but Ninja finds it a bit annoying personally. Ninja had one of the first 200 built with the moving building. Even had a NOS (new old stock) playfield for it. But couldn’t find the energy to do the restoration. I guess Ninja doesn’t like the game that much. Ended up practically giving the game away. Oh well.

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Yes it’s still summer here at the Ninja land. Which means nearly every pinball repair call that comes in on a Williams/Bally 1990s pinball is related to game resets. “When I hit the flippers the game turns itself off, and then comes back on.” It has to be the #1 repair Ninja does during this time of year, when the air conditioners are blaring, and the wall line voltage is a couple volts lower. And here we have a 1992 Bally Black Rose pinball with that problem. In fact it’s so bad, the game can’t even boot up. Ninja can hear it trying, but the DMD panel never comes on, and one can *hear* the reset cycle starting over and over. It’s really too bad, because Ninja likes pirate games. If you think about it, being a pinball pirate isn’t much different than being a Pinball Ninja. Especially when the pirate game has half naked chicks with huge bazingas on the backglass. What more could a pirate (or ninja) want?

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We’ve been talking about the 3 messed up games at this one guy’s house, and this is the last of the three. Ninja thought for sure it would be the most wacked of the games, but as it turned out, it was the least electrically problematic game. Unusual since it’s a 1981 Gottlieb Volcano pinball, a system80 game. Ninja works on lots of sys80 games, and frankly Ninja wishes someone would sell the Ninja a Volcano. It’s a pretty cool game. Traditionally, being a system80, it should be all kinds of messed up. But this game wasn’t hosed at all.

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Ok we’re back at the guy with the three INSANELY broken pinball machines. We documented the Stern Stars yesterday, but now it’s time to look at the guy’s 1980 Williams Firepower pinball. This is an iconic game for the era. Multiball and talking, good game flow and objectives. For a “nothing fancy” machine, it’s a great player. And very popular. But this guy, well, he let his game go into the crapper. Let the Ninja explain, while he sharpens his numchucks and throwing stars…

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Ok from now on the Pinball Ninja isn’t going to do complete explanations of everything with great pictures. Instead it’s going to be a “paint by numbers” experience. Ninja will post pictures with arrows, and you guys have to figure out what the heck is going on. Let’s try that for a while. Ninja is frustrated. Every day Ninja goes and fixes someone else’s game. Like this 1978 Stern Stars pinball. But when will someone come over and help fix Ninja’s games? There’s only about 12 bazillion games that Ninja owns that need work!

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Another game that the Pinball Ninja had serviced many moons ago. (Certainly over a year ago.) But just last week (this guy plays the game daily) it developed a problem where the game would not reset, the score motor would just continually turn, and the ball never went to the shooter lane. The game owner called the Ninja back to get this problem resolved on the 1972 Gottlieb King Kool pinball.

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The Pinball Ninja had visited this 1973 Bally Circus pinball back in March 2010. The game had worked fine all this time, but just developed a problem where the game would reset, but not kick the ball to the shooter lane to start play. So Ninja did a return call to check it out.

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Here at the Pinball Blog we’ve talked many times about the fun-ness of Gottlieb EM drop target games. And the 1974 Gottlieb Hot Shot is right up there with 14 drop targets. And we’ve visited this exact game before too. Ninja was out this to the owner’s house earlier in the year, getting the game working. Frankly he got sold a bag of goods on Ebay. He had to have a Hot Shot, it came up on Escam, and he bought it. Game was advertised as working, but it was far from that upon arrival. To add misery, no back door and the wrong length legs. And that’s just the start. The game was clearly in a flood. (See the picture of the bottom board.) But Ninja got it working about 6 months ago. Got the call to come back, as it had some new problems.

That’s a 23 year old Frank Sinatra mug shot from the 1938 in the background. Arrested for adultery (later dismissed.)

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The 1978 Bally Eight Ball pinball is a classic. The game play is decent, and with the Fonz on the glass, well, it rings the bell of many pinball players back from the day. The Bally solidstate system is pretty good too, easy to work on, well documented.

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Ninja likes EMs with lots of drop targets. And the 1976 Gottlieb Target Alpha pinball is right up there. Like 15 drop targets. That’s a lot of stuff to aim at with throwing stars, err, pinballs. The local shop got a Target Alpha in, and Ninja was asked to fix it. No problem, Ninja likes this game.

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Several years ago Ninja had to service this game, and didn’t hear back from the owners. It’s a 1968 Gottlieb Polo pinball, and turns out, it was running just fine. But the twin grandkids were over, and of course playing the. “The ball will no longer kick out”, was the complaint. So Ninja stopped by to see what had happened.

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Ninja just can’t imagine what the thinking was in the 1970s with pinball and Indians. Gottlieb and Williams both had Indian themed games. Heck Williams had a couple (well Gottlieb had two also, if you count Big Brave/Big Indian.) The 1975 Williams Little Chief pinball seems to be a decent portrayal of American Indians. But since Ninja isn’t an Indian, Ninja’s opinion on this matter is irrelevant. Ninja bets someone isn’t gonna like the theme much. Personally Ninja would have rather seen the game called “Big Tits” with chicks on the glass, instead of “Little Chief” and Indians on the glass. Like who would complain about “Big Tits”, right?

