I went to purchase a Black Knight a couple of years ago, and the owner had an extensive collection of pinball machines. Most I was able to walk past, pretty uninterested. Time Fantasy was the same way. Weird art, drug culture?, no multiball, no ramps (so I thought). But the owner went on and on about the machine. Its rare. Cool. That usually means it wasn't very good. Then he started to explain the rules of Snail Time. I thought, that is interesting, I'll give it a try. I liked the feel and the simple layout. I decided I wanted one pretty much the moment I stepped away from the machine.

I came home with my new Black Knight and almost immediately starting looking to see if any Time Fantasy machines were out there. No luck. I put out a wanted ad and got one reply from a guy who wanted like $3000. I didn't have that kind of money, so I kind of gave up for awhile. I figured if one fell into my lap, that would be cool.

Then, searching the computer one night, I found a partially populated playfield. I bought it pretty cheaply. Its not in great condition, but I had dreams of what it could be.
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So you can see i'm not starting with much. The playfield is there, but there are some problems. Lets list them.

1. Everything is pretty dirty
2. Flippers are missing
3. Missing most of the plastics
4. Missing 3 stand up targets
5. Missing a lot of orange plastic posts
6. Missing some metal posts
7. Needs new rubber
8. Needs new apron cards
9. Missing a pop bumper body
10. Missing the pop caps
11. Significant wear to the playfield
12. Missing and broken lane guides

Well there was a first look. Then I took a deeper look.

All of the pop bumper assemblies are missing, including the coils.

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A whole light unit is missing.

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Then there is this mess. I wasn't sure when I bought it, but the coils for the flippers were included, but no flipper assemblies and most of the switches were gone. Everything was there for the kickers.

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Thanks. Someone else sent me scans of the plastics. I appreciate your thoughtfulness.

One of the things I have found in pinball is that it touches so many areas for so many people. I love the art and the design and the mechanics and the the play and the sound and the lights. I enjoy repairing and painting and designing just as much as I enjoy playing.

The playfield didn't just have wear....it also had lifting inserts.

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So here is the TWIST. All I have is a playfield. I don't have any other parts of the machine. So what I am planning is to use my Firepower cabinet as temporary home for Time Fantasy. I have a universal MPU/Driver Board from Rottendog, which has dip switches that allow it to switch between firepower and Time Fantasy. The cabinet is the same size. The sound board is the same (though I'll need a new ROM). So, my idea is to have a convertible machine. I can play it as Firepower, or switch it over to Time Fantasy.

This idea appeals to me because I have limited space in my garage for pins....well kind of limited. I can fit 7 in my garage and two in my living room. I know, my wife is a saint. So this idea moves my count up to 8 in my garage, because Time Fantasy won't take up any additional space.

So onto the next problem....

The wiring harnesses were cut. Ughhh.

So here is the first work I did, rebuilding the harnesses and organizing them into plugs to match Firepower's plugs.

First I tied on similar wire, then I soldered them together and use heat shrink tubing to cover the wire.

Then, I matched wires from components to spots on the board that controlled those components. Comparing the wiring charts of both machines helped a lot.

I was short one male plug, so I put the wires in the female end one at a time to test them. I also had to add another GI line that I fused.

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Thanks! I'm looking forward to getting some play time in. Right now is all work, but the payoff is coming....

I'm having fun. There is something special about bringing something back to life.

Money is short right now, so I am going to try to get the playfield up and working with what I have on hand first, then replace parts as I can. I borrowed a few parts from my Firepower playfield. I borrowed the flipper mechanisms (this was pretty easy since they are all contained as a unit) and the three stand up targets.

Once I removed the stand up targets, I decided I'm also going to go ahead and convert Firepower to drop targets. I have a ton of fun playing my Black Knight and my Stellar Wars which are both full of drop targets. There is something special about that thunk when they drop. I have heard the arguments about it slowing the game down, but I feel like I need to try it and now is a perfect time.

Another problem I found when I removed the apron is that that I was missing a bunch of parts for the ball kicker. Luckily, I had a complete unit from a Flight 2000 I recently had to part out.
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Next I worked on the pop bumper assemblies. Temporarily, I borrowed a body from firepower. I decided to use the assemblies I had from Flight 2000 since they had the same footprint. I ran into a problem here though because the space between the spoon and the plunger was too small and the spoon would have to push down the plunger in order to trigger the switch. I tried some hacks here to create more space, but finally gave it up. I have new assemblies coming now from Marco.

I also replaced a bunch of missing light sockets and rewired them. Many of the wires were cut when the standups and other parts were removed, so I needed to extend the wires to make them fit. I am trying my best to match colors wherever I can with wire left over from Flight 2000. The colors aren't perfect, but they come pretty close.

