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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: October, 2015
Oct 11, 2015

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.

Oct 10, 2015

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.

Oct 9, 2015

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.

Oct 8, 2015

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. 

Oct 7, 2015

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!

Oct 6, 2015

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.

Oct 5, 2015

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.

Oct 4, 2015

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).

Oct 3, 2015

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. 

Oct 2, 2015

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.

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