The Groovy Goat

The Groovy Goat is a sports bar and restaurant at the OWA Park in Foley, Alabama. They have a giant menu, great margaritas, solid nachos and good service.

In the back of the restaurant or to the left of the park box office, is the Arcade. Attached to the restaurant, it is OWA’s take on the Arcade gameroom.

Big Games

The Groovy Goat / OWA arcade is a pretty traditional redemption arcade. Big games, big cost, little prizes.

This claw machine is about the size of a Prius.

I do like the giant LED matrix versions of Space Invaders and Head to Head Pacman. Be aware, it is on a hard setting with very few lives awarded.

Giant Halo is cool.

Giant Tomb Raider was fun except for the fact that one of the guns was out of order.

I gave my kids two $50 game cards. They lasted about 15-20 minutes before the $100 was spent.
They each got enough digital tickets for one very small stuffed animal, about the size you’d find in a Walmart claw machine.

Takeaway / Impressions

OWA’s redemption arcade is big, filled with big games and generally pretty stingy ticket allocations. The games are usually set to higher-than-average difficulty.

The kids dig it but it isn’t my cup tea.

Ice Cold Beer

First, the Happy Ending

The Road from “Got it!” to “Thank Guinness, it finally it works”

Summary / Timeline

July
With Excitement: Taito Ice Cold Beer!

August
With Anticipation: Taito Ice Cold Beer!

September
With Exasperation: Taito…Pass me an Ice Cold Beer

October
F@!#?@! Taito… Ice Cold Beer.

November
Holy Shit! I finally get to play Taito Ice Cold Beer.

The Snag!

A local collector, knowing I’ve been looking for the game offered to sell me one of his two games so as to make room for two A-Tier titles that were on the way. I was ecstatic. The price was, um…about what you see them go for these days - after all that’s what he had in it too, so I felt it was a square deal (and still feel that way).

Tapper and Ice Cold Beer… They make a pretty pair.

Everything is great, until it isn’t

There was one known bug in the game. The errant-ball-kicker/ solenoid didn’t work. I replaced the solenoid with a new one from Pinball Resource and picked up a power supply modernizer from ArcadeShop.

Usually, these power supply adapters from Arcade Shop are the cat’s pajamas. This time, not so much. The general idea is that it gives you a factory header-side harness where you can bypass the original power supply and run your game from a modern 8-liner without hacking up the harness. Unfortunately, this kit didn’t have full 5v service from the pinout and his suggestion was to solder a 5 volt jumper to the test point pictured above.

Instead… I used a crimped molex pin. Good thing, too. That adapter is a piece of crap so I ended up rebuilding the original power supply instead.

By piece of crap, I mean that - in addition to not being hack-free in terms of connectivity, you can’t get consistent gameplay (I tried several new 8-liners) because the regulated power supply seems to jump around and the 5volt jumper hack created logic problems on my game, causing it to freeze. (and yes I adjusted voltages as best I could..)

It was a little disheartening seeing just how much rust had accumulated. I bought new screws, tumbled and cleaned anything that couldn’t be easily found at a hardware store.

Guide My Balls

I found myself with the need for a new ball guide and a very generous friend sent me a repro from a KLOV contact.
The original was very brittle in places and the ball would actually puncture through at certain points.

As you can see in the video, there are some subtle differences between the original and the repro that matter. This took quite a bit of trial and error to get right.

Solenoid Problem = Board Problem

So, it turns out the issue where the errant ball solenoid wouldn’t fire was an issue with the drive transistors on the PCB. I tested the transistors and one was bad, one was good.

Unfortunately it looks like someone used an EZ Bake Oven and maybe a soldering torch to try to repair this area of the board. Since the board isn’t replaceable I sent it to the venerable Chris Hibler for repair and cleanup.

Chris did his magic, got the transistors swapped out and cleaned up the mess as best he could. The solenoid now fires!

Kicker Hurdle

Unfortunately due to differences between the repro and original ball guides, the kicker assembly plunger was no longer able to engage with the ball. Let’s be honest though, I don’t know if this ever works. Extra unfortunate is that the plunger (2 in the graphic above) is unobtanium. I ended up using a knocker plunger and modifying it for length with a… dowel rod. Yeah… I know.

Concluding Thoughts

I called this “The Out of Order Corner” at the last show I went to.