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After all of the missing components were replaced, I cleaned and adjusted all of the switches on the underside of the playfield. Sometimes alcohol on a Q-tip will remove the build up and improve the connectivity, but in this case I needed a slight abrasive to get through all of the built up soot and grime. I use a sanding pad similar to a sponge scrubbie soaked in alcohol. I am very gentle so only the grime is removed, not the coating on the switch tips.

After that I flipped the playfield over and stripped off all of the posts to give it a good cleaning and polish. I also cleaned and adjusted all of the switches on the topside. I don't have the money right now for everything, so I am using some new black posts I had lying around from another project. I'm also using some lane guides from my parts box.

I patched together a rubber kit from an existing kit I had for Flight 2000 and filled in what was missing from Marco. I got a rubber chart on the Time Fantasy Club forum from bballfan. He noted some of the rubber seemed too loose and he substitued smaller sizes in some places. I agreed with his substitutions and made several others myself where it seemed the rubber was slack.
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Next I'm working on the plastics. I had some leftover Lexan from another pin I was working on. I got vector images of the plastic outlines and scans of the art from G95. I cut the Lexan to these shapes with a scroll saw, then used a bench sander to finish carving and smoothing the edges. I test fit them on the playfield, then I decided for this project to fire polish the edges.

Here are pics of the plastics cut and test fit, then some pics of the polishing process. I practiced on some scrap to make sure I wouldn't mess up the good plastics too much. Too much heat causes bubbles to form, then burns and melts. After some practice, I found that sanding the edges with 220 grit purple 3M paper, I was able to get a nicer edge. I also used a razor blade to get off any hanging bits left over from sanding. I then used a torch and a pot holder to polish the plastics.

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So....maybe you have found yourself in the same spot. I am flat broke right this minute, so I'm using every scrap I can find to keep moving forward with my project. I had three sheets of clear decal paper left, so I did my best to cram all of the art onto those three pages. When I printed, of course there were some issues, so the decals are not perfect. There were some spots of missing color and the green is not a great match. I'll have to redo them later, but for now, having something is a huge improvement. I cleaned up the art files, printed the decals, cut them out to fit the plastics, soaked them, the attached them. I use an old spatula to get all of the water out. I decided to touch up some of the printing errors, but it didn't turn out well. Another reason to redo these later.

Here are some pictures of the process and what they look like on the machine.

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Next, I needed to work on changing over the sound from Firepower to Time Fantasy. Funny that the sounds are the same, just used differently with no speech. I purchased a new sound ROM and installed it in the board. That didn't work, so I researched a bit more and realized that the jumper wires were different. I needed to add two jumper wires to the board to allow the sounds to work. They worked in the test function, but not at game start. After a bit more research, I learned the sounds on system 7 machines come from the MPU instead of the driver board. So, I built a new connector to connect the unused pins on my universal MPU to the sound pins on the sound board. After that, everything is working great with the sound.

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I gave up my twist and went for a full recreation.

I purchased a Williams World Cup and used the cabinet to house my new machine.

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I sanded down the cabinet and used Pinball Pimp Stencils to repaint it.

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I put everything together and had a new machine.

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I then created a translite for the back box. I also added a new set of LED displays.

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I agree, Kinda funny.

In the end, I really enjoyed this project. I'm having a ton of fun playing the machine. However, I did spend a great deal of money on this project and at the moment, all of my pinball activities and projects are on hold because of it.

My son and I would also like to purchase our first NIB pinball machine, and so I'm going to put a bunch of machines up for sale.

As a middle school teacher, my cash flow is very limited. If I could keep every machine that I love, I'd be thrilled. I've had to make some hard choices which have included selling some of my favorite machines in the past. My High Speed is gone, my Black Knight is gone, my Sorcerer is gone, my Silver Slugger is gone, my Pharaoh is gone, my Space Invaders is gone, my fully restored World Series is gone, my pristine Old Chicago is gone.

I miss them, but needed to part with them in order to work on other projects and purchase other machines.

thanks.

I know of a couple of other machines that have time features. I have a Laser Cue. When you earn an extra ball, the first 30 seconds is free time so you can drain over and over and get the rollovers at the top which increase your bonus. Has a similar feel because it is drain, plunge, drain, plunge.

The other machine I can think of is Beat the Clock. It is a bally machine that you can build time by hitting shots. As long as you have time on the clock, you will get a new ball when you drain. If you run out of time and lose the ball, the game is over. No 3 or 5 balls, all based on time. Pretty cool twist.