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Not every repair is complicated. And Ninja would certainly say this repair was one of those less complicated ones. The owner complained that the balls were not kicking out on his 1992 Bally Addams Family pinball. So Ninja drove the ninja-mobile to this estate to check it out.

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When Ninja was a small ninja-boy, he loved watching Rocky and Bullwinkle on the Saturday morning cartoons. So one would think that Ninja would love the 1993 Dataeast Rocky and Bullwinkle pinball right? Well for some reason, the game got lost in translation. Though a decent game, it’s more annoying than pleasurable for the Ninja to play. But enough about that, what about this game?

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Free pinballs here! Well Ninja guesses not completely free. But these people got the game with the house when they bought the new home. That’s a nice house warming gift. Ninja had seen this game before, a 1992 Dataeast Hook pinball. Done some minor repair. And it again needed some minor repair.

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There aren’t a lot of 1970s Williams EMs that the Ninja likes. But the 1973 Williams GulfStream pinball is a good one. Some call it the single player version of OXO. It’s very simular, but they are slightly different. The owner bought this game from a garage sale for $300. According to the counter, it had 8000 plays on it. Man it was nice. Made Ninja very jealous. How can Ninja get this guy to trade backglasses? (Ninja’s Gulfstream backglass is OK, but not crisp like this one.)

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Gottlieb system1 pinballs. Ok has Ninja cleared the room yet? Usually just mentioning these will have that effect. Ninja has to fix a good number of these though. They are viable games if you do the mandatory modifications. But they’re essentially EMs with 1st generation computers. And the 1979 Gottlieb Totem pinball is no exception. Not a bad game Ninja guesses if you like half naked guy’s on the score glass. Obviously not a game for a Ninja.

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Another early solidstate Bally pinball for repair. Ninja slashes and cuts through these with the numchucks. But this one was a challenge. It had every little problem you could imagine on one of these games. Basically the prior owners played this game until it would do nothing. Then the current owner bought it (more like saved it.) So here we are, attacking the 1979 Bally Supersonic pinball.

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Ninja wonders what Bally was thinking. Their highly popular Eight Ball (1978) and Eight Ball Deluxe (1981) were real winners. But the 1985 Bally Eight Ball Champ pinball, not so much. Maybe you can’t ride a successful pony that long and hard, Ninja guesses. The 8 Ball Champ just didn’t make much of a mark in the pinball world. But really it’s not a bad game at all. Just slightly misguided Ninja guesses.

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Maybe Ninja should just post pictures of the repair in a chronological order, and all the readers can figure out how the story went? Just an idea. Not necessarily a good idea, but an idea. Anyhow we have here a 1986 Williams High Speed pinball. A pretty iconic pinball. But it would not power up. Like just the playfield land backbox lights would come on, nothing else.

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So ya sick of all the Gottlieb EM pinball repairs the Ninja does? Sometimes Ninja wonders. There sure seems like there’s a lot more Gottliebs out there than say Williams or Bally EM pinballs. Not that it’s bad, just an observation. But anyway today we have a 1975 Gottlieb Pioneer pinball. It’s the mate to 4player Spirit of 76 model. Ninja generally likes 2player Gottliebs better than 4player models. Why? Less crap to break and fix! And you can still play a friend/victim before the kill, err, Ninja means before the beer.

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Ever have one of those weird repairs? Like you get the address. You don’t know exactly where the GPS is taking you, but things look familiar. As you get closer and closer to the destination, you have this strange feeling. Well this was one of those days. Ninja had been to this house before, but it was a bad trip. The guy called the Ninja-hotline and scheduled an appointment. Ninja drove out (about 25 miles) and nobody was home. Called the guy and he said he fixed it, and didn’t need the Ninja’s help. That type of thing makes the Ninja want to break out the numchucks. Well this repair was a return to that same house, but probably 4 or 5 years later. It was to fix a 1988 Williams Cyclone pinball.

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As you have all figured out, Ninja isn’t a big fan of 1970s Williams EM pinballs. Ninja guesses if the artwork (and the color schemes) were better, it would be far easier to like these games. Ninja looks at 1970s Williams EMs as that horny fat chick back in the college days – not great to look at but generally pretty fun otherwise. Ok maybe that’s a bad analogy, but you get the point. Anyway, the 1977 Williams Big Deal pinball falls into the really ugly category, yet it’s not a terrible game to play. It actually has a real drop target bank. This is rare on a 1970s Williams (often they have single drop targets, but not too many Williams EM games with a whole bank of them.)

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Ok so we’re back to the two guys, one being the cousin with, umm, issues (see prior post, repair#269.) The second game that needed repaired for the cousin was a 1975 Gottlieb Spin Out pinball. It’s not Ninja’s favorite pin by any means, but that’s may be why it was one of the games the cousin was getting for free. Cousin had calmed down quite a bit after we got the Triple Action running. But we still had to send him on errands. “Hey we need some Mexican Cokes here Cousin.” Yea that’s right, Mexican Coke. They are made in tall 12oz bottles only, and have real sugar instead of corn crap. Only one place sells it in the area, so it took the cousin quite a time to find the place and get back with them. But back to the SpinOut, it was in decent shape, but Ninja and the owner cherry picked to make sure he got the good duplicate of the game, and the cousin got the lesser condition version.

