I played a Dragonfist at a friend's house a few years ago.. It was extremely fun and fast!
Enjoy!!1

You need to get this in the show. I'm a big Joe Joos fan and I gotta play this to see if it's another damn Stern game I need to find. I'm bringing Quicksilver....not finished with the restoration, but the playfield is done.

Yeah, I remember when you bought this thing...I was actually wondering if it was the same game or not. Man...lol.. that's been sitting a while.

Your rising to the challenge Luke....Once we turn it on the spinner better be tweeked, pop bumpers lightning fast, flippers perfect and the drop targets ..hairline trigger fast.....Now that is what Classic Stern's are all about...

Impressive young Skywalker...

Darth..

Can't wait to play this at TPF!!!

The classic stern line up so far. Here is where we stand. 20 plus!!! 14 titles (excluding a few titles) we have the best of the best in beautiful condition.

Iron Maiden - Full restoration - Cabinet, Cleared field
Stingray - Full restoration - Cabinet , Cleared field - Last years ribbon winner
Stargazer - Full restoration - Cabinet, Cleared field - Last years example
Stargazer - Restoration - Cleared playfield - Really sweet looking game.
Stargazer - Spectacular original game
Stargazer- Beautiful original
Seawitch - Spectacular example - NOS field, NOS backglass
Seawitch - Nice original - Plays over the top.
Dragonfist - Beautiful original
Nineball - Beautiful original - Great play
Quicksilver - Clear coated beautiful game.
Ali - Great player..The best playing LEE... I have ever played.
Gamatron - Steve Kirks original game. - Beautiful original kit.
Gamatorn whitewood - Steve Kirks white wood playfield of F2k or Gamatron ?
Flight 2000 - Beautiful original - Really great player
Flight 2000 ??
Magic ?
Lectronamo - Nice original
Meteor - Beautiful Original
Big Game - Beautiful Original - Super playfield. - Won a ribbon a few years back.

This will be the best single line up ever at the Texas Pinball Festival and I can say all of these games are gonna be working great. There is alot of complete restorations in this line up....Simply Amazing.

Everyone in the classic stern pinball community has really taken it to the next level.

I know it sounds odd, but using a fine steel wool grade Xtra Fine 000 or Finest 0000 on the flipper bats and the white backglass trim works like magic getting them white again. It removes the yellow and makes them white.

Your suggestion is great. I showed him that the other night. How to clean up yellow plastic to make white again. I use sandpaper (same concept) and work down to really fine grit and then polish.

I buy it from NAPA or an auto parts store. I'm sure a hardware store would also have it.

The home centers have the 0000 steel wool. The backbox GI issue is probably the connectors. I found these on Newark.com and they are Mate-N-Lok connectors made by TE Connectivity. The best thing is that you don't need to buy a thousand of each, only what you need. Buy the pins too. You need to snip the wires at the but of the connectors as they are almost impossible to extract, even with a .093 tool. LMK if you need part numbers. They have the 2,3,4.6,8,and 9 pos connectors and they are identical to the connectors used in these early Sterns.

Not restored, but decent original. Had a crapton of green vinyl paint all over the sides of it that my wife and I cleaned off to find the original cabinet art underneath in pretty good condition. See pics on my original thread. Got new rubbers and waxed up a few weeks ago, so it's pretty fast. Played a game on it the other day just to see what needed tweaking and had a ball get shot right down the middle of the PF from that top pop bumper...didn't even touch the center post and drained.

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/remove-odd-color-paint-and-leave-original-intact#post-1389769

9 pin connector in back box and 3 pin connector for service outlet. Sent PM with part numbers

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Loving this thread. I have two Dragonfists in my basement waiting for full restorations. Plus a third backglass...

Why Dragonfist? No idea. It just seems like they keep coming into my life.

Man, that just looks wierd to see a nice white clean connector on an old pin lol.

I would like to buy a Dragonfist if anyone has one for sale.....

Dragon Fist is a great game. I have heard it is the "poor" man's Stargazer but I completely disagree. I am so glad I did a full restoration on mine (Cabinet, Playfield, Backglass). The game is great and I recommend it for any classic stern fanatic. The ROM's Scott Charles made from the original software are also excellent. This fixes the long bonus count down between balls and speeds up the game. Not like it needs to be any faster but yea....That is what it does.

My son and his friends like it better then Stargazer. Myself I think it is a great compliment to it and is necessary for any classic stern collection.

