Apparently I have an extra special Le. Twice this morning the ball has ridden on TOP of the left ramp it falls off just at the creature claws plastic.

Lucky

Curious if any of the classic owners would be interested in something like this. I ran the “classic” text as a test cut, but can do any word. Showing the “Bally” as an example of what it looks like on the machine. Obviously I can’t sell that wording or “Williams” as I don’t have the rights, but wanted to see if there was interest out there before going making any more.

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I got sick and tired of sifting through tons of poorly marked key chains and decided to make my arcade life easier. Monster Bash

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Where do most of you have the bubble set?
When I got ours in I set it at the halfway mark and every game someone was having the ball fly off the right ramp where the wire frame has that huge gap on the right. I called the distro asking where it was set when we test played it because we didn't have this happen once, and they said they set their show model CGCs with the top of the bubble touching the top of the line. So I raised the pitch and have the bubble set like this and we're not having the ball fly off anymore, however I keep getting comments about how fast the game is, maybe too fast for a lot of people.

MB is brutally fast when angled correctly, and not just ball speed, you want a fast quick game? MB is your machine... with Monsters of Rock sized outlanes, Scoops that like to SDTM drains and Dracula's feet all make MB a bitch to play. But the fun of the Monster Bash and Monsters of Rock wizard modes, plus the Universal Monster theme make this one great Halloween themed machine. It is a favorite of everyone who comes by to play. And who has ever walked away from one not smiling after simply getting to the Monster Bash rock concert mode intro?

I normally set machines to the recommended 6.5 degrees. However, I found that increasing my MBr to 7.0 degrees made this game play better. I got far less cheap drains off of drac's feet, and it just felt better in general.

Also, the increased incline reduces ball hang ups in the entrance to the left ramp on a weak shot. And when it does hang up now (which is rare), I can simply shake it loose without having to remove the glass anymore.

Fortunately, my scoop rarely sends the ball STDM, and usually allows for a nice dead-flip bounce over to the right flipper.

Thanks for the replies. I've explained to several people at this point that the fan layout of MB can make it easier for some novelists to make shots including the orbits that zip around and feel fast to them, in addition to the pitch setting. I've also noted that the faster speed can reduce some floaters to the outlanes. Our scoop varies in the amount of speed it shoots the ball out but fortunately never sends it sdtm. It was just odd that placing the bubble in the middle made so many right ramp balls fly out of the gap in the wireframe, and leveling was checked numerous times both high and low to make sure it was level, only the pitch being increased fixed it.

The wireframe of the right ramp can be adjusted by bending it slightly. I had to actually open mine up a bit because it was causing ramp shot rejections and would also sometimes get stuck. It might be that yours is just too open and closing it up a little would be good. YMMV.

hey, just grabbed an se on saturday; my first MB ever. noticed there's no ball save at start. is that normal?

Please check your settings in the game. In the manual page 1-39

A.2 01 Ball Save

A.2 02 Ball Save Time

LTG : )

Just leave it off for the first day or two, then turn it on... and you will see why most ops turned it on almost immediately... but don't get greedy... turn on the minimum amount of time... too long a ball saver makes getting Frank stupidly easy, and mainly the ball saver is just a way of fighting Drac drains from the right orbit without cutting off his feet.

yeah, i was more interested in knowing what the default setting is. looks like default is off. i assume it's the same on the original?

yes factory resetting restores it to "off"

Is there some way to adjust the ball save time on a missed Phantom shot?

Mine is enabled, but I have found that the ball will often bounce around the drain area a bit before it drops in, causing the ball not to be returned. If the ball happens to fall in the drain immediately, then it will return the ball (but this is rare).

It's bad enough when the Phantom shot whiffs on a fast inlane ball, but it's worse when the ball save fails on it too.

No is the simple answer... I think it has to be a drain shot with a missed hall effect sensor trip... in other words, if the ball rolls off the flipper without detecting a hall effect event and the next switch hit is a trough switch, this is when it does the ball save on phantom flip.

Yes, I know, but not only does it have to be the trough switch it hits next...it has to hit it within like 1 second. Often on mine, when the phantom shot fails, that 1 second ball save has expired by the time the trough switch is actually hit.

You can disable Phantom Flip in settings.

But if I did that, then I would have to blame myself for all the bricks and accidental frank starts instead of just most of them.