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It was a strange day for the Pinball Ninja. Got a call from a guy that had many Gottlieb wedgehead EM pinballs from the 1970s. And he was willing to give one to the Ninja (and Ninja got to choose), in exchange for fixing a couple games. Now Ninja doesn’t normally take deals like this – they are never as good as they seem. Usually the games to be fixed are hammered, and a giant time suck, and everyone else that has worked on them either couldn’t fix them or screwed them up worse. But geez, a free wedgehead of the Ninja’s choice? The urge couldn’t be stop… Ninja had to go. Had to fix the first game, a 1974 Williams Triple Action pinball.

Look at those wedgeheads in the back of the garage. Ninja took a Gottlieb Sure Shot home for the repair work.

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Ok things are getting a little complicated here at the Ninja Pinball Blog. The amount of detail in these posts is getting out of hand. And the amount of time needed to edit the pics, write the text, it’s getting to be a bit much. So there may be some scaling back done. It’s all about the time this takes. And we’re backed up a number of repairs, it’s getting hard to get them all on the pinball blog. But anyway, the repair today is a 1974 Gottlieb Magnatron pinball. Ninja was never really a big fan of this game. But after doing this repair, it does seem like a better game than the Ninja remembers. Magnatron was the first Gottlieb the Ninja owned. But couldn’t he have bought a Target Alpha or similar first? No of course not. You always start low and work up right? Well at least that’s how it seems to work here.

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It must be the month of the 1976 Gottlieb Royal Flush pinball repair. Ninja knows this is an incredibly popular game. And for good reason – it’s a fun game. And the way the game counts the bonus based on poker hands, it is pretty cool. But in the last month it sure seems like Ninja fixed 3 or 4 of these. (This repair almost got caught in limbo because the Ninja computer died, but lucky for Ninja, the photos were uploaded to the pinballninja.com site just before the computer croaked, except for the lead game photo.)

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So how often do these Gottlieb cocktail pinball tables come around? Not too often! But here’s a couple the Ninja has repaired within a month. This one is a 1989 International Concepts Caribbean Cruise cocktail pinball. Really it’s a Gottlieb system3 game, but who’s to know that? Now this owner just bought the game. And the seller said the time tested phrase, “it only needs a fuse to work.” How many times have you heard that phrase? Ninja can tell you this, it’s *never* just a fuse! Well almost never…

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Owner was complaining on his 1978 Bally Bobby Orr Power Play pinball was scoring points randomly. Fair enough. Can’t be having that kind of behavior. So how do we fix it? What’s the first thing to do? Well let’s investigate that.

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Not every pinball repair is rocket science. In this case the owner was concerned about the “test report” he was getting when the game was turned on. On this particular 1995 Williams Congo pinball, pressing the diagnostic “enter” button inside the coin door would give a “flipper EOS” error. This concerned him, so the Ninja was called to check it out.

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Free games are always good. They are better when they are free to the Ninja, but unfortunately this wasn’t one of those cases. The guy got this game because it wasn’t working. It’s a 1979 Williams Stellar Wars pinball. Not regarded as a great game, but Ninja always found it pretty fun. And for free, well, it’s REALLY fun.

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It’s not really strange. When people first get into pinball they usually make their first pinball purchase as a “mistake.” Ninja knows he did (well if you call a game for $50 a mistake, but it was a real dog title that wasn’t very fun.) It’s called getting a pinball education. This 1975 Bally Hokus Pokus pinball was this guy’s education. It’s a good game, 3 spinners, fun and decent looking. But man the backglass on this game was toast. Peeling hugely, almost more clear than color. He did kind of over pay for a game with a glass in this condition. But the only reason the Ninja says that is because finding a replacement backglass will be nearly impossible (and probably not cheap.) It can be argued that a game with a bad backglass is considered “scrap.” Some may not agree, but the score glass is what one sees first, and if it’s all peeling, well it makes the game look really bad. If you can get past that, well that’s good. But it’s hard to get past sometimes.

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Ahoy mate. OK this is the Ninja pinball blogs, not the pirate pinball blogs. But at one time Ninja did consider becoming a pirate. It’s a good thing Ninja choose to be a ninja instead, as it’s much more clandestine. It does seem that pirates get more chicks than ninjas though. Hmmm maybe ninja should reconsider his advocation. But anyhow Ninja is fixing a 1992 Bally Black Rose pinball today. It’s July, which means we’re at the height of the “Williams/Bally reset problem” season. But Ninja is good at fixing this. Well so Ninja thinks anyway…

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No offense Williams, but battery leakage is a problem on all of their solidstate pinball machines. And the 1993 Williams Whitewater pinball is no exception. And just changing the batteries doesn’t necessarily fix the problem. The battery holder itself can be an issue.

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Aww yet another 1993 Bally Twilight Zone pinball to fix. (But hey at least this one doesn’t have a reset problem.) Instead we have to deal with fixing the clock. Now this machine was in very nice condition. Ninja had visited it before, and the problems were always very minor on this lightly used TZ. The first problem was the infamous “clock is broken” error. That is, if the game doesn’t get a clear signal from the clock at boot up (or during game play), the game will give a “clock is broken” test report, and disable the clock. Though the clock is a super cool toy, it’s really not integral to the game. But it’s there, and everyone of course wants it to work.

