I've had BK and Pharaoh, liked them both, but like Solar Fire way better for whatever reason. I let the other two go and kept this one!
It belonged to a buddy of mine for a while and I'd been pestering him to sell it to me since the rest of his collection was mostly newer games (WPC+ and a few Sys11) - he finally relented, AFTER I moved over 900 miles away! No biggie; I arranged to head out there on another mission (picking up a car from an auction) and combined the trip.
When I got there to break the machine down and load it, we found out someone had crossthreaded a couple of the backbox bolts, and that in turn ripped the tangs out from the t-nuts and they were just spinning. With a very long trip ahead of me there was no way I was transporting it with the backbox in place, especially not with it flopping around with two bolts that couldn't be tightened (or removed.)
So we carefully took off the legs, sat it down on the floor, and pulled the playfields. I then crawled into the cabinet with the idea of grabbing the backside of the t-nuts with vise grips while he removed the bolts. Couldn't quite wrangle my arm up in there. While changing positions, I put my weight on one hand on the bottom of the cabinet, which just happened to find one of those pointy nail-style screws holding the speaker in. It went ALL THE WAY into my hand. I didn't yell or scream, just told my buddy, hey could you get a paper towel because I don't wanna bleed all over your floor...so yeah, after that we did manage to get the bolts out, backbox off, game wrapped and loaded.
Before he got the game someone had installed NOS playfields. Where they got them I have no idea! The plastics and backglass are pretty nice, too. Only real downside is the cabinet is kinda beat. Not terrible but not great. I spent a good amount of time repairing the boardset, which had already been sent out for "professional" repair by a known company; previous owner had plugged the playfield in wrong and zapped 'em. The repairs were substandard and I had to go over everything. Now the game works great other than it still seems to give me more switch-related problems than any other classic Williams title I've owned, and that includes Firepowers with the leafs assembled backwards! Right now it's sitting there with a ball in the left lock that it refuses to recognize; I'll deal with it later.
Some crummy size pics from forever ago...one of them with Barracora and Time Fantasy, two other classics I never shoulda let go!
Richard