Yes, but that sort of defeats the whole point. The problem is that the Phantom Flip mechanism (while a good idea) just isn't good enough to rely on. Maybe if they had made it only attempt to make the bride ramp shots, then it could have become smart enough to make those shots reliably. Instead, I often go out of my way to avoid allowing the Phantom Flip to trigger.

While I love MBr for the most part, there are a few things on it that could have been done much better - and Phantom Flip is certainly one of them.

That was true of the original and I don't believe they can change the Williams end of things.

LTG : )

I think it actually adds something to the game in that you KNOW FOR A FACT that phantom flip is NOT going to hit the shot you NEED, but hit the shot that messes up your strategy the most and so you avoid it at all times. It adds a layer of "Risk-reward" to the game in that if you risk letting it trigger and shoot a shot, you are more than likely NOT going to enjoy the outcome, BUT it just might hit a shot that has been flumoxing you for the entire game, in a sort of desperate attempt to get something going on a really bad game/ball. And of course there is always the popular "Just start Frank" mindset where you have flailed for so long, you just want it to start Frank and get on with your game and so you just stop caring and let it trip when it wants to.

Yes, the items I was referring to are true of the original as well. I wasn't trying to put any sort of blame on CGC for this.

I do wonder though, that if CGC actually did "buy" the rights to the Williams stuff (rather than just licensing them), I would think that they could make various improvements/changes to their remakes. For example, they should be able to add the spinning tiger saw on TOM.

I don't think the rights can be bought.

Way back when Williams wanted to sell the pinball division. Anything that was used or could be used, in slot machines. Wouldn't go with. Which would include their source code and a lot of the pinball software.

LTG : )

I have no real problem for the shot it TRIES to make. My problem is that it usually misses the shot it tries for. All too often, it simply hits one of the stand-up targets and then drains. And that doesn't count the times that it whiffs the shot completely and drains.

My problem is I never know what shot it is going to try except I know if Frank is qualified it always chooses Frank. So the ONLY real time I let Phantom flip try the shot is when I got Bride (and any other monster I can happen to get started) running, then I will let Lyman try and take the shot... and if YOU are good at hitting Frank yourself, Lyman seems to always be able to start Frank.

Well, if Phantom Flip could shoot like Lyman does that would really be something...

I competed against Lyman several times in the early PAPA days (before he worked for Williams), and it was fascinating. He would play in his socks, strangely balanced with one foot on top of the other, and then shifting his hips back and forth.

What was amazing though, was that he would take a shot, hit what he wanted, and have the ball return right back to the flipper - over and over again - for like 20 minutes. The ball was very rarely not in his complete control. It looked like he had the ability to move the ball with his mind (and was only pretending to use the flippers to shoot the ball). It was quite surreal.

It was the first time that I saw someone play and thought "I just can't compete with that guy." There were other "great players" back then (like Dave Hegge, Rick Stetta, and Roger Sharpe), but I knew that I had at least a chance to beat any of them. But Lyman was just in another league.

They added the new bigger/color monitor and created new graphics on it, so I don’t understand why they couldn’t have at least provided the option to use either 3 or 10 letters for the high score entries.

The color and new graphics works the same way as the ColorDMDs do - it detects that the "scene" is to be shown, and it shows it. But it works on "top" of the existing code, in between the CPU and the DMD signals. No code change involved. Even something simple like adding a new way to enter high scores would require getting access to the original (likely lost) source code and modifying it. Almost no chance of that happening

Hmmmm, I heard there were new graphic scenes/illustrations created to add to the newer screen, but maybe that’s inaccurate.

Rick is a good friend of my brother and I... The first time I met Lyman and Rick was Wednesday night at Pin Expo 92, November 11th, 1992 at the Chicago Ohare Ramada's "Arcade room", a little coin-op mini arcade that had a couple of video games and two pinball machines provided for guest entertainment. The exhibit hall was not open (but full of pinball machines) and there was not a single pinball machine to be played that night except those two machines in the guest arcade. I can remember one was DE TMNT because that was the one we were playing. It was Me, Rick, Lyman, and another unknown player playing 4 player games and we played for like 2 hours straight, spending personally only a couple bucks worth of quarters. That kind of tells the story on how long our game times were. At the time (this was my first pin expo) I had NO IDEA who these people were, we all just wanted to play some pinball. Rick and Lyman spent all of maybe a buck apiece, they were hitting free games left and right, and I was holding my own but not on score... I had the sequnce to light the special down pat and I could easily score a free game doing that just about every game we played minus the few games where I failed to knock. The forth guy (who was just a hotel guest, not there for the expo) was the guy we all felt sorry for. This dude was a casual player and didn't have the chops to keep up, he was pouring quarters into the machine at every game. I was no where near as good as these guys were, Rick could just get going, and going, like the energizer bunny. Lyman, however, was brutal. He would start multiball, cup 2 balls and then just destroy you with that third ball... unrelenting. Rick kept getting on my case about the fact I could complete the special sequence and score my free game every time, but my scores would all suck. I said, listen if the objective is to have fun and not pay for it, I felt I was doing my job right nicely, score be damned. We usually go and visit Rick at CAX but sadly not this year