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So you think you’re a wise guy eh? Well here at the Pinball Ninja blog/webzine, we roll as ninjas, not wise guys. But that’s OK, as ninjas, we’re willing to help out wise guys now and then. And help the Ninja did on this 2005 Stern Sopranos pinball machine. Interestingly Ninja once owned a Sopranos pinball. For about 1 day. Mrs.Ninja was not impressed by the game’s language – “freakin’ this” and “freakin’ that”, and she made Ninja sell it. At the time Ninja didn’t know you could turn off the f-bombs in the software settings! Duh.

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The case of the jumping ball. It was a dark night (no not a Dark Knight, please try and stay on subject with the correct game!) and Ninja was called to investigate a ball hop. When ever the ball on this 1993 Bally Twilight Zone would come out of the left side auto shoot, it would “jump” and hit the habitrail in the lane. This would prevent the ball from getting to the top of the loop, and hence would prevent the ball from loading the gumball machine. Kind of a drag because it’s a big part of the game play.

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It’s the heat of the summer Ninja says. And if there’s one repair that Ninja is getting a lot of calls on during July, it’s Williams and Bally pinball reset problems. You know, where you’re having the best game of your life, you press both flippers together, and the game resets (turns itself off and then back on.) Or in the case of this 1992 Bally Addams Family, this guy couldn’t even get the game to boot up because of bad logic voltage. This happens a lot more in the summer because of the electrical stress created by air conditioning. This can lower the wall voltage, which lowers the input voltages to the regulation circuits on the WPC pinball driver board circuits. If the 5 volts isn’t perfect, the watchdog chip on the CPU board resets the game.

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Is this deja vu? No not really. Just the 1976 Gottlieb Royal Flush is a *really* popular game. And there’s lots of them out there, and the demand for the game is high. So people like their Royal Flush fixed. And who is Ninja to argue with that? This particular RF the Ninja saw long ago. Don’t remember doing much to it other than a few new rubbers. This was no doubt in the early Ninja days. Because now this game was officially a mess, and needed a good 1.5 hours worth of work. Time to get down to it.

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Ok you slot machine haters, here’s another for you. Yes Ninja fixes slot machines sometimes. Actually he really doesn’t like doing it, but it’s just part of the job. Thank goodness that Ninja doesn’t fix jukeboxes! But anyhow, this is a 1930s Mills silent model slot machine. Well really it’s not, but it *wants* to be a 1930s Mills silent.

What it really is, well, is a reissue. It’s made to look old, but it’s really about 10 or 15 years old. It’s a good reissue though. But not made quite as good as the originals.

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Ok so here’s a pinball game you don’t see much. It’s a cocktail table pinball made by Gottlieb, the 1989 International Concepts Night Moves pinball. It’s a weird thing, as it really doesn’t have the Gottlieb name anywhere on the game. But Gottlieb definitely made the game, using system80b hardware. The game is multiball too. It’s not horrible, as most cocktail style pinballs are. But it’s not a great game either. Interesting pinball, but the concept of having a multi-player, but the player has to switch seats with another player when it’s their turn, well, that’s kind of weird.

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Another classic, the 1993 Bally Twilight Zone pinball. Everyone likes this game, including the Ninja. And it’s popular out there in the wild too, as Ninja sees a fair number of them. In this case the TZ in question needed some tweaking.

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The Ninja likes the 1995 Bally Theater of Magic pinball. It’s a cool game, and Ninja of course likes magic. Because that’s what Ninjas do, magic stuff. Throw down smoke powder and disappear, etc etc. Anyhow this guy moved to a new house, and bought the ToM. He had a Dr.Who pinball, but the guy he sold his old house insisted the pinball be part of the house deal. Ninja guesses you don’t blow a house deal over a Dr.Who pinball.

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Ok here we are at the Pinball Ninja blog, hitting a big milestone. The half way mark to the 500-repairs-in-one-year objective. We’re about a month behind, should have hit 250 about 4 weeks ago. So that means Ninja will have to do nearly 50 repairs per month for the next 5 months to hit the 500 mark. Dang that’s a lot of fixin’. But anywho, what we have here is a 1979 Bally Harlem GlobeTrotters pinball. This was a charity repair, as the game was located in a local hospital. The patrons all had some issues, and were there for a short period to get their heads straight. So Ninja felt good helping these people.

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The world of pinball repair is a strange one. Ninja doesn’t know how to describe it any other way. This particular 1986 Gottlieb Genesis pinball proves the strangeness of pinball, on many levels. First the game itself is a bit strange. The backglass is lit with a blacklight behind the translight, which gives the game a very odd look. And the history of this particular game was weird. The first repair the owner said he called the shop he bought it from, they did the repair, but never cashed the check. Then last time he responded to a post on Craigs List where a guy was doing *free* in-home pinball repair. So that’s two repairs the guy got at no charge. Pretty good but both of the free “repairs” didn’t really fix any of the game’s problems. Hence the Ninja was called in to actually fix the game.

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The Mrs.Ninja is on a tear. She’s got everything ripped up in the ninja-lair. And there were instructions that Ninja had to re-connect the ninja-washer/dryer. Moving the dryer is one thing, but the washer is big and heavy. So Ninja had to call a friend for help. Unfortunately, these things come at a cost. “I have a 1993 Williams Star Trek Next Generation and I’m getting a sound board interface error when I turn the game on. Can you fix it?” Well this is the price one must pay if you need help moving a washing machine.

