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    Brisbane Pinball Adventures

    1up Arcade Brisbane Events Sunshine Coast Pinball
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    Having a blast at Sunshine Coast Pinball!


    It's been a while since I have done a good road trip! Last weekend Fiona and I headed up to Brisbane to attend a friend's wedding. We decided to drive up to give my new-to-me van a good road test. The advantage of this was that we could drive wherever we wanted to in and around Brisbane as well. I have read a lot about the pinball and arcade scene in Brisbane. It's huge. There are a lot of venues, a lot of operators, and a big competitive scene out there as well. Strange, for a relatively small capital city with half the population of Melbourne or Sydney. So, I decided to check out a couple of pinball locations that I had been wanted to see for a long time while I was there!
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    Comic Book Day 2024

    Comic Comic Book Day Events
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    Yesterday (4 May 2024) was a holy day for nerds worldwide. It was Star Wars day. This was also the day that Campbelltown City Council decided to host Comic Book Day at the HJ Daley Library, a celebration of comic books, gaming, and pop culture. Cool! I'm always up for nerdy stuff. Pinball is the perfect companion to nerdy stuff, partly because so many pinball themes are based on nerdy stuff! So, I contacted the library and asked if they would be interested in hosting a couple of pinball machines for the day for guests to enjoy. The library was hosting all kinds of other cool stuff on the day including comic book giveaways, cosplay competitions, Star Wars trivia, and more. They were really keen on the pinball machine idea, so I committed to bringing a couple of games to spread the magic of pinball. I had two perfect games for this kind of event: Judge Dredd (Bally, 1993) and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Data East, 1991). Both are based on comic book themes, and both would appeal to the kids that would be attending this kind of event. Unfortunately, however, TMNT is not in service yet as it's still undergoing restoration. So I decided instead to bring Super Mario Bros (Gottlieb, 1992). Into the van they went, and off we went to the library for the day. 
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    Collector Con 2024

    Collector Con Events
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    ​​We're back! Five years after the inaugural Collector Con Toy & Hobby Fair in Campbelltown in 2019, the show is back in town. Collector Con has grown considerably in the last few years but unfortunately there has not been a Campbelltown show since 2019. This year, that changed, and when we heard that Amy was bringing the show back to Campbelltown, we put our hands up to bring some pinball machines along for the public to play again.
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    Pinfest 2023

    Events Pinfest Tee'd Off
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    It's happening! Time for Pinfest! This year's show promised to be the biggest and best yet, with more machines on display (104, to be precise) than any year before! The show gets better and better each year, and this is a huge achievement for such a small and dedicated pinball crew from the Newcastle Pinball Association (NPA). Compared to the absolute insanity of larger shows such as Pinball Expo (400 games, including other coin-op games!) which is happening as I write this, the NPA team do a fantastic job at organising a relatively large show with limited resources. I'm always happy to be a part of it. 
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    Ace Driver: Victory Lap

    1996 Namco Victory Lap
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    This is starting to look like a video arcade restoration blog rather than a pinball one! However, I am running out of space with too many projects sitting in the queue, so I need to sell some games to make space. Naturally, that means the larger games, particularly the twin driving cabinets, have to go!

    It hasn't been too long since I finished with my Cyber Cycles restoration, and now, I'm onto another Namco game. This time it is Namco's Ace Driver: Victory Lap (1996). It might be a little confusing why I have two game flyers at the top of this page. One for Ace Driver, and another for Victory Lap. That's because Victory Lap was not a complete, standalone game. It was sold as a conversion kit for the original Ace Driver (1994), and used the same cabinet and hardware. This restoration was mainly a cabinet tidy-up and go-over, as the game was mostly working when I first powered it up.
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    Williams WPC CPU Board Battery Corrosion Repairs (Including a Scratch Build)

    Circuit Board Repair Williams
    It seems to be the season for battery corrosion on pinball circuit boards. Over the last few months I have repaired several Williams WPC-era MPU (CPU) boards which have suffered various levels of battery corrosion. Original WPC CPU boards are now at least 33 years old, which is an eternity when it comes to electronics. By this point, a randomly-selected CPU board will have had many issues during its working life which would have necessitated bench-level repair. However, for the most part, these repairs would have consisted of replacement of a couple of defective components; a relatively non-invasive procedure. Battery corrosion repair is a different beast, and is more akin to amputation followed by transplantation. 

    Unfortunately for the boards featured in this blog post, the corrosion was discovered too late, so some extensive repairs had to be carried out. This post deals with three levels of battery corrosion: minor, moderate, and major, and the actions undertaken to get the games back into working condition. There is some great information available regarding how to tackle these kinds of repairs, such as the Alkaline Corrosion Abatement section on Pinwiki, and TerryB's Guide to Repairing Alkaline Battery Damage. I used tips from both guides to carry out these repairs.