I recently caught the pinball bug, and purchased a 1986 Gottlieb Genesis, followed quickly by a 1990 Gottlieb Silver Slugger. I paid almost as much as the machine to have Genesis partially shopped, so before I did the same for silver slugger I joined up here to try to increase my skill set and knowledge base. Please forgive my pinball ignorance but every great pinhead started out right where I am now. I tried to upload a video, but it gave me the common upload id error. Basically, when hitting the ball through either home run spinner when lit and landing in the hole, the display reads mystery and starts counting down from 99 on the top line. The bottom line usually scrolls through the list of bonuses, special, instant multiball, etc. Seemingly at random, but given the nature of electronics and logic random is a particularly impossible word, the top line display will read mystery, count down from 99, but the bottom line will largely be blank, save for the occasional single bonus item scrolling across the display. Usually nothing happens until the top display counts down to the high 30's, then the ball is released and play continues. I am hoping that given my limited knowledge and rather kindergarten description of the problem, someone who has already seen this before can recommend a fix. I doubt I have the skills yet to attempt a fix, but it may save me some money in telling a pinball repair pro where to look.

Thank you for reading,
Eric

I have found that a good cleaning of the contacts helps for a while, but I have resigned myself that a new varitarget is probably in my future

I'm terribly sorry. I had two topics on this game that had never received a reply. I did the ground mod on this game and since I did that, I can't remember the mystery problem happening. The vari target issue is a delay between hitting the target and it registering. Cleaning the contacts helped with that. I guess my brain saw such an old topic and my fingers replied before my brain could chime in.

It is much better without that happening. I have a background working with tools, and the ground mod took me about 15 minutes.