About a year ago my old pal in US Dan Kramer ( ATARI genius, inventor of the Track Ball and now working with Wade Kraus) emailed me regarding a RALLY WEST CLUB he was to restore and get going for Michael Schiess. Game had been sitting in storage for 30 years, many parts were missing etc.
When i got my RALLY COMICS ( thanks Nino!) it came with a small bag of goodies.. NOS bumpers, schematics etc.
I ended up sending Dan detailed plans on how to make the PF glass frame as it was missing.. i also sent a schematic i had translated from german to English over so he could fix the game.. also in the box were some rare NOS bumpers and also a box of Grain of Wheat bulbs i had sourced from overseas, plus some of the internally illuminated posts that these bulbs sit in. We emailed back and forth about how i had fixed the nixie display logic circuits... problems i had found with these etc.
Anyway, game finally got going JUST before PPE this year.. Dan installed some external speakers so the sound could be projected forwards instead of down to the ground like a lot of games.
Ive just recieved an email from him stating that WEST CLUB was an absolute hit with the crowds.. worked faultlessly for 4 days. Nobody at the expo had seen a Fliptronic game before and the Nixie displays were an absolute hit... these games are late 60's.. Nixie's were really cutting edge and the tone sound generator sounds like a Stern SB100 except its 10 years ahead and much much simpler.
Game WON Best Restored EM for the show... how cool is that?
Heres the game..
and of course the award..
Awesome stuff and im pleased as punch to have contributed