Ahh but it's not an old game anymore, check it out...

http://southjerseypinball.com/gallery/v/lovef2k/F2K+2013/

These connectors were the missing link to having ALL of the connectors replaced with new pins and housings. I very happy to find these.

was

How many of the light sockets did you have to replace? I have only dived into one of mine and I have probably swapped half of them. Still have issues with most of the rest. Especially that nine bulb common ground part.

Nice work on the pf! Magic erasure?

Looking good Marcus. Keep going and thanks for going the extra effort to bring the fist. Last year when Bill and Scott brought Ali and THE FIST I sent this to them:

ali.jpg

That plastic crack in the corner happened lifting the playfield, didn't it? I hate when plastics are up against the side wood like that.

Whoa, wait a second. Where did that center drain post come from? That totally changes the difficulty of the game. The biggest threat in Dragonfist is a center drain coming down from the left orbit. That will never happen with a center post.

The gap between that post and the tip of the flipper is barely bigger than the ball!

Heh. That is someone's mod to make the game WAY EASIER. If you leave it like that someone good at the old Sterns will roll the game multiple times. I suppose you could leave it and make the tilt super sensitive, though. Just sensitive enough that the slingshots don't tilt but anything more will.

Not really. I have a post on mine and it is extremely hard with it. So I think they came with both. I noticed Scott Charles had a post on his.

Watch the drain at 1:13 of that video. The gap between the center post and the flipper is so small all someone has to do is nudge the game every time a center drain is a threat and they'll reduce that drain from the majority to single digit percentage. That's like an eighth of an inch clearance on either side. You might be able to tap pass on that game without using the flipper.

Yea I get your point. I know you can't roll pass like on Nineball and Meteor. Nineball you can let roll down and it goes to the other side. On DF the post is much farther back so it hits the back of the flipper. Tried that. Its not reduced to single percentage even with a loose tilt. The game is extremely difficult and I am a fairly good player. I am going to pull the glass and look at the clearance though. My post is all the way back on the star blade. It has to be straight down the middle to get anything on my game.

I heard the same thing about Galaxy; put in the 7 digit mod and took it to the festival and no one got over 1 million. I think Brian Bannon had the high of like 600k.

But....Like I tell everyone; if you are in North texas come play it.

Chad, I just looked at your collection. You still have your game ? I am assuming it did not come with a post?

What sort of scores you get on yours and the tilt of the playfield and tilt settings ?

I have been in debate on the phone with a few other classic stern collectors on this.

I have two of them, actually, and neither has a hole for the post.

My (14 year old) son and I are both B division level players and on a good night we'll average around 450k. I think my high is about 850k. Most of my drains come from helplessly watching the ball come down the left orbit and straight down the middle. Put a post in there and that would pretty much never happen because with a moderate tilt you can nudge that post to the right far enough to catch nearly all of those orbit drains.

Can anyone actually confirm that some came from the factory this way and they are not user mods?

Yea, I don't think we will ever know. It is probably some where made with and without because your scores are low compared to mine. My current high score is 3.2 million which is typical of Classic Stern's of that vintage. Quicksilver, Seawitch, Nineball when set on conservative. Seems like they targeted 3 million and above as high scores. Outside of Stargazer with the poor rule set. 09 rules are much better that Oliver made with my input.

So without a post I think mine would make me cry. But the game is still really difficult even with it. I find it hard to believe 4 games that I know of would have this "Mod". With your 2 and the one on IPDB that makes 3 so 50% that don't. I have Scott Charles Rom's in my game. I don't think the scoring is different just the bonus count time.

So it was probably so difficult they added a post later; but still did not sell many of them and finally shut the door on pinball. How do you like the game ? What sort of shape are your examples ? Do any of them have a good backglass.?

Nice job skywalker.....

Oh I will test it! Yes I WILL.

We like the game quite a bit. Given it's place in history as the last real Classic Stern, its low production numbers and the super low market value, we figured it's a really good one to target as our entry into deep game restoration. I actually have three backglasses. One is really nice and the other two I'd call C+. They can be touched up but have seen better days. I'm hoping as part of the process to get a really good scan of the nice one and send it up to John Greatwich for his direct ink work. Maybe the playfield too if I can find a way to get it scanned. And I'm probably going to make a couple of plastic sets once I get into it because the same couple of plastics is broken on every Dragonfist I've seen.

I'd love to play one with a post at some point. My biggest challenge in this game is that SDTM from the left orbit... take that away and it would almost feel like a totally different game.