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BSD refresh - lightning flippers

Jonwolf

Jonwolf

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Apr 4, 2016
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So I've been refreshing my BSD and added new flippers. I've replaced the Williams lightning flippers with the 'original blood red' flippers. They look a lot nicer but it has transformed the way it plays. They are 1/8 inch longer.

Yes, it's easier, but the loops feel way more natural and the machine flows well.

Did they ship these machines with lightning flippers to shorten game time (and fun) ?

Note the ghosting on the inserts. I have L1 U6 EPROM - as far as I'm aware there are no upgrades to sort this ?

I used the upgrade EPROM on TZ and all ghosting went away.uploads.tapatalk_cdn.com_20160808_2dd51435ebba4715d8c4a50e8a748aa9.jpg



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Ghosting can be sorted by using the LED OCD board;

http://ledocd.com/

I have a few in my machines and they make a great improvement, also means you can use cheap LEDs rather than the non ghosting no flicker ones.
 
BSD originally shipped with yellow lightning flippers.

Apparently lightning flippers were added to games that they felt were playing too long with regular flippers. The original suggestion coming from a Euro distributor so the story goes.

Games shipped with lightnings were BSD, WH20, Popeye, Dr Who, Fish Tales and Black Rose I believe.

I'd be worried that it may make the game too easy but it's all personal preference. Same as outline gaps, steepness of playfield.

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Me and @DRD were talking about this at the weekend, particularly with Fish Tales, and pretty much as @Sgt GrizZ says - it is a lazy way to shorten ball times on games that are playing too long with regular flippers. I mean if you were Williams what would you have done? Alter the entire playfield to compensate for regular flippers, or just put a slightly shorter pair of flippers on the game? Obvious solution.

I tend to find Fish Tales with lightning flippers to be quite punishing because of that missing 1/8th of an inch which makes a huge difference. I've played about 4 or 5 different Fish Tales. 2 of those had regular flippers and I had no issue scoring 200m+ without any difficulty, ones with lightning flippers on a good day I can scrape 100m.

I believe Popeye, Dracula, Dr Who and Fish Tales shipped factory with these, don't think any other games did.
 
There are all sorts of stories about flipper gaps. Some games were apparently designed to have lightning flippers. I read that fish tales was designed for regular flippers, but a last minute decision was taken to put lightning ones in. I like to keep my games pretty original, but I have no idea what original means for fish tales !

@Nedreud and I maintain a blood feud about the correct size of the upper flipper in vector. I think a similar thing happened here. Designed for one flipper, but shipped with another ...

Having played my fish tales for a few days now, I actually think you need to play the game and decide yourself what the correct level of difficulty is according to your own needs ...

Ball time ?
Drains left, right, centre ?
Ability to reach modes ?
Need to make it harder for tournament or competitive play ?
Accessibility to novice players ?

Some games just have bad scoring. I think fish tales has, imho dracula has it too. No amount of tinkering can really set them up "fairly", whereas i find that addams, scared stiff, funhouse have much more consistent scoring imho. I find that World poker tour has extremely consistent scoring

If you have a few games, you may choose to make one "difficult" to sharpen your playing skills.

I personally get bored of long games, touring the mansion twice on addàms for example so I have set this game up to be hard.

Whereas the Shadow has been given the easiest outlane settings as it is a drain monster.

World poker tour is very easy to play (possibly designed for hone use with massive ball times to reach really deep modes and wizard modes) so I took both outlane posts out altogether
 
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Wh20 defo shipped with them. The wh20 I bought was one owner from new and still had the goody bag which contained easy break plastics and lightning flippers. Im assuming it was an op preference whether they installed them
 
The Internet says that BSD was originally designed with the standard blood red flippers (so hey, it must be true [emoji6])

I did this today, I really should get out more ...uploads.tapatalk_cdn.com_20160809_96cd1b404a2309329b89c5bd23925d55.jpg


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