Home... safe... tired... body is sore... 5+ hours of arcade with a lot of pinball... all three Black Knight variations, Addams Family remaster, a good mix of modern tables, and some retro games with age-based audio and graphical issues, but still in playable states... so Gyruss, Tapper, Punchout, MsPac, Joust... I had a good day, but the hour+ drive to Madison and another back has taken it's toll on my neck and back, so I'm gonna sit and just chill for a while!
@JulieSqveakaroo Oh, sounds wonderful.
I've only once ever been someplace that had all three Black Knights together. Must be fun following the progression, though.
@Austin_Dern Sadly, BK1 was not in the best state of play... the actuators on the lower flippers was really weak and it was nearly impossible to get the ball back up into the upper play area once it went down the ramps...
2 played well, but it's flippers were also a bit weaker than they ought to be... but the audio was perfect, so I can't complain.
3... I personally think the side drains are too wide, but that's more my fault for missing so many lane shots.
@JulieSqveakaroo Ah, shame for Black Knight 1, although it's so hard to find one with strong enough flippers anywhere. 2000, yeah, good audio carries the game.
Black Knight 3, oh, every drain shot is too wide there. It's a less brutal game than Munsters, I suppose, but only by a whisker.
@Austin_Dern @JulieSqveakaroo Are the weak actuators a design flaw, or did they use bad ones that didn't last long?
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@JulieSqveakaroo @Austin_Dern Yeah, that makes sense. Should be easy enough to replace though, with new springs, new solenoids, and maybe some kind of custom (3d-printed?) mechanical adapter to make them couple right to the flippers
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@Felthry @JulieSqveakaroo My *impression* is that it's not hard to get the parts to replace or repair the solenoids like that, it's just a chore to do the replace-or-repair, so people put it off until a major repair is ready.
(And the tech might not know the flippers are weak, unless they've got specific complaints that don't sound like the hardcore players being fussy, or if they know how the game should feel and tested it out for themselves.)
@Felthry @Austin_Dern They do make replacement parts that aren't an exact fit for games that are 30 years old, but there is a thriving rebuild/modding community for these games, so it's not impossible... mostly it's a time issue and the operators focus on one or two machines at one time and try to do the full repair... also, on older tables, access to the inner workings isn't always an easy process.
Modern tables are designed to give easy access to the underboard for repairs and replacements.
@JulieSqveakaroo @Austin_Dern That's the exact opposite of basically everything else--modern stuff is much less repairable than old stuff
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@Felthry @Austin_Dern Modern tables have gotten a pretty good resurgence, and the newer folks that make them (JerseyJack, Spooky, etc...) have learned from the frustration of years of trying to repair/mod older tables, so they design to reduce future frustrations.
@Felthry @Austin_Dern The game is 30 some years old... eventually parts wear out. Actuators on the flippers and the coil spring on the launching plunger are usually the first things to weaken.