San Ramon, CA
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Quoted from prl867:Although I do not doubt the voracity of your post, I can say with full certainty that the request to view the vaccine card is the option of the proprietor,
Can you comment on if the PHOF will accept a photo of a vaccination card? I will be there vacationing starting May 28, and would like to leave my vaccination card at home. I have a photo of it on my phone. Is that enough for entry to the PHOF, and not have to wear a mask while I'm there? Thanks!
1 week later
About 80 people today at the PHoF around 3pm.
Love all the oddball em stuff. How ‘bout this photo? OXO as a 2-player game. According to Tim’s hand-written note on the machine, it was a prototype that was not produced, and a Williams employee got to take it home.
A little over 100 people in the building at 2pm on a Wednesday afternoon. Wow, pretty amazing for a Wednesday - just wait until this place gets popular!
About 115 machines turned off. Many more machines on and playable, looks like they’re doing a great job ramping up.
My favorite this trip: United Deluxe 5th Inning shuffle game. You get 3 shots with the puck per inning, and scoring a run increases in value each inning. Plus, love that the puck return is a player-operated conveyor belt, inside the game.
BDEAEC72-6463-46E8-9107-848AD5E5B74B (resized).jpegLove the Star Jet. Pretty intricate mechanics for an em game. The ball count stepper knows not to advance when plunging a new ball due to the previous ball being caught and held in the top kick-out hole. And then the balls get released for multi-ball play - maybe one ball, maybe both - and again, when the now-released balls drain, the ball count stepper knows not to advance. Pretty good game logic, whoever set up the circuits.
I know many collectors like this game for the artwork package, which I agree is wonderful, but I'm sold on the gameplay. It's fun to have multi-ball on an em, especially when the player has the option to release one ball at time, or both, depending on which target is hit.
I guess Tim & crew were tired of answering questions about what to do when the ball is trapped in one of the top two kick-outs, so hand-written instructions (in a star-burst cut-out) were placed on the playfield glass next to the trap holes.
Some of the women on the backglass also look identical. Are they meant to be clones, or was it 5pm Friday and the artist wanted to finish before they went home for the weekend? To me, all the red heads look like the other red heads, and the blondes look alike. Yet only 1 blonde dude and 1 red head dude. Hmmmmmm.
At the risk of being labeled a little odd by the pinball community (ha! - wouldn't that be ironic?), I'll admit I don't know why I like this game as much as I do. I used to own a really nice example of it, and it's one of the few I regret selling. I appreciate that the PHoF keeps this one in great shape - all the pool balls light up, flippers work, scores correctly, etc. It's like a mystery to figure out where to shoot to un-light that last pool ball, and then guess where the pinball is going to appear from when it comes out down by the flippers.
Quoted from PismoArcade:When I was a kid, this was one of my favorites, too. I also play it everytime I'm at PHOF.
Weirdo.
OK, these are the last photos from my recent trip. Tim's wry humor is on display with "Ghetto Trip" info card, but also has some extra interesting info about the "butterfly bumper". A lot of the info cards on the games have this type of informational nuggets that I appreciate, probably in large part due to Tim's years spent as an operator actually purchasing these games for use. He's got the "inside info" about the manufacturers that he shares on these cards. They're worth a read.
By the way, Tim, Beth and crew were great to me while I was there. Approachable, helpful, focused on their work. Saw numerous techs caring for the games the 2 times I stopped by. Thankful this place is there, and grateful to all those that share and maintain this collection of games.
Bumper (resized).jpeg 3 weeks later
Quoted from Bandit78:Survey companies carry insurance for exactly this.
If the survey company is sizable, and carries $5 million insurance, problem not solved, but at least funded. If survey company is small, and carries $1 million errors and omissions insurance, then there might be trouble in fully funding the solution to the problem. If the PHoF hired a general contractor to run the build, and the surveyor was a sub to the GC, that would be even better. Then both company's insurance would be in play.
5 months later
Spent the last 2 days in Vegas, and went to the PHOF both days. Was also there in June, just after they opened. I'll post some photos over the coming days, but here's my thoughts for this visit compared to last:
THE GOOD: Combined with the tireless efforts from the PHOF staff, I think the visit from the Banning crew made a significant difference. For the solid state machines, WAY more were on and playable than June. Seemed like the vast majority of newer games were lit up and ready for quarters. And not to take this for granted, but the variety of games to play is fantastic. Godzilla to Pinball Circus to Asteroid Annie. It's all there.
THE BAD: Opposite for the EM games. I'd say LESS were on and playable then when I was there in June. And a good number of unique games that were on the floor in June, and not playable, continue to sit there - dark.
THE HEROIC: Tim and company. Both days I was there, the number of people in the building exceeded 150. Think about that. 150(+) patrons banging on interactive machines. How many problems do you think the staff deals with on a daily basis, and I'm not just talking about the machines? What about the few oddball folks that come in with their own bag of problems, and through their own weirdness, make problems at the PHOF?
For example, I'm leaving on the second day, walk outside, and it smells like petroleum out in the parking lot. There's two guys standing next to a car, half-way in a front parking spot, with a trail of liquid behind them all through the drive aisle. Turns out their fuel tank was leaking. Huh?
What happens next? Out the front doors come Tim and another volunteer. They talk to the 2 dudes, figure out what happened, and off Tim and the other guy go to clean up the mess. I had just seen Tim getting the em pitch-n-bat, Line Drive, going, and now he's out in the parking lot taking care of some goofball's car issue, that impacted the new construction. Yikes! I bet he has to deal with something like that almost every day.
Add to that the daily grind of fixing games, collecting quarters out of hundreds of machines, cleaning the restrooms, staffing the place with volunteers, keeping up with City code / Fire Department inspection requirements, COVID issues, being open for 12 hours every day, site and game security, finishing out the build (like the new sign install), etc., etc. It's a lot. And throw on top of that the issue with the building being built partly on the neighbors property. I asked, and I guess that's official, it happened - the surveyor made a mistake. Seriously, how does Tim get any sleep? The effort level to keep this operation going is off the charts, in my opinion, and I tip my cap to Tim, Beth and all those that, daily, take on the challenge to make it happen. Well done. Though it does not add much to the overall scheme of things, I'll say out loud that I appreciate their efforts. The PHOF is a jewel in the crown of the pinball community.
If you're visiting Vegas and would like to stay near the PHOF, here's 2 options. For big resorts, Mandalay Bay is 3 blocks away, takes under 10 minutes to walk from door to door. For those of you that don't want to walk, there's an Uber pick-up location at Mandalay, and it's generally around $12 at non-peak Uber times to get a ride from there to the PHOF. Also, there's a McDonalds and a gas station grocery store along the walking route, if you want to buy snacks for less than the high-flying resort prices.
If you want to stay even closer, there's an old-school motel called the Diamond Inn only 1 block away. And for convenience, there's a wedding chapel right next door, in case you need that! Can't speak to the quality of the motel, but the Mandalay Bay is really good. Plus it has that wave pool and beach area, which is unique to the other resorts in town.
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Played this unique game for about 10 minutes, and in that time, I think I saw all it had to show me. Tim's comments on the info card are pretty spot-on accurate. It IS a weird game. Made, no doubt, to capitalize on the video arcade craze at the time. The designer simplified the game by having the layout dictate the shots, so I think it takes away a lot of the fun of pinball - the randomness of where to shoot the ball next. On this table, it's pretty much either shoot the left curve or the right curve, or up the middle to prevent the monsters from coming down to get you. At least that part kind of matches the video game. The flippers at the bottom are an oddity, too. The bottom right flipper is controlled by the left flipper switch, so that takes some getting used to.
Didn't seem to me like the start button was in such an odd place on this one, so don't know why the nubes can't seem to find it. But clearly, they don't, as evidenced by the 10 credits on the game when I found it. Thus the big pink star sign on the backglass reminding players to push the start button.
I also don't get how the "Ball in Play" is at 20, or why you'd even have a double-digit display for that, but whatever.
Pretty great that the PHOF often has the replay version and the add-a-ball version of em games next to each other, so players can compare. Cool little detail on the Subway info card, that I would not have noticed otherwise. Also, Porange not so impressed with my last game on Subway.
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My favorite games in this hobby are the em arcades. PHOF has a pretty incredible collection of some of the best titles. This trip, the Grand Prize big ball bowler, United's 5th Inning, Funland gun game, Sidewalk Engineer Crane, Hi-Score Pool and a few pitch-n-bats were all working. My previous trip, Genco 2-Player basketball, Pop-Up, All-Star Bowler, Texas Ranger Gatling Gun and The Safe were working, but were unfortunately down this time around.
There's some pretty amazing titles on the floor, awaiting repairs. Lots of games at the PHOF, gotta tackle 'em one at a time, but I'll admit I'm looking forward to the chance to play these in the future:
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Every time I go to the PHOF, seems like there's always one machine that stands out to me. Something I haven't seen before, or a game I haven't spent any time playing, that just ends up being fascinating. Last trip it was the United's 5th Inning shuffle. This trip, it was this playmatic Speakeasy. Been in the hobby almost 20 years, thought I was aware of most of the em pinballs out there, but had never heard of this one. What a great game!
It's got kind of a weird plastic ethos to the playfield, but really, in a good way. It had a tactile feeling unlike any other pin table I've tried. The kick-out holes adjust the slot machine reels in the backglass. The holes are not easy to hit, but not impossibly challenging, either.
The key feature to me was that little target tunnel in the middle of the game. The stand-up targets next to it adjust the bonus and other stuff. The left side of that center playfield feature, there's no target. You have to hit the ball through the opening, and that's not easy to do. What a cool change of pace!
I had a lot of fun playing this game. If the cash box level was higher than normal in this game last week, that was me.
8 months later
Tim and crew at the PHOF:
Congratulations on getting through the lawsuit. As if there's not enough stress in managing an all-volunteer operation that is trying to keep alive 40-70(+)-year-old equipment, with the rude, entitled general public shoving 1,000s of quarters in them each and every day, a lawsuit can be draining to deal with. For most of us, we don't know how the court system operates, and reading legal filing after legal filing can be brain-numbing. Plus the snails pace of the progress, and the cost of the lawyers is enough to make anyone's blood pressure rise. So well done, getting to the finish line.
Having dealt with several property / construction lawsuits in my career, I can appreciate the relief that is felt once the case is settled, especially with a reasonable conclusion. About 15 years or so ago here in California, I started to see engineering contracts that included a clause where the liability of the engineer was limited on the project to the fee they received for the professional services. Would you mind answering if the contract with the civil engineer, or their surveyor subcontractor, included this phrase? Was that a part of the contention with the surveyor? What argument did the surveyor / civil engineer make to try to relieve themselves of any financial liability associated with the property line error?
Glad to hear it's over, and I'd like to learn from your experience if you could shed some light on the details. Thanks!
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