For those of you like me (always pinching pennies!), be careful about using cheap/bargain brand batteries in your machines! I powered up my Stern Magic to play this afternoon, to discover the batteries died. I figured since I was replacing those, that I might as well replace my other games too (been meaning too for awhile anyways). I discovered this in my Meteor.
These particular batteries were maybe all of one year old!
Also, this should serve as a good reminder to everyone why you want to keep your batteries off the board. Luckily, the worst that would have happened here is ruining a $2 battery holder. I'd hate to see this on someone's WPC CPU board, or something pricey like that!
So remember my fellow thrifty pinheads, spend a little extra on decent batteries