The E.M. Dungeon

24/03/2024

While we hate to see any machine come to its end, this particular piece was recently acquired with a certain project in mind…. But more on that in the future…

17/03/2024

As we prepare to depart Texas Pinball Festival 2024…
Good times, good friends, lots of game play, and a confirmation that we suck at trivia! At least in the “So you think you know Pinball” sphere…. 🤣

15/03/2024

One guess where we are… (though you really shouldn’t need it). 😁

12/03/2024

Well, it has been a bit of adventure but the Gottlieb “Jungle Princess” is heading back to her home. Amazing how much happier a machine becomes (or the drop targets at least) once it is freed from years of gunked up lubricants that probably should not have been applied in the first place.

Now, that said…. From the perspective of a former “route rat”, when you are trying to keep games on route running sometimes you will give in to the “quick fix”, probably with the intention of getting back to it at some point and “doing it right”…

But we all know how that goes all too frequently…

And before you ask… The owner indicated that they already had new bumper caps just waiting for the game to get back!

09/03/2024

Jake Danzig just listened to your interview on the Pinball Innovators and Makers podcast. Good stuff!

08/03/2024

Agonizing over a schematic waiting for the stream to start! Bug's Scream N' Stream

01/03/2024

You know the feeling when you are just about at the end of a project, but something just does not ‘feel’ right?

Well…. That was the case with the Gottlieb “Jungle Princess”.

All of its major issues have been addressed, and it is playing well.
But perhaps not quite ‘well enough’…

We were playing what we thought would be the last couple of games before returning the game to its owner, but something about the drop target banks would just not stop bothering us. And it took a while to finally put a finger on what it was.

They still seemed ‘stiff’. They dropped when hit and reset properly between balls, but there was still something…. A hesitation! Difficult to see if you did nothing but watched the targets, but if you listen…

Once in a while, various of the targets would drop just slowly enough to cause them to double score. The sound of the score reels when the targets were hit was enough to give it away! And no amount of (acceptable) adjustments would seem to resolve it.

So…. Good news, bad news.

The good: we now know what has been bugging us about the game.
The bad: it will be a bit yet before the game gets to go home.

Because the drop target assemblies are getting pulled for a full tear down and cleaning.

Unconscionable to do otherwise. And yes, this is just the sort of thing that we would lose sleep over!

17/02/2024

The Gottlieb “Jungle Princess” is getting closer every session! It will now properly start and play in both one and two player mode, though the 10,000 reel on the second player is not scoring at the moment.

Sneaking up on it though!

Lots of annotations on schematic copies helps keep track of the specific areas in the game that we want to work on at a given time, and what we need to focus on.

09/01/2024

Well, progress on the Gottlieb “Jungle Princess”! (While we are waiting on the “TRON” side art to “relax”) For the first time since it landed in the Dungeon it came out of “game over” on its own.

The flow chasing by scribbling on schematics is still one of our most reliable techniques for working through issues. Though it has also revealed that the bulk of this game’s issues appear to have been self-inflicted, due to multiple relay contact blades that were likely bent during attempts to “clean” them…

We are sure that the intention was good, but the technique appears to have been lacking.

Suspect that the final solution will be to pull the electrics board out of the cabinet and examine every relay, stepper, and motor contact to verify proper operation and correction of any additional ones that show issues.

Likely to be much more efficient than the current ‘one symptom at a time’ approach.

The current state: gets through the game start cycle (though it does it multiple times) and gets to the player one, ball one state, but then fails to send the ball to the shooter lane.

Progress though, we will take it!

07/01/2024

While we will admit (at least on occasion) that patience is not one of our greatest virtues…. Once in a while one must channel their inner “Dude” and just “take it easy, man”…

And this is one such case. Have been doing some rearranging in the Dungeon annex and finally have room (don’t panic, but non-E.M. Content to follow) to shift TRON into a position where it’s new side art can be installed.