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In the repair world of the Ninja a lot of times people live a far distance from Ninja. And Ninja doesn’t want to mess around going back to their place because the drive time is just too much. So extreme measures are put in place to fix a game. That was the case with this 1993 Williams Indiana Jones pinball. It has the classic Williams “press both flippers reboot” problem.

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Ninja likes free games. Of course Ninja likes free games when they are free to Ninja. Unfortunately this wasn’t one of those. The owner got the game free from a friend. The prior guy had taken all the parts off the playfield, tumbled (polished) them, and put them in a box. Then he handed the game and the parts off to the new owner. Why? Well the backglass was peeling badly. But the rest of the game was fine. The prior owner was going to part out the game. Errr. And it’s a desirable title. Remember we talked about the Add-a-ball thing in the prior Pin Up post? Well the 1967 Gottlieb Melody pinball is another Add-a-ball (and it’s one the Ninja would love to get for the Ninja collection.) The replay is version is Gottlieb Sing Along. And actually both of these games were copied from extremely popular 1965 Gottlieb Kings & Queens.

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The Pinball Ninja lives in a replay state. What the heck does that mean? That means Ninja doesn’t live in NY or WI, where “add-a-ball” EM games from the 1960s and 1970s were sold. Replay means the machine allows the player to win games. Add-a-ball (AAB) means no games can be won, but instead, extra balls are awarded (to increase the length of the current game.) A lot of collectors like AAB games for their basement, as they are already playing for free, so winning extra balls means more than winning games. And that brings us to this 1974 Gottlieb Pin-Up pinball, the AAB version of the 1974 Gottlieb King Pin. They made a lot fewer Pin-Up games, and in this location, it’s a pretty rare game. Ninja was called in to repair the game. The owner thought the transformer was bad. Ok newsflash – the transformer is NEVER bad. Ninja has been fixing EM games for many years, and has yet to see a bad transformer. Sure there’s probably an EM out there with a bad transformer, but Ninja has never seen it.

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The case of the mysterious TILT. Ninja was at the office relaxing, when a call came in. “P.I. Ninja, we have a 1956 Williams Picadilly that goes to tilt as soon as a game is started.” Ninja responded with the obvious. “Well did you tilt the game? Did you check the plumb bob tilt mechanism?” After a moment of telephone blank stares, the owner responded. “No we didn’t tilt anything. Though this problem did happen when one of the grandkids was playing.” Errr Ninja thinks, kids today. So Ninja grabbed the ninja overcoat, the numchucks and throwing stars, and drove out in the ninja-mobile to check out the problem.

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The local pinball shop called the Ninja. “We have a 1993 Dataeast Rocky & Bullwinkle pinball, and the General Illumination (GI) lights for the playfield don’t work. Can you come take a look?” Ninja asked if they were prepared for throwing stars and numchucks. They responded in the positive. So Ninja got in the ninja-mobile and drove there to check it out.

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The Pinball Ninja has spoke many times here at the Pinball Blog & Pinball Webzine about his like of drop targets. And Gottlieb’s use of the during the 1970s was unbelievable. Where else could you play a game with *14* drop targets? Well the duo of 1973 Gottlieb Big Shot (and 4 player Hot Shot) was the ticket. Though not the biggest use of drop targets, it was pretty close. Dang that’s a lot of stuff to shoot and knock down. People love this game.

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Ninja likes it when the kids get involved in pinball. This new owner was a local college student, and he always wanted a pinball machine. They were always too expensive for him. But his lucky day came, and a friend of his girl’s *gave* him this game. It’s a 1979 Stern Stars pinball, not a bad game at all, especially for free!

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Sometimes repairs turn into non-repairs. That is, something really isn’t broken. This was one such case on a 1994 Bally Corvette pinball. The owner lived in a state far far away. He had a problem where the game was blowing fuse F114 on the power driver board. And off course the game would boot with a message to check fuse F114/F115. Since the game was just too far away, the owner sent the CPU and Driver boards to a local shop near the Ninja. Then the Ninja was called in to check out the boards, and fix any problems found.

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Ninja fixes a lot of EM games. And the one that definitely bubbles to the top as the “most seen” is the 1976 Bally Captain Fantastic pinball. As we’ve discussed before, it’s a cute game. Ninja isn’t totally thrilled with the game play, but it is an iconic pinball, there’s no debating that. And this particular game was on the list “to-fix.” The owners had the game for a long time, since the game was nearly new. It hadn’t been looked at for nearly 20 years. The top glass was gone, the game stored on its side. Ninja brought along a new top glass. The owner had a vacuum. Sometimes you have to start with the simple things first. But this game was anything but simple. It’s may be about what any wanna-be-ninja should expect when buying a “dead” Bally game.

Not the actual game in this repair (Ninja forgot to take a satellite picture!)

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Ninja got the call from a friend that was having problems with his recently purchased 1976 Bally Hokus Pokus. If you’re a fan of spinners, this is the game for you, since there’s 3 spinners. Ninja thinks spinners are Ok, but would prefer drop targets and maybe one spinner. Ok so enough of that, what was the deal with the game? Well it had a problem that is common to 1970s Bally EMs, and one that really confuses a lot of guys.

