The strip in back is a purple. It makes the characters glow.

From what I can tell, 5v is not enough juice to run high quality 6.5v pinball leds. It is fine for the ablaze bulbs you guys chose and also fine for the 4 F'ing bright ablaze leds. The issue with the GI here in my opinion is that the ablaze leds used absolutely suck. And better lights cannot be installed because the power of 5v won't drive them. In either case, the add on kit I made lights up the entire game just like it did for WoZ and it does stuff you cannot do with just GI bulbs.

In all fairness, the Prison Warden is a semi-professional voice talent.

Agreed. I've done plenty of voice work just being myself. Trying to "do" a character was very challenging. But fun.

I get what Ben said about a board trace for GI being too lightweight, that'd starve some current.
separate fused 5v line to GI, I'd think it helps, but at that point, why not disconnect the lightweight feed from the board and pop in a step-up buck converter to the new GI supply line, so theres 6.3 to 6.5v to play with? markmon just might add that into his kit "plug-n-play" style that quick..

no 'expert' here, but isnt it typical that something fed lower voltage is going to try to make up for it by drawing more current? could it be why the GI board trace is too lightweight?

theres another device I'd seen for LED's that gets more out of them by increasing the voltage, using high frequency pulse so LED's dont burn up. really common in one 1.5v cell LED flashlights, I forgot their nickname, they'll have the flashlight running "forever".. bright until the battery is down 85-90% dead. as example: ebay.com link: 10 White LED CL0116 Boost Driver Circuit Inductor for 1 2 VDC Battery USA

those are too "weeny-tot" for GI of course, but its the idea I'm talking about, higher voltage at high frequency so theres much less current draw. idk, something similar might be an easy pop-in solution if 5v low current capacity from board to GI is a real problem.

This might be more obvious if I had the board in front of me, but would a potential fix be just jumping a sufficently gauged wire between two points on the board?

That would work too. Better bet to just pull it off PSU.

Just picked mine up. Will set up tomorrow.