It’s not quantity, it’s quality!

Yesterday, I was making some adjustments to my Mata Hari game.  The right flipper had come loose and needed to be tightened down, and I installed some connectors in the head.  This Mata Hari has seen better days…

The first time I remember seeing a Mata Hari game was around 1978, at Sammy White’s Brighton Bowl.  Sammy White’s was a 48 lane bowling center with 14 lanes of tenpin bowling, 34 lanes of candlepin bowling (what I bowl), two pool rooms, and a lounge which I was too young to ever get into.  It was sold in 1986 and closed and today is a massive car dealership, but in 1978, it was a place for people to come and have fun!

Sammy White’s usually had the newest and the nicest stuff.  Maybe it was because Channel 5 taped the old “Candlepin Bowling” tv show out of there?  Maybe the owners knew that place drew people from all over to come and see the place?  Whatever it was, Sammy White’s is where I remember seeing my first Solid State pinball machines…

My memories of the games they had in there and exactly when are a little vague – I was 10 in 1978.  Those Bally solid state games really caught my attention.  I remember being fascinated by the little tunes they would play when you inserted a quarter into the machine, and then pressed the start button.  The numbers were glowing orange, and they’d blink between the score from the last game played and the high score, as if daring you to do better!  As a child, these games beckoned to me – don’t play those old games, I’m better!

Today, Mata Hari still beckons to me.  What a fabulous pinball game.  The art on the game is very well done.  Lit up, in a darkened room, the red backglass stands out amongst the crowd, but it’s the game play that I really like.

People who play modern pins say that there isn’t much to hit on Mata Hari.  That’s true, compared to today’s multi-level games covered with ramps and “habitrails”, there isn’t too much happening, but it’s the quality, not the quantity which make something better than the rest.

Mata Hari has two lanes to complete A&B, which seems simple enough.  The first time you complete both A&B, you get 1000 points, the second time 2000 and so on.  After 5000 points, you’ll earn and extra ball and then a free game before going back to 5000 points.  It has eight drop targets, two banks of four.  Drop all eight drop targets, and earn 50,000 points.  The second time, and each subsequent time, you win a free game.  At the top of the playfield is a saucer hole.  Get the ball in the hole and it begins to multiply your bonus.  There are also pop bumpers to help rack up points too.  Sounds simple enough, right?

Everything on Mata Hari is set up to seemingly make the ball come speeding toward you.  If you get the ball through the A or B lane at the top, the ball rolls through the lane and into the pop bumper cluster, where it gets kicked around a bit until it’s invariably shot down toward the flippers!  That saucer hole at the top, kicks the ball out and almost straight down between the flippers.  You can hit the ball, but you’re trying to save the ball, more than trying to catch it.  Those drop targets?  They’re aimed at about a 45 degree angle to the player.  You hit one on the left side, the ball caroms across to the right side and then right back at the flippers!  The pace of the game when set up right is nothing short of frenzied!  Blink at your own risk!!!  Sure, you can catch the ball on your flipper and take a breath from time to time, but it usually starts right back up the minute you flip the ball again.

I ended up getting lost in playing Mata Hari for the better part of an hour.  I can’t recall rolling the score over more than a few times.  Mata Hari is on my top ten list of all-time best pinball machines, and if it’s set up properly, is just as much fun to play as any of today’s modern, deeper, and more sophisticated games!

 

Testing the Craigslist Nightmare, and Ice Fever update

The Criagslist Nightmare game is pretty much done.  I changed out some bad light bulbs on the playfield to make the game a little easier to play.  I’ve been booting it up and playing it now for a few days, and so far everything seems to be working perfectly.  I hope to return it to its rightful owners sometime during the weekend.

I started working on Ice Fever today.  I needed to get a feel for what was wrong with the game.  The first thing I did was inspect all of the fuses.  Most of them were the wrong ones for the circuit, which as most people understand, is a very bad thing.  Add to that, someone ripped off the ground plug from the wall plug – yeah, that’s safe!

If you own a pinball machine, or any electrical device, remember that these devices use certain types of fuses for a reason.  Also, that third prong on the wall plug is indeed there for a reason – safety!  Running ungrounded electrical devices is like asking for trouble!  I’ll step down from my soapbox now…

Before I can really get into testing Ice Fever, a trip to the hardware store for a new three-prong plug will have to take place…

 

The Brady Bunch, a Good Deed, and Pinball…

As a kid growing up in the 1970s, I watched my fair share of television programs.  In the days before DVDs and VCRs, we watched programs on television that might not have always been our favorites, but were better than the other options available.  Such was the case with “The Brady Bunch”.  Admittedly, it was not one of my favorite shows, but I grew up watching most of the episodes and learning some of the lessons which the show gave to its viewers, and the meaning of the latin phrase, “Caveat Emptor”.

In one of the later episodes of the show, Greg Brady (the oldest son) buys a new (to him) car.  He’s really thrilled with it until he finds out that he bought a clunker.  In his Father/Son chat with Greg, Mike Brady tells his television son about Caveat Emptor or “Let the Buyer Beware”, and that the purchaser of anything must do his/her “due dilligence” to determine whether or not to buy a particular item.  This was a lesson which I learned from this television episode, and carry with me today.

The secret I have found to running a good business, is that I *want* my customers to trust me.  I want them to recommend me to their friends, and I want them to be repeat customers.  However, not everyone subscribes to that theory, and I’m not necessarily referring to “scammers”.