Fun to play but ownership is not for the Faint of Heart

If you find one at a show, play it early because it will likely be out of order by the second day of the show. I can go through my camera roll and find at least three examples of Ice Cold Beer’s with Out of Order signage. Which, taken as a whole, is surprising considering the game’s simplicity of being 12 switches, two motors, a PCB for logic and a PCB for scoring display. You’d expect the game to have higher reliability than a pinball of the same era but that doesn’t appear to be the case.

Remember when I said I bought one from a local collector that had two of them? Yep, his other one is down too..

What Ice Cold Beer has going for it is:

• Theme

• Approachability

• Novel Gameplay

• “Just one more game” X-Factor

What Ice Cold Beer has going against it:

• Poor reliability despite simple electronics

• Poor parts availability

• Poor aftermarket for critical components

• Lackluster Factory Documentation

You can probably tell that, for me, initial ownership has been a bit of a let down. It has been a constant battle over what should be simple stuff that feels more like punching myself in the groin than an enjoyable hobby exercise. At his point of the hour-meter in a typical pinball restoration I would be getting to super-detail OCD items but in this game I haven’t even begun to address the small stuff.

I still have… a screw head that engages with the art. Coin mech, coin door wiring issues... Quieter motors…. Cabinet touch up… EOS adjustments… Ball rail re-true and polish…

To end on a positive note, I’m hoping as I get to spend more time playing the game with family and friends the hassle memories will get crowded out by happier ones.

Fairhope Pins & Pints

Over the weekend I got the pleasure to attend the soft opening at Fairhope Pins & Pints in lovely Fairhope, Alabama. Apologies for the video quality. That’s a re-download of a Facebook live post, a lot gets lost in translation. Like 2.7k of resolution worth.

Fairhope is such a unique town. Looking at the founding documents sounds more like Walt Disney describing his Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow than a typical South Alabama coastal bayfront community.

to establish and conduct a model community or colony, free from all forms of private monopoly, and to secure to its members therein equality of opportunity, the full reward of individual efforts, and the benefits of co-operation in matters of general concern

Fairhope feels more like a New England Hamlet with a tinge of Austin in the artsy-fartsy department. Lots of foot traffic and small boutique shops and eateries. A cool place for a pinball hangout.

The owner is a local collector, enthusiast that resells new pinballs on the side.
..and.. a super nice guy.

A nice turnout for a soft-open. With the weather getting nice, I’ve got really high hopes in this place succeeding in growing the pinball hobby in our area.

As a bonus, it was super nice to get to play some of the newer Stern titles in a more intimate setting than the usual show-floor experience. Star Wars and Deadpool really stood out to me.

Sillyness

Not arcade related really but shenanigans nonetheless. My teenager wanted an embarrassing pick up from the car rider line at school. :)

Introducing: This American Pinball Podcast

Last weekend I learned of a new Pinball Podcast - This American Pinball. The host is a super-thoughtful guy, fun pinball player and collector with a ton of professional experience to give the podcast a professional polish and direction. Looking forward to more episodes!

Just in time for Halloween, check out horror stories from pinball collectors:

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/mistory/this-american-pinball?refid=stpr.

Creepy Coincidences

Getting Halloween stuff out I ran into this glasswear set we’ve had since 2004. The similarities in the fill indicator levels and the Scared Stiff achievement ladder are interesting..

Fun coincidence.

Centipede’s G07

“What’s the Diagnosis Doc?”

Last week, Centipede decided to jump line in the repair queue with a monitor problem.

Monitor dark, game was playing blind and no neck glow. It had been playing fine the day before and hasn’t shown any warm-up quirks leading up to the failure.

My gut reaction was - flyback.

Before ordering parts, I consulted this handy troubleshooting workflow chart:

https://flic.kr/p/cLbnA7
(first google result for g07 troubleshooting chart)

The fuse at 901 was indeed blown and you can see a slight crack in the flyback. I’m surprised it wasn’t arcing. If it was a Hantarex it would have arc’d… :)

The Fix

I ordered parts from https://www.arcadepartsandrepair.com/ (the first time I’ve used this particular site) Prices were average, shipping was fast and the order was correct.

Not a fan of axial-lead fuses, so I added board-mount fuse holders when I replaced the fuse.

The new flyback proudly boasts its Chinese origin. Hopefully it’ll hold up? The transformer adjacent to it at T-503 looks pretty crusty but works and those aren’t made anymore, so I’m leaving it.

Time to Test it Out

Quick test showed neck glow was back. I made a few small adjustments and we were back in business.

I let the game “burn-in test” for a couple of hours and so far-so good. Fingers crossed it stays working so I can move on to other regularly scheduled projects in progress!

