Enclosing a few pix and a video of a really fun 5 ball game with “side recovery lanes” or slot kicker kickback lanes.
I hadn’t even heard of this game until a few years ago when a friend offered the one that he had in storage for sale. It was unworking, missing cabinet and playfield paint, had wood chips, etc. but if it didn’t have a pristine art glass and good marbleized original bumper caps, I likely would have passed. It sat in my storage for awhile, but over the last few months we tried to bring it back to its former glory.
A couple of big shout outs to those who helped make the restoration possible:
1) Kevin at Preservation Paint and Pinball (https://pinside.com/pinball/biz/directory/1181-preservation-pinball) - I’ve always been hesitant to take a 66 year old machine and repaint it to make it look like a new one. While in many cases, there is no choice but to have to fully repaint and wood repair a machine with terrible paint (as was this case), we opted to “preserve” as much of the original paint and graphics as possible. This meant a more time consuming approach to not only color match the repaired areas, but to re-create the patina and aged look. In this regard, we left the minor dings and scratches alone and concentrated on fixing the damaged wood and removing the deeper scratches/graffiti, etc. Similarly, was the work done on the playfield…the area between the pop bumpers was heavily worn, inserts needed to be leveled, gouges needed to be addressed, etc. The goal of the restoration was “more is less,” and keep it vintage. Very pleased with the results.
2) Thanks to Bobby and Russ at Pinrescue. Game needed a full shopping, replacement of all pop bumper parts, coils, flipper parts, etc. And then the tweaking to make sure that all the scoring, steppers, specials and lights work correctly.
Interesting is that this game, produced in 4/51, is in the middle of Gottlieb’s “safety gate” era, yet it doesn’t have the blocking gate of the Knock Out, Minstrel Man and Happy Go Lucky that preceded it, or the Mermaid, Glamor, Wild West, etc., that followed it. What it does have, that no other Gottlieb had in that time frame, are two side slot kickers that launch the ball back into play.
Between the side kickers and 5 pop bumpers in the middle, there is plenty of activity for this old girl. You can win on high score, points and Specials. No wonder it’s been so heavily played when in route.
cyclone pre-repair1 (resized).jpg
cyclone repairs head (resized).jpg
Cyclone back of glass (resized).jpg