Now that I have a few solenoids firing, and I've talked to a lot of people locally about it, I figure it's time to make a thread with some info about my build. First, I have to give major credit to ThatOneDude for guiding my through this process. Seriously, he held my hand every step of the way and let me build most of this at his wonderland of pinball parts garage. I entered into this with nearly no experience in building or even owning a pin, carpentry, electrical work or programming. And, after a year of working on this, no major injuries or expensive disasters have occurred.

So, a couple of years ago I got a playfield (not in great shape) for a Demolition Man and a few parts. I had been thinking it was a travesty that no Wu Tang pin existed and I wanted one. It's sad there isn't a hip hop pin yet, and what has better theme and imagery and huge library of music and great beats to be the base of a game. There's so much that can be brought in. But, I would need a layout that allowed for all nine original members to have a shot in the game, which Demo Man had.

So I spent the time until about a year ago collecting parts, ordering a P3-ROC system and VirtuaPin cabinet, setting up MPF, and writing down rules.

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Also thanks to drypaint for a lot of support and patching some inserts in the playfield I didn’t use and help with the photoshop work on the pf art. Here’s the cabinet being assembled and LEDs wired in serial. The playfield art I photoshopped using a lot of art from Wu Tang albums and comics. The back box has the p3 and a chromebox.

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With a playfield protector to keep the art fresh- it’s just a vinyl wrap from fastsigns. And an apron from sendcutsend. My Dad helped me cut an upper playfield- rather than a cryo claw, we will have an upper playfield bee hive. And the switch and driver boards mounted under the pf

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Made a bar of LEDs to go under the center ODB (formerly Ac-Mag) ramp and tested the string. Also, had to make ramp flaps since the repro ramps I got didn’t have them. After a lot of deliberation, I settled on an upper pf that has a scoop fire the ball toward a pop, and allow for a lot of chaos before the ball exits down one of the four paths.

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Since I was missing a few things like the cover for the car crash lane and the right ramp diverter, some guides had to be cut. The car crash lane will actually be Deck’s shot and I got a green caddy as referenced in The Movement and as close as I could get to the NYPD Caprice on the Uncontrolled Substance cover. Also the finishing on the Triumph hive. I frankensteined the diverter from a Rocky & Bullwinkle one and made the blade.

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And just this week we got power to the boards and playfield nothing blew up! I still have a lot to do, but provided it flips and I can at least get the base mode going, I hope to have the unfinished version at GSPF in Lodi in a couple weeks.

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Once again, huge thanks to ThatOneDude my fellow Pinball Hacker and all the supportive folks here in our East Bay community who have been helping me with this.

Lol, to be clear, this is about a year's worth of actual work. And what will be at GSPF in two weeks will be a very unfinished version, though most of what is left is either cosmetic or programming. Lots of code work is left to do, though the basic rule structure is there.

And today the playfield joined the cabinet! Also finished the wiring, at least for now. Now I have it home for testing and getting the code working and less than two weeks until Lodi.

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Not yet, but hopefully I can come up with something temporary this weekend for the show, or it may go without. Eventually I also want to make a stencil of the logo for the side of the cabinet, but that won't be this week.

I spent the weekend cutting up plastics. I still plan to have the game in Lodi next weekend, though it probably won’t be flipping, barring a miracle. There are some gremlins in the wiring and the code is still a long way off. But, the hardware is pretty much done and I’ll get to tell folks about a possible party in the not too distant future when it’s complete.

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Thanks to drypaint for the help I now have a translite! The machine will be at Lodi, though probably not flipping.

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I've thought of this. When I was first having the idea during the pandemic, Ghostface and Masta Killa were both on Cameo and I thought about contacting them there, but I didn't really have the rules thought out at that point. Then, the pandemic ended and Cameo kind of dried up. Right now, I have a lot of call-outs sampled from songs and ad-libs on the albums, but one day it would be really cool to have custom ones from one of them. Hell, it would be cool if any of them find out about it after it's finished and don't refer me to their lawyers.

At one point I think I read that RZA bought a pin after Forever came out, and I'd love to know which one.

This weekend I took WuTang to the Golden State Pinball Festival. Even though it wasn't flipping when I got there, it looked good and I had so many great conversations about the build and the future of the machine. I also picked glass there. But, the most important thing is that a single flipper flipped! It was while Mike and I were tinkering with the wires on the driver boards, and I have a good idea of what wiring needs to be debugged. Thanks to everyone who came and saw it and chatted about it.

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After taking a little break to recover from the fast pace I had working on this before Lodi, I’m back at it and determined to get things flipping. My progress this weekend was debugging the switch wiring, which I was mostly able to do by fixing one of the connectors on my daisy chain of SW boards on the playfield and correcting the dip switch on my cabinet SW. Now most of my switches including the cabinet buttons work. I still need to adjust a few and get the optos working, but I can now start and run a game on the physical machine, which I think will incentivize my development of code.

First official flips! Still a lot of debugging to do, but the flipper buttons, lower flippers and slings are working. It starts a game and keeps score too.

OK. I took a little break from it last year, but now I'm back at it. I have a lot of debugging to do in the wiring to get a few of the switches and coils working that aren't. I also had a dead bank on one of my PD-16s, but was able to move things around and hopefully the ones I have left work and I don't need to replace that whole board. I also have some problems with my optos I need to get sorted. After that it's mostly code and optional cosmetic things.

I haven't had as much free time this year as I did last spring. I'm not sure if I'll have it done for Golden State this year, but that would be nice. If not, my goal is to have it done some time in summer.

Since I'm realizing how long it's been since I posted any progress, I will share that the sound system is working. I have base mode background beats and tested a few sfx.