(Topic ID: 296426)

New target designs + odometer reels for Bally Night Rider

By goingincirclez

2 years ago



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#1 2 years ago

Couple months back I was given a mildew pile shaped like a pinball machine. After a few gallons of disinfectant, Mold Control (R), and elbow grease in 3 days' worth of perfect sunshine and heat, it actually seemed worth salvaging. It was ROUGH and is still far from perfect BUT my goal was to make it into a nice player for starters. And it now plays! So there's hope. Worst visual is now the backglass (it was already cracked and wedged solid with barely any remains of the lift bar!) but I'm afraid a replacement will open the chasm of "well now it's time for a new ___ to match" so time will tell.

ANYWAY. In the process of cleaning the drop targets the OEM bullseye patterns mostly came off. Fine by me because IMO that was a lazy design for a game about *trucking*, so I now had a reason to do something better. Same thing with the score reels: already yellowed, grungy, and missing parts of their numerals, I never liked the boring font Bally used (WMS and GTB are far superior IMO). And on an EM Night Rider, the reels practically BEG to look more like an odometer - what better way to claim KING OF THE ROAD than hammering 100,000 miles delivering the goods?

So I created the overlays below. The reels for players 3 & 4 use a font with more squared-off numerals more like a typical odometer's to me; compare to Bally OEM on P1 & P2. The targets now feature typical truck loads and a little Red vs. Blue thrown in for good measure. Hit the target to deliver the load (note the Bandit's bounty next to more precious cargo in the middle)... I kinda wish I'd labeled the barrel for hazardous waste tho, ha.

Anyway, just thought I'd share... if there's interest here I can see about making some available for purchase.

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And yes, I realize that dummy "zero" is still the original Bally one - it doesn't match but sorta looks like the oddball "tenths" reel on an odometer that way, so I'm keeping it

1 week later
#2 2 years ago

oof, guess nobody cares about EMs these days? Or maybe just my threads, ha. Anyway, here's the full suite of Odo-reels on all players.

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As of yesterday I got this game 100% functional: all balls, all players, all functions, all resets, all lights indexing, working, and resetting as they should. 3 months ago it was destined for the trash! Now to address the crack...

#6 2 years ago

Thanks for the comments all. The target decals are first-shot first-print efforts I applied while the targets were installed in the game. I need to increase the size slightly to better fill the face, and prevent snags as they drop - Incredibly, the thickness of the paper sometimes snags the metal frame, because the decals aren't long enough to extend past the frame while raised. I've accommodated that exact concern on WMS and GTB targets I designed... but here I re-used a template I made for Stern targets which apparently fit just a bit differently and didn't have this issue (so much for Sterns and Ballys being the "same"). So yes, a revision is planned, and I'll pull the mechs to square up the application this time. OCD placated!

They are very durable. I use printable adhesive vinyl, and always overlay with mylar before cutting them out. The glossy finish is slick and easy to clean too. Durability is well proven as I made custom "S O X" targets for a Big Hurt that went on location 4 years ago, and they STILL look great despite the rest of the game wearing heavily (it's popular!) over the years.

I could almost not worry about the BG crack, but every time I remove the BG it flexes and shifts at that faultline seam despite my mylar reinforcement. So it's a matter of when, not "if", it will finally separate toward disaster. The mostly-absent (corroded) lift bar certainly isn't helping this scenario. But I have a vision: if I try to replace the bar (I did buy a new one) to make the glass more stable & easier/safer to handle, the process of doing so will make the glass shatter, etc (those bars aren't easy to remove or replace even on *good* glass!)... so I fear I'm ultimately damned whatever I do, or don't :/

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