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For Amusement Only EM and Bingo Pinball Podcast

Detailing EM and Bingo pinball features, gameplay, and repair techniques.
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Now displaying: 2015
Dec 11, 2015

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.

Dec 10, 2015

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!

Dec 9, 2015

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!

Dec 8, 2015

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.

Dec 7, 2015

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.

Dec 6, 2015

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!

Dec 5, 2015

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.

Dec 4, 2015

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.

Dec 3, 2015

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.

Dec 2, 2015

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!

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