In the modern world, we have many new and different places to conduct business, especially in the virtual world of the internet.  There are a lot of good people (like I try to be) who will offer items for sale, and stand behind the product being sold.  I sell most of my games with a one-year warranty on parts and labor, because I know how much work I have done to the game, and I trust it will be trouble free for at least that long.  If for some reason it doesn’t last, I’ll fix it and make it right with the customer to the best of my ability.  Again, there are people out there looking to scam people out of their hard-earned money.  People who try to sell you a true piece of crap for top dollar, only to dissapear before the unsuspecting buyer figures out they’ve been “had”.  Then there is a third type of seller…

Some of the people on places like E-bay and Craigslist are good honest people who have had an item, maybe for some time, and then they decide to move on from it.  The internet provides a great way to get a few extra dollars from something you might otherwise throw out or donate to a friend or family member.  These people aren’t necessarily experts in selling, and they’re not necessarily looking to back their product or provide you with a warranty.  They’re not bad people, they’re just using Craigslist for what it really is – an online garage sale.  This leads us into my story, of a pinball machine which was sold over Craigslist, and the buyers who became so unhappy with their game in a matter of months, they just wanted to see it gone.

I was put in touch with a woman who owned a pinball machine, which she wanted removed from her house.  She wasn’t looking to get paid for the game, she just wanted it gone.  This isn’t terribly uncommon, as some people have had a pinball machine in their house for years, and now it’s taking up space, hasn’t worked in years, the kids who used to play it have grown and are gone now, etc.  Moving a pinball machine is not an easy task, and in most people’s opinion, the people who remove the game get to keep it, as payment for moving it out of the house.  In many cases, this is a win-win situation for all of the concerned parties, but yesterday, I wasn’t getting that vibe from the woman asking me to remove her game yesterday.

My wife and I arrived at the woman’s house at the appointed time.  The house was small and she and her husband were the only two living in there.  In the corner of one of the rooms stood the pinball machine.  The job seemed easy enough on the surface, but as we spent a few minutes talking to the couple, I began to sense that giving away their game was not something they wanted to do, but something they felt they needed to do.

I worked as an EMT for several years, and you get used to identifying when people are just putting on that “I’m really emotionally strong” act.  This woman, and her husband to a lesser extent, were both putting this act on.  I sensed that they really wanted to keep their game, but they felt helpless in their current situation.  I asked them to tell me about their game.

They had purchased their game less than a year ago on Craigslist, and they loved it.  At first, the game played great, but then a few things started going wrong it.  Neither of them had any experience fixing a pinball machine.  Now, their game is unplayable and they didn’t know where to turn to get the game repaired.  Since their house was so small, getting rid of the game and reclaiming the space for something else was now what they deemed their best option.  My wife asked them why they just didn’t want to get the game fixed, and they said they’d like to, but didn’t know where to turn.  The person who sold the game to them was unwilling to help them by repairing it.  My wife told them that I fix these games all the time, and that I could probably take care of it for them.

I took a few minutes explaining what Craigslist really was, an online garage sale, and that if you buy something at a garage sale, it’s not likely to come with a warranty or a service plan, nor is the seller likely to fix the item you bought when it breaks down.  The seller of the game probably wasn’t trying to be a bad guy, but may not have known how to fix the game, or didn’t want to get into the “for hire” pinball repair business.  Whatever the case, buying ANYTHING on Craigslist requires “Caveat Emptor”.  Now, with a new understanding, I explained to them what I do, in that I work on pinball machines, and restore many of them, and resell the games with a warranty and that I am willing to service the game for a reasonable fee even after the warranty has expired.  I offered to take their game back to my shop and see what I could do to repair it, and to do my best to make sure it runs for them for a long time.  They liked that idea, but again were unsure if they wanted to fix the game because of their small house, and how much space the game took up in it.  I asked them if they had another place they’d like to put the game, and they said “In the basement”.

Putting a pinball machine in the basement can be difficult, depending on the game and the design of the house.  Most houses aren’t built with pinball machines in mind, and their game is a somewhat newer, Solid State game.  Unlike the older EM games which I typically work on, this game’s head doesn’t get removed, it folds down on top of the playfield glass.  The head measures 28 inches wide, and MY basement door measures a mere 29 inches!  This means taking the door off the hinges to move the game into MY house – not something one wants to do in February too often!

We went down to their basement through their kitchen.  The door seemed wide enough, as did the flight of stairs going down.  There was a back door with a smaller stairway heading into the basement, but it would require me to make an s-turn maneuver with the game.  I’d need to take measurements of the back stairs to see if the game would have enough clearance to get down there that way. 

We told the couple that we thought we could help them out, by removing the game from the upstairs, repairing it, and then returning it on another day and installing it in the basement.  The woman looked so happy, she started to cry.  The husband was concerned with the price of repairing the game.  They had spent a lot of money to buy the game in the first place, and he wanted to just cut his losses if the repairs would cost too much.  I told him that from what I saw, the repairs would be very short money, and that I would call him with a better estimate before proceeding on any work.

Satisfied and relieved that they had finally found some help with their problem pinball machine, they helped us move furniture and rugs in the tiny house while my wife and I carefully guided the game out of the house on our hand-cart.  We got the game onto the sidewalk and as we left, we all said goodbye.  We loaded the game into the van, carefully secured it inside, and headed home.

Not having enough free room in my shop at the moment, their game is currently in my game room, a place I try to reserve for working games, but then this is a “special” project…