That's Why it's Called Wipe Out

The Pinball Projects team had a unique challenge: a local sandwich deli has a Gottlieb Wipe Out that plays well, but has some parts missing, has a short in the sound (which makes it wildly annoying) and is super, mega, unbelievably, out of control dirty! The owner let us take the machine to the garage for repairs. What a trusting soul...

We fixed the machine and learned a lot in the process. The story, however, flows along the dirt-laden paths of the machine's loops, ramps, and super-cool slalom gimick. We actually thought the dirt on the slalom was embedded until we took the Novus 2 to it.

Obviously, we played the game extensively before we cleaned it. It was fun, had some hard shots, and flowed pretty well. Hours of rag work ensued as we pulled up the intricate levels of ramps and wire tracks up and scrubed the playfield and ramp parts. Then we took to the Turtle Wax and shined that machine like a hundred-thousand dollar sports car.

And it worked! One game into our newly cleaned machine and we discovered just why it wasn't as popular a machine as it should have been. The game screamed silver-flaming, quarter-munching death as the ball whirrled around corners, shot around turns backwards, and flew up parts of the game we didn't know were available!

If that isn't a lesson learned in basic machine matainance, then I can't teach you a thing. We couldn't give the machine back to its owner fast enough.

So fast, in fact, that we left a screw out. We'll put it in when we get a chance, I swear...