It will go into attract without balls, after the ball walker cycles 7 times.

This is important to note for troubleshooting with the playfield raised. You don't want balls installed just for them to be ejected and fly out / down during tests. So you can remove the balls, but you have to wait for the ball search / walker cycle. Or you can shim the outhole switches closed instead

In the club after rescuing a completely dead example that was about to be parted out. Nothing worked! But it's playing nicely now, pending a few debugs and dialins.

The targets were of course mismatched, so I made my own decals. Went with custom, but tasteful, numerals inspired by real countdown clocks and Stern's logo of the day.

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Redid spinner with decals from Marco. Almost made my own of those too, but wanted to compare quality and I was pleasantly surprised.

Originally that spinner has the diamond pattern and while it wasn't in bad shape, I found it uninspired and also too familiar from Old Chicago.

So I got my F2K mostly dialed in and I have to say... of all the machines in my collection, and hundreds more I've played, I'm really intrigued by how unpredictably fast and backspin-inducing this game is. The playfield is far from perfect, but I have the Beehive overlay installed. Even so, it's faster than any other widebody I've played. The ridiculous backspin on the ball is as frustrating as it is fascinating: I can watch it cross from the pop area toward the left flipper return area, bounce favoring the inlanes, land on the post between then, and spin "backwards" toward the "B" or the outlane. Same behavior for the opposite direction of travel (rebound off drops to the right return area)...

And maybe it's how I have my flippers set, but trying to trap the ball is almost impossible! I have never played another game where the geometry and timing to aim a shot is so sensitive to the variable of ball speed. I rarely manage a chance to trap and set my shots to the walker, and trying to find the consistent sweet spot on the fly is so varied and frustrating. I severely underestimated how fast and challenging this game could be. Are they all like this, or is there something... different about mine? I mean I'm no stranger to fast, flowy, arrgh-inducing games, but there's something weird about this one I can't put my finger on.