there's only a dots mode for the bigger screen, right? unlike a colordmd which can blend them together.

No, you're correct. That process is like this: show the (old) Frankenstein "He's alive" sequence. QUICK swap in the new HD graphics!

The code is still sending the commands to show the graphics, it's just that the board is intercepting the actual graphics that get shown, and replacing them on the fly with the new HD graphics. You can't do that with a score table or anything that's interactive.

Ahhso gotcha, that makes sense thanks for clarifying.
Well everyone’s loving it at my little tavern, first time for us to have a machine there and it’s already got its groupies! The lighting, audio, and screen upgrades just make the machine feel so amazing. Definitely makes me want to get their AFMr SE one day too

No doubt!!

howdy yall, been lurkin a while, and now that ive had my MBRCE for a few weeks, ive got a few questions i couldn't find answers to by searchin this thread. So, time to make an account i guess lol

- i can't seem to be able to get this thing to remember the date/time properly. or i should say, if i enter a date and time, and turn the machine off, next time i turn it on it's got the time i turned it OFF at, rather than the current date/time. is it not supposed to have a realtime clock while its powered off? i'm only turning it off, not unplugging it. i tried swapping out the CR2032 coin cell battery in the back box in case that was the culprit but still no dice. figured id ask here before I hit up support/warranty, if its supposed to work like i expect it to

- the spotlight that points at Frank (attached to the back of the creature feature lights/sign) seems to never turn on? not sure if its attached to a special mode or if its just broken. ive gotten up to Monster Bash (but not Monsters of Rock) and have still never seen it flash. curious what the 'correct' behavior for it is. its sorta dark up in that section of the playfield?

- re: dark upper playfield, that's exacerbated by the glare from the backbox, even at its lowest brightness setting. is there some sort of antiglare idea/solution for the backbox? outside of buying a wholeass piece of invisiglass i mean (oddly enough, i basically get no glare from the dmd, just the backbox)

- is there a reason these four brightass GI leds next to the launcher need to be pointing in my face, or can i cover the tops of them or something? cuz good lord they are bright

thx all

Put a bulb condom on them.

Try Tests - All Lamps - see if it lights then. If not check if bulb is bad, and connector below playfield is plugged in.

Please try cleaning new battery and holder.

LTG : )

tried another known good battery and the holder is clean, still no dice. im not sure if that battery even has anything to do with it tho, just tried it out since it was the only battery i saw lol

all lamps+flashers test is giving me nothing on that spotlight, and its plugged in under the board and on the back of the post, so i guess i need to hunt down a bulb for that one

ok followup dumb question...how the hell does this led come out of this spotlight??? lol

https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/DGG-01

the dmd is fine, its the whole backbox/translite thats super glarey

Page 1-13 in the manual. You can adjust it in the CGC menu.

LTG : )

i am working on new stainless steel speaker grills for MBR wit XL display

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I have an LE on the way and I really like the attached classic Williams logo instead of the CGC logo. Where can I find one of these? Thanks

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Download and install what you like. It's not plastic like the Williams one, it's a 320x80 screen and you can place any .bmp file there you like.

Try this thread...

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/need-a-high-quality-image-file-of-the-williams-logo

Total newbie here... The left flipper rubber snapped on my MBr SE. What size/type of rubber do I need to order to replace it? And can I just replace the broken one, or should I replace both at the same time? Thanks for the help.

https://www.pinballlife.com/black-flipper-rubber.html

I'd replace the broken one. I'd replace the other if worn. I'd order a few spares.

LTG : )

Just placed the order. Thanks!