|
The Machine: Bride of Pin*Bot
Absolutely Flawless
Creator: Williams
Designer: Python Anghelo
Year: 1991
IPDB Link:
http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1502
Date of Writing: 1st November 2004, Revised: 22nd September 2005
My
first contact with The Machine happened in 1997 when I was about to graduate
from elementary school and move to high school. We were on the final class
trip shortly before the school year's end and there, in a large empty white
room, she was, the "Bride". Everyone loved her; we couldