Twilight Zone owner for about 12 years now. I'd like to point out one thing about the "upgraded" replacement slot machine scoops. They are wider than the originals, at least, for my early production game. I have had nothing but trouble with my replacement scoop giving me inconsistent ball delivery compared to the old scoop. Right now it is about 1 of 20 balls SDTM, with the rest hitting the right flipper anywhere from the center to the tip.

I'm actually getting rid of that scoop and going back to a NOS original style, this time I'll reinforce the perimeter with JB Quik before I install it. My old scoop lasted more than 10 years with that fix, until I tried to "adjust it" and cracked the JB Quik.

No mods on my game aside from full LEDs with LED OCD and GI OCD. I like my games to look like new, as close to factory original as possible.

_{Post edited by neurokinetik: added obligatory pics}

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That is the bottom guide to the rocket kicker. It needs to go on top of the two rubber posts to aim the kicker into the hitchhiker lane.

I had to grind that part down too. It stuck out well past the greed targets, and also was too far forward to fit properly with my reinforced slot greed target. I'll take measurements when I get my replacement (because I don't feel like taking the game apart twice right now) but the width of the scoop is probably 1/16" wider on the replacement than the original.

Got my replacement slot scoop today, and took some measurements:

NOS old style slot scoop: 1.08"
NOS new style slot scoop (Mantis?): 1.19"

Pic shows the new style scoop with the caliper still set at the measurement from the old scoop. There is almost 1/8" side-to-side for the ball in the new scoop, compared to around 1/16" in the original style.

Also noticeable is the way they are constructed. The new style scoop has the sides sitting outside of the center section, where on the old scoop, those sides are made to overlap the center a bit. This seems to be where the big width discrepancy is coming from.

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Just had an amusing issue, and the fix:

A couple of nights ago, was playing a game, and locked my first ball. Game says "watch for kickout", then POWERBALL. However, no ball appears, and the powerball is actually visible in the gumball machine. So it kicks off a ball search, then seemingly gives up and auto-fires one from the trough. Game continued normally after that, so I just filed it away to look at later.

Another game tonight, I started multiball, but that multiball only had two balls kick out. Hmmm. Time to investigate.

First place I looked was at all the trough switches, then all the lock switches. Also cleaned the lock optos while I was at it. No issues were noted with any of the switches. So I did an "empty balls" operation from the menu just to see if I hadn't somehow had a ball gone missing somewhere.

That was where the problem became apparent. The game would only kick one ball out of the trough, even though there were three in there. Turns out that the ball popper mechanism itself was gummed up and not returning to rest position when it kicked (at least, not right away... eventually it would get there).

So, it was an easy fix. Pop out the mechanism and thoroughly clean and degrease it. No further issues, and no parts needed replacing. Not sure how it ended up with grease in there, but at any rate, it is all good now.

Is the target the one from Pinball Resource, or from somewhere else? I've had the reinforced clock and slot greed targets in my game for more than 10 years, and neither one of them have bent.

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I've had my TZ for so long that it just does not get the play that it used to. Looked at my audits the other day, and only 39 plays since March of this year when I installed the NVRAM.

But I finally got sick of seeing the default high scores on there yesterday and decided to do something about it. I did eventually get back on the board, but during that one good game, I had not one, but two separate multiballs with the powerball in play (obviously failed to get Powerball Mania going). Cashed in double jackpots both times, of 160M and 130M. Highest I've ever personally done.

The powerball aspect during multiball is just one of many things that makes this the best game ever. Lots of games have multiball, but none say "oh, you have to make the jackpot shot with just this one particular ball to double it". Genius.