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Sometimes pinball themes and real life intermix. This was one such example. First just finding the game location wasn’t that easy – no house number and in a kind of out of way location. Like the owner didn’t want to be found. And he was a Vietnam veteran, and very cautious of people (especially government people.) Ninja wouldn’t call him particularly happy about the ‘Nam experience either (but then again, who was?) He had some great ninja stories about ‘Nam though. The one thing that really threw the Ninja was how much different the U.S. military was in the 1960s. For example, he said he was literally in the jungle on Tuesday, and back home on (honorable discharge) Thursday. No down time, nothing. And he said the welcome home wasn’t, well, very welcoming. He also was pretty mad on how the war was not won, explaining that the U.S. military in ‘Nam *never* lost a battle. He claimed it was the U.S. politicians and the U.S. public that lost the war for us. He had many great ninja stories about Vietcong tunnels (that wasn’t quite the job he was doing, not quite a “tunnel rat”, but he worked with them.) He had a great story like the time they were in the jungle and kept hearing trucks driving by – yet they’re in the jungle. They soon figured out they were standing on top of a huge tunnel, big enough to be a small highway. But he said the biggest thing the U.S. military had going for it was FOOD, having never met a Charlie that wasn’t half starved. But anyway, after getting home about 1970, one thing he enjoyed doing was playing pinball. So in the late 1970s when a 1975 Gottlieb Spirit of 76 pinball came up for sale, he bought it. Again this guy was fiercely patriotic, so the theme fit him perfectly.

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So Pinball Ninja goes to the movies every now and then. And the Austin Powers series was pretty dang funny, Ninja enjoyed it. AP was a sort of goofy ninja. It was a good change of pace from the reality of slash and maiming that the PN encounters. So when the 2001 Stern Austin Powers pinball came out, Ninja looked forward to playing the game. Boy was Ninja disappointed. Ninja guesses the game hit the theme well enough, but the play just wasn’t that much fun. This is weird because the 2010 Stern Iron Man (which is based on the same design) the Ninja thought was quite fun. (Read Ninja’s review of the Iron Man.)

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The Pinball Ninja is a known Quick Draw. That is, numchucks come out quickly, and attack an opponent with lightning speed. Because of this, Ninja like the 1975 Gottlieb Quick Draw pinball. It themed after the wild west after all. What’s not to like? Seriously it’s a great multi-player pinball, one of the best from the 1970s.

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So here’s a game Ninja doesn’t see much. The 1974 Williams Lucky Ace add-a-ball pinball machine. It’s add-a-ball (AAB) meaning you can’t win games, instead you win extra balls (for longer games.) And not just one extra ball, but you can stack up to 10 balls at any one time. Add-a-balls were made mostly for the NY and WI markets, where winning a free game (a replay) was illegal. So to find an AAB is pretty rare in places other than WI and NY. And Lucky Ace is basically the single player version of Williams Dealers Choice, but with more florescent orange (and less florescent pink!) Ninja had worked on this game before, and it was acting up again with a new set of problems.

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The Ninja has said this before – not every repair is complicated or difficult. In fact, sometimes they are downright simple. Not always, but sometimes you get lucky. And this was one of those cases. The 1968 Williams Lady Luck pinball was not working. Ninja means dead, as in nothing. Not a light, not a glimmer of any kind. The owner had done some preliminary diagnostic work, but had not come up with a solution. So the Ninja was called in to check out the problem.

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A while back Pinball Ninja posted about the purchase of a 1965 Bally Bowler 16 foot ball bowler game. Ninja had been looking for one of these for probably 10 years. (Bally made this bowler in 1963-1966, and then again in 1969. And if you have a Bally Ball Bowler for sale, please let the Pinball Ninja know via email on the About Ninja page.) Finally one came up for sale, A) within driving distance, B) at a reasonable price, C) in reasonable condition. Ninja posted the details of the trip and the buy in an earlier entry. But what about repairing the game? Well here’s the chronicle of how that went. Sit tight, it’s another long post…

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The Pinball Ninja is often in denial. For many years, the Ninja looked down on the Gottlieb multiplayer EM pinball games. Generally speaking, multiplayer EMs aren’t as good was their single player cousins. The reason is simple – there’s no way for the game to store a player’s game progression from ball-to-ball. Because of this, the game completely resets at the start of each ball. So effectively, each ball is a new game on multiplayer EMs. Opposed to single player EM games, where (generally) nothing resets from ball-to-ball. Which means the game rules can be wider and more involved. Potentially makes for a better and more challenging game play. But the 1976 Gottlieb Royal Flush pinball (and it’s 2 player cousin, Card Whiz) are an exception to the rules. It’s obviously a multiplayer EM pinball, but it’s one of the best in terms of rules and game play.

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It’s the 4th of July. No Ninja doesn’t take any days off. Games get fixed everyday, and this day, it’s the 2005 Stern Nascar pinball that is broken. Ninja admits, not a Nascar fan. But kind of like this game. The way the ball loops around the playfield. It’s a good implementation of the theme into a pinball machine.

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In 1977 Bally over stepped their bounds a bit with this game. Not because it’s a great or innovative game, but more with the theme, or lack of license. Clearly the guy on the 1977 Bally Eight Ball pinball score glass is “the Fonz” from Happy Days. Yet no license for this was secured. Though Bally got away with this 30+ years ago, this wouldn’t fly today.

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There are certainly a lot of 1976 Bally Capt. Fantastic pinball machines out there. Ninja knows, because it sure seems like no game room is complete without one. Of all the EMs Ninja sees, the Captain certainly is up there in population. It’s a pretty game for sure. Ninja is not sure how to rate the game play. “OK” so it seems. Would rather have a Gottlieb for game play, but hard to beat the artwork on this game.