A Look at the Books: Merch Sales this Summer

Backstory

For a couple years, usually adjacent to shows I often get feedback for:

“Wouldn’t it be cool if our pinball-arcade group had shirts to wear to the show?”

One year, I engaged a friend / local collector who was in the shirt biz. The good news is, it was nice supporting a friend and his wife’s side-gig and the shirts turned out great. The downside is, it puts me “in the middle” in some unfulfilling combination of personal shopper, transaction guarantor, tailor and delivery-boy. Yuck.

This year, I decided to try to use some available online-services to meet this need. I set up a couple designs with a print-on-demand service, tied in to a shopping cart on the blog and made it live. Took maybe a day or so, in all. Nothing major.

Yada yada, [trolling]… yada yada..

Look, I normally don’t engage with trolls and I’m pretty good at ignoring negative crap from keyboard-commandos. I don’t want to break my streak and answer this, per se but call it a catalyst for this post that hopefully other hobbyist bloggers might fight insightful or at least entertaining. One of my favorite podcast networks, Bald Move, does this thing they call “Empire Business” where they divulge all of the nitty-gritty financials to their supporters. This is going to be sort of like that.. Remember Catalyst, not Troll Engagement! anyway….

Today, I found this little gem in my inbox:

I laughed (loudly) when I read this. Laughter provides a dopamine release that generates more happiness. This actually improved my mood, somehow - so thanks for that.

Putting spell check, toxic trolling, mental illness or whatever aside for a sec.. Looking back, when I did post the Merch link, I did post in our local Arcade & Pinball Facebook Group (that I helped to co-found) some throwaway line that “… and the profits… if there are any…. whatever, we’ll do something good with that”

.. and what I meant by that, was that I’d donate them to a good cause or try to do something positive in the community, hobby: generic social good with whatever pennies were left over.

Platforms

SquareSpace

This site is hosted on Squarespace. True, I have web-development experience dating back to my teenager years and while I could certainly build up a site / blog or roll my own Wordpress or similar - these days - why would you? Going with a provider like Squarespace gives me a solid content-management system with nice content-creation tools in native apps for IOS and Android. It also gives me a nice selection of highly customizable included templates that have mobile-friendly, responsive designs.
.. and it keeps my hobby from taking on aspects of my day job. For $10/mo that’s a no-brainer, friends.

Not for nothing, Squarespace also provides a robust analytics platform that can be pretty informative. Not that I pay it much attention. This is a passion / hobby project and creative outlet for me. (full stop)

So, my Merch experiment was based on Squarespace, Shopify and Printful. There are certainly cheaper ways to go about setting up a shopping cart but they come with tradeoffs in inventory management, up-front expense or up-front time expenditure.
Shopify Monthly Recurring Charges

Shopify

Shopify provides a shopping cart platform. This is inventory management, order fulfillment and secure credit card processing.

June Hosting Invoice - $29.00
July Hosting Invoice - $29.00
August Hosting Invoice - $29.00

Printful

Printful is a really cool print-on-demand service. Your art, their products. They are secure, have a nice selection high quality products, an easy-to-use online interface for product branding & design.

Printful makes their money on the transaction. So, a $15.50 shirt would cost you about $17.80 shipped. Once you order it, Printful charges My American Express for your order. Once it is fulfilled, your payment minus their cut gets deposited back into my account. In this case, $1.95.

Other Platforms

I also use AWS for DNS, large file storage, CDN features. Not including any of that in this particular post, though since it doesn’t particularly pertain to my Merch Store experiment.

YTD Merch Sales

$183.09 were my total Sales in 2019. Don’t get too excited, though… $113.90 of that was me buying shirts from my own store. A couple for myself and a couple to give away at events, etc.

Bottom Line

Total Sales Revenue ……..$183.09
Less Inventory Buy ………$113.90
Less Production ………….$58.62
Less Shopping Cart ……..$87.00
______________________________
Total Profits ………….. $(76.43)

Final Thoughts

Again..

Don’t feed the trolls

I don’t want to address the specific, ridiculous claims in the email above but it was a Catalyst and a reminder that I’d been meaning to express an open-door policy with respect to those financials. I took the store down last month (unrelated to this emailer, obviously) to keep my hosting fees in check but I definitely intend on doing it again in the future to make it easy for my friends in the hobby to get show-shirts, etc. Because… this is all for fun, folks. If you aren’t having fun - do something else. :)