Got Judge Dredd and the Zone done today. I'm really itching to get back to my Road Show project and finally put the thing back together.

Anyway, here's the shiny Zone.

Early Stern White Star games (2000...) had often these colorful miniatyre bulbs. In a lot of Williams games they used normal clear ones with a silicone hood (which we promptly named bulb condoms) to change the color. Stern instead used painted lamps. I have a good collection of all the colors to keep these early 2000s games looking original. I also kinda like how the painted bulbs look.

A little detail that even many owners of Judge Dredd pin don't know. There's an area under the Deadworld planet, that's purely ornamental, giving the area bit more 3D look than just flat plastics. But since it's under the playfield, a ball can actually land there under very rare airball conditions.

This is why the area has kind of a bowl, that will catch the ball and lead it towards under the playfield pathway normally used by the Subway entrace behind the drop targets. So a ball that wandered there will be returned to the game from the Subway's upkicker.

I wonder how often this has happened and if this was actually a feature that was axed during the game's development.

Let's play "spot the dead lamps" game.

It's Judge Dredd's turn to get washed and waxed. Running the lamp test is normal part of the cleanup service on these incandencent light bulb using machines.

I can spot some dead feature lamps and at least one dead flasher.

Here we go, the first production version of the Who Dunnit's 3D printed reel. In the end, 7 different prototypes were made, zeroing in on the shape and then the transparent material. Naturally also learned about designing stuff with FreeCAD while doing it.

Seen in this video is the 2 part model, where the hub and wheel part are printed separately so no support is needed. Before this I also quickly tried on the one piece version but didn't put decal on it.

In the end I reused the old decal as it came off in good shape and it seems to stay on the reel just fine.

All in all, this was a fun project that taught me a lot. Next I'll probably go back to tackling the modified Road Show project when I have the extra time.

This is the future! You can interact with the pinball companies by using electronic mail while surfing the cyberspace!

Topi and I have been trying to get the medium badge from Mando and it’s so damn annoying.
Technically it’s not difficult. You just need to get the Razor Crest to the first green spot to start Ice Spider multiball. Then you need to make the six purple shots to light super jackpot. But the super jackpot doesn’t come up after draining two balls like it does in Jetpack.
This is our 8th try now. I’m not going to try anymore after this. #pinball

Huh, some of the folks behind Arcade1Up are launching a home pin:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wonderlandamusements/wonderland-pinball

To reduce costs, they are sizing everything down, and using a 22mm pinball versus the standard 27mm. This also means that many standard playfield components won't work, so they are building their own.

Now I'm curious, how far could you shrink the geometry and still have it feel like pinball?

Taking some advice from @FediTips to do an introductory post about myself https://social.growyourown.services/@FediTips/114133970187268189 and pin it to my profile. I am Dave, I'm from the UK but I live in the Netherlands where I work as a contractor at the European Space Agency. I help coordinate education related activities on board the ISS for the European astronauts. I have a wife and two kids under the age of 10. My hobbies include #retrocomputing and #pinball (playing and fixing). I want to design my own pinball machine one day.

The Who Dunnit #pinball machine slot machine reel project appears to be a success. This part seems to be difficult to find around here and even when repros are available in the US, these cost over $100 to import here, which I find a bit steep for a plastic piece this simple, so I made my own.

I'll release a video soon about the whole project and how the finished product looks installed in the game.

The model is now available here for #3dprinting:

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6976697

My Who Dunnit project is nearing completion. I printed the first production version of the reel and applied the decal to it. I intended to buy a set of decals, but this one peeled off intact. I had feared I'd never get it to look good, but this filament saved my day, I tip my had to Formfutura for their clear HDglass PETG. #pinball #pinrepair #arcaderepair #3dprinted

Guardians of the Galaxy, Stern 2017.

I remember the Finnish league game where this thing was premiered around here. It's such a pretty and colorful game, looking sharp down to the screen animations.

As a game it isn't super deep for its era, but it's passable with multiple mini wizard modes and stuff.

Technically it's so and so, with the Groot's Jaw being constant headache because of bad electrical design.

Elvira's House of Horrors, Stern 2019.

I'm so glad my two previous favorites of pinball history got the 3rd game to follow them. So much love went into theming it, from Cassandra's commentary to custom video segments and all the crappiest movies from Movie Macabre revival.

It's also damn pretty machine and unlike Party Monsters and Scared Stiff, it has a relatively deep rule set.

Mechanically this is one of my least favorite Sterns, so many annoying design choices that need constant fixing or the huge QA issues it had.

The power of the rag compels you! Become clean!

Cleaning with IPA is a handy way to find every single nick and cut in my hands.

Elvira's House of Horrors was cleaner than Cassandra's puns, I pulled the plastic ramps to clean them from the underside, which made it look like new #pinball #pinrepair

Mando has a curious bug. If you trigger the miniplayfield entry opto during attraction mode, it starts the encounter mode, then backs out to the attraction mode. I assume they forgot to disable this part of the code for the attraction mode. #pinball #softwarebug

Mando has some playfield damage, this is the spot where the ball lands from center ramp. May have to put a protector here. #pinball #pinrepair

Godzilla is not mega dirty, but it's gonna get a cleaning and new wax whenever he likes it or not. #pinrepair #pinball #godzilla

I encountered an odd problem with Jaws. I booted the game up to check it before cleaning and I had an operator alert about the shark fin being disabled. The game asked me to run the test to enable it, I ran it back and forth couple of times and could not immediately see any of the position optos do anything funny.

As you can see from the video, the solenoid that kicks the shark fin up is pretty violent, these games suffer from so many solder cracks in connections thanks to the lead free solder used, although I assume the materials have become better from the early lead free solder that developed cracks if you looked at it wrong.

I examined the board with a magnifying glass, it appears to be intact. I'll chalk this one up as a fluke and come back to it if it starts acting up more frequently.