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It’s been about 6 months since the Pinball Ninja started doing the daily pinball repair blog/webzine. And the repair number is now 225+. That’s good and bad. Good in that it’s a lot of repairs. Bad in that it’s not enough to be on schedule for 500 repairs in a year. (Christmas season is coming, which should accelerate things a bit.) Anyway what we have here is the 1972 Midway Dune Buggy EM arcade game. During the pre-video era, Midway made some amazingly cool and imaginative non-video arcade games. Dune Buggy is certainly one of them. You drive a small Matchbox sized car around a dune course. Certain obstacles light up, which the player must drive over (and get points.) You have 120 seconds to do this. And there’s also a car that is running back and forth which gets in your way. If you hit the car, or go off the course, the steering wheel shakes and the game pauses. While this is all happening an 8-track player is cranking out surf style music. It doesn’t get any cooler than this!

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Generally speaking Ninja doesn’t much like Williams EM pinballs. Sorry but Steve Kordek is, at least in the Ninja’s eye, just not that good of a game designer. But one game Kordek did for Williams that Ninja likes is the 1976 Williams Grand Prix pinball. Though not a flashy game (artwork is pretty bland, and no chicks), it does play well and have a lot of features. Two spinners, four individual drop targets, two kickout holes, dual bonus feature, three pop bumper and two slingshots. A lot of stuff to aim for. And high scoring, going up to almost a million points – perhaps a record for a score reel EM pinball. (Hey if you have a Williams Grand Prix pinball for sale please let the Ninja know.)

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The 1980 Stern Flight 2000 is a cool game with speech and multiball. Ninja likes this game. There’s a number of them out there too, as F2k and Stern Meteor were the two most highly produced classic Stern pinballs. This repair was pretty easy. The Ninja had serviced this game before a few years ago. So the basic repair stuff had already been done.

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ZOOM. Though a lot of pinheads don’t especially like the 1994 Bally Corvette pinball, but the Ninja thinks it’s a darn cool game. Talk about toys galore. The ZR5 motor (which actually shakes and revs), and the dual matchbox cars racing up the side of the game. And more ramps and flippers and spinners and other do-dads than you can shake a stick at. What’s not to like? (They don’t make pinballs with this number of toys anymore, it’s just too expensive.)

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Not all repairs that the Ninja goes on are complicated. Sure some are. Heck some are brutal. But not all are that way. Like the repair of this 1979 Williams Laser Ball pinball – it was pretty easy. Really easy. But again, you have to know what you’re looking for. That’s what makes it easy. Obviously it wasn’t easy for the owner of this game, hence the call to the Pinball Ninja. So it’s all relative. The problem here was no sound. Electronic pinballs with electronic sound are, well, “dry” if the sound doesn’t work. Ninja guesses that you don’t notice the sound until it’s gone. Then the whole pinball experience is lessened without the noise.

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In 1978 Gottlieb had a big gun pointing at their business. All the other pinball manufacturers had embraced solidstate designs for their games. But Gottlieb was slow to this turn. And the design they ultimately ended with (Gottlieb system1) turned out to be less potent and potentially more troublesome than say Bally’s -17 system. But in this time Gottlieb managed to get a few decent games out. Not that the 1978 Gottlieb Solar Ride pinball was one of them though. It frankly feels like it should be an EM. But it is what it is. And the Ninja has to fix it.

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After the 1985 Williams Space Shuttle game, which was hugely popular, in 1987 Williams came up with their Space Station pinball. Frankly as a follow-up game, Ninja thinks Williams did a really good job. In fact Ninja will go out on a limb and say it’s a better game than the original Space Shuttle. But that’s an opinion probably not shared by the pinball masses.

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Again Ninja knows that the pinball people just don’t like slot repairs. But hey people have these things, and they want someone to fix them. It’s not there’s slot guys out there in huge numbers. (Interestingly the slot techs that work at the real casinos can not do in-home slot repairs, it’s part of their contract.) During the 1990s, IGT really had a good hit with their Red, White & Blue/4th of July slot machines. And the other manufacturers took note. Hence we have the Universal Stars & Strikes and Bally Stars & Bars (all Americana fourth of July themes.) This slot machine is a Universal Stars and Stripes. Not the Ninja’s favorite, but they are out there, and fairly inexpensive (compared to IGT.) They run generally pretty good too.

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Ok here’s a game you don’t see much. In fact the Ninja has never seen this game. A 1988 Gottlieb TX Section pinball (system80b.) Some of these late system80b Gottliebs are really decent games, even if you have never heard or seen the game before. There’s some interesting shots on the playfield. It’s not a pretty game, but it’s decently fun to play.

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Now the 1996 Bally Attack from Mars is much like it’s older cousin Addams Family. In that it’s a game that has deep rules for the advance player, but is easy to comprehend for the pinball neophyte. This is a rarity in pinball unfortunately.

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During 1992 to 1996, Williams/Bally was kicking some butt making pinball machines. Some really good titles were produced. Maybe the best games ever made, so many say. And one killer game is the 1993 Williams Whitewater.

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In 1994 John Popadiuk designed his first game for Bally, the 1994 Bally World Cup Soccer. Though a lot of pinheads pan this game, it really is a good player. Deep rules, but easy to understand. Interesting toys and shot layouts. It may not be a good looking game (even the chick on the playfield is ugly), but it’s a fun pinball to play. Though soccer is not hugely popular here in the U.S., Ninja comes from a land where football (soccer) is king. Maybe that’s the draw for Ninja. The Ninja would like to make some suggestions for the game (soccer, not the pinball.) But that’s for another article. (Much like hockey, soccer needs more scoring. And forget the “tie” thing. What the hell kind of sport has ties???)

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The Pinball Ninja likes classic Stern games. Mostly the m-200 MPU board models with multiball, but some of the pre-multiball Sterns are cool too. And the 1980 Stern Seawitch is certainly one of those cool models. Ninja would have loved to buy this game (Got a Stern Seawitch for sale? Please contact the Ninja.) But unfortunately it was not for sale. They just wanted it fixed. So the Ninja stopped flailing the nunchucks and got down to work.

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So a while back the Ninja bought and repaired a 1969 United (Williams) Epsilon shuffle alley. And when done, Ninja thought it would be a cool game to have on location for the kids to play at 25 cents. All was working just fine. Game was being well enjoyed, and worked flawlessly. But then the Ninja came to the location, and saw the game was started, but no one was playing. And the game was set to “flash” instead of regulation. Hmmm. Something is up. Turned the machine off (to end the current game), and then back on. But as the game was powered on, it just reset and restarted another game. Maybe a quarter had stuck the coin switch closed in the coin door? Maybe not…

Blue arrow shows some soot. What’s that all about?

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Rumor has it that the 1989 Williams Police Force pinball was really supposed to be the first Batman pinball. Instead of the police car on the playfield, that should be the bat mobile. But Williams didn’t get the license, and later Dataeast did. So instead we have the Williams game “Police Force.” It’s a decent game, but far from what many really wanted.

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Ok so the Pinball Ninja admits, not all repairs are complicated. But hey when your game isn’t working, and you can’t figure out what is wrong, and you just want the darn thing to work, well, what can you do? It’s not the Ninja’s fault that sometimes the solutions are very easy. And in the case of this 1979 Bally Future Spa pinball, the solutions were pretty easy.

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Roll down games don’t generally impress the Ninja. But there are exceptions. And the 1955 United Derby Roll is one of them. Now you don’t see too many 1955 games of any type. It’s not like you can go down to Walmart and buy one. So the Ninja like to see this stuff and work on it. (And if you have a 1955 United Derby Roll for sale, you should definitely contact the Pinball Ninja.) It’s a cute game from a time gone by.

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The Ninja must admit, the 1970 Sega Gun Fight EM arcade game is extremely unique. It’s one of those games that people see, and immediately want to play (much like a ball bowler.) There’s something about the visual representation of the game that just draws people to it. Now the Ninja also likes the game, as it’s a miniature version of a western ninja gun fight. What’s not to like? And if the manikin gun fighter hides behind a cactus, the other player can shoot the cactus, cutting it in half! Really, Ninja not kidding about this. The only downside to the game is it requires two players (there is no single player mode.) By the way, if you have a Sega Gun Fight for sale, please contact the Pinball Ninja.

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Genco EM arcade games rock. Ninja loves them. Harvey Heiss was the designer of most of these games, and he did a fabulous job with them. Very imaginative stuff. Unfortunately for us, Genco went under in late 1957, with its assets bought by Chicago Coin. And what we have here is a 1957 Genco 21 number rolldown game. Now Ninja doesn’t generally like roll down games so much. But this one proved to change the Ninja’s mind, as it was quite fun. And being a 2-player game, very competitive. By the way if you have a Genco Number Roll for sale, please contact the Pinball Ninja.

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Again the Pinball Ninja apologizes to all the pinball ninjas out there. Yes another slot machine repair. But wait, before you navigate to another web page, Ninja invites you to read on and learn about perhaps the best video slot machine ever made. The 1997-2003 Silicon Gaming Odyssey slot machine is awesome. There’s nothing quite like it. A *huge* vertically mounted touchscreen and amazing game play and incredible graphics. These machines, made by a startup California company (Silicon Gaming aka SG), were so good that IGT crapped their pants, and tried to sue SG into submission. This apparently didn’t work, so eventually IGT just bought SG, and then disassembled the company. I guess that’s one way to kill the competition – if you can’t beat them, buy them and then kill them. Way to go IGT. (Remember IGT had about 70-80% of the slot market in the 1990s, and they were trying to keep it that way. Ninja never liked IGT slot machines, they were alway clearly inferior to Williams, Sigma and Silicon Gaming.) By the way if you have an Odyssey slot machine for sale, please contact the Pinball Ninja.

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In 1983 the pinball industry was in a down turn. To try something different, Williams came up with a pinball named after their very successful 1980 video game of the same title, and the 1983 Williams Joust head-to-head pinball was born. It’s a rather cool novelty game. Though having owned one, it didn’t stick around. Takes up a lot of floor space, and isn’t fun enough to be a ninja-keeper.

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The 1992 Williams Terminator 2 pinball is a popular game. And it’s pretty easy to work on. Uses ‘old school’ style flippers, meaning no CPU control (other than the flipper relay on the driver board.) In this case, the right flipper was really weak. Could not flip a ball. The flipper would barely move. Ninja was asked to repair this.

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