Skip to content
The Classic Pinball Podcast
The Classic Pinball Podcast
140 episodes tracked since 2019 about →
Copied!

#19 The Production Room Floor: The Classic Pinball Podcast

PodcastAnalysis updated 2d ago23 min listenBy George
From the creator

Outakes from several recording sessions with little editing. First up is flipper talk. The guys discuss RAZA and the unobtainium shot for the last time. Poor playing games at tournaments. The guys...

Listen on The Classic Pinball Podcast

Highlights

  • Deep Root Pinball's show machine had weak flippers that made the most forward shot inaccessible to players
  • Deep Root's excuse was that stronger flippers would break plastics and targets in the game
  • Jersey Jack games allow flipper voltage adjustment through software settings from the front door
  • Modern Stern games do not appear to have adjustable flipper coil voltage settings
  • RoboWar at a recent show had flipper problems and failed during tournament finals after previously crashing
  • The main tournament event had 18 games that all played great with no flipper complaints
  • George maintains his tournament games to higher standards than typical venue machines through regular maintenance cycles
  • Tom Callahan was a pioneer in board repair and custom MPU work in the 1980s-2000s
  • Seven-digit display modifications for games like Embryon can be achieved through ROM modifications and either direct wiring or breadboard circuits

Notable quotes

“break the machine give people an enjoyable experience that's a whole different wrap”
George
“Their excuse was we make them too powerful. We're going to break stuff in the game. It's going to break targets and stuff. Yes. Wow. That's... who's the manufacturer that makes that? Deep Root.”
George and Dave
“I never hit it, and I never saw anybody hit it. See, that's not good. Then people aren't going to get the full experience.”
George
“if you're bringing a game the game should should play correctly that's all don't bring a crap game to a tournament you're not doing anybody's any favors”
George
“you can't do it mid tournament but you can do it if it's overnight and the game's sitting everybody has an equal chance”
George
“I have a i have a new found affinity for people who can do this you can call them a talking head and yes they are because they have a teleprompter but you need a good script writer and you need somebody who can run with it”
George
“the old way is a guy overseas made these nice, you know, modified ROMs for this game, all these games in this time frame, and some he'd give seven-digit scoring to as a modification”
Dave

Entities

  • Deep Root Pinball· company
  • Jersey Jack Pinball· company
  • Stern Pinball· company
  • Embryon· game
  • Retro Atomic Zombie Adventure Land· game
  • RoboWar· game
  • Groton, Connecticut· location
  • Houston· location
  • Bruce· person
  • Dallas Overturf· person
  • Dave· person
  • George· person
  • Jack· person
  • John Toth· person
  • Paul (PJ)· person
  • Tom Callahan· person
  • Allaire State Airport· venue
  • Bowlerama· venue
  • Free Play Florida· venue
  • Funny Games Framingham· venue

More from The Classic Pinball Podcast

→ All content from The Classic Pinball Podcast
Contact us about this coverage