But… (yes, in presentations there is frequently a “but” slide) when removing the lovely Phoenix Arcade artwork from its mailing tube in which it has resided for too long, it was so tensely curled that we did not dare attempt it at the moment.

After a bit of contemplation, it seemed the best course of action would be to hang the prints up and allow them to relax at their own rate.

And so, off to other endeavors for a bit…. (Darn it!). And then of course, there are the Doctor Who artblades to install…. Wait! What do you mean we just piled a bunch of stuff on top of it?!?

07/01/2024

Back to work on the Gottlieb “Jungle Princess” after surviving the holidays!

Sometimes you just have to get back down to ‘old school’ troubleshooting and annotate on (copies of) the schematics to help in tracing the flow for process of elimination…

01/01/2024

A very Happy New Year to everyone who pursues the silverball and things from the world of the electro-mechanical in all of its forms and incarnations!

25/11/2023

Some times life and circumstances just insist on getting in the way! But if you persist you can persevere and overcome!

After far too long a break, a new visitor to the Dungeon in need of our assistance! A Gottlieb “Jungle Princess” that refuses to come out of the game over state. This should be fun!

13/11/2023

It really does feel like this at times…

23/10/2023

So, the Pinball Hall of Fame has some things other than pinball machines in order to offer a little bit of something for everyone.

And a couple of things that we immediately recognize as they are part of the Dungeon collection as well!

Now, while we have not seen this particular example with this specific marquee we had to have a go because ours (in its standard configuration) is rather brutal to win at. Which is as it was designed.

We noted that the PHoF had made a slight modification to the game to make it a bit more friendly to the casual player. While we can appreciate this gesture we were also slightly taken aback since this rather simple change had never occurred to us. And rather than give it away, we will leave it to the viewer to attempt to determine the nature of the modification.

It must have worked, as we won something on our first attempt! Which never happens on our own machine! (At least not yet). 😉

17/10/2023

So… we were sent to Las Vegas on business (that darn “real life” thing again!) and we were not about to leave without a return visit to the Pinball Hall of Fame! Our first time back since the move to the new facility.

We took many pictures as us our custom, a couple of which follow. Normally we would post the lot, but something gave us pause.

For anyone expecting a tirade over the number of games that were not functioning at the time of our visit… you have come to the wrong place!

While we were a bit disappointed to see some of our personal favourites among those not operating, those which were more than made up for it (at least in our opinion).

We are (sometimes painfully) aware of the effort needed to keep all of the games in our modest personal collection fully functional at all times, (especially without the looming deadline of a monthly podcast segment as impetus) we can barely conceive of the effort required to keep multiple hundreds operating properly!

Add to that the fact that the PHoF collection has machines that span many eras and designs, and we cannot but appreciate the difficulties involved in finding people who can work on machines covering such a span of time.

We very much enjoyed the visit as it is an honor to be in the presence of these rare and classic machines, working or not because they are survivors that are being preserved! How many machines from the past have been lost because there was no one who cared enough to preserve them?

The point of the rambling missive is this. We will likely post some selected pictures from our visit here shortly, but will not be posting the entire set as we do not intend to feed into the recurrent whining and moaning that has been far too prevalent regarding the PHoF and its collection.

If people can’t have the vision to see the good that goes on there, it is their own loss!

For our part, since we do not live close enough to offer our direct assistance we played many games, purchased some merch (we do love a good tie-dye shirt), and attempted to offer our encouragement and respect to the staff that were moving about the floor working on machines.

The Pinball Hall of Fame will always have supporters in the E.M. Dungeon!

Everyone is entitled to their opinion…. This is ours!

14/10/2023

Well…. At least Delta airlines has good taste with regard to inflight movies!

04/10/2023

And well deserved!

We are excited to announce Pinball Film has won the Best Audience award at Biopic Fest!

Stream the movie audiences around the world are falling in love with today on your favorite streaming platform including Hulu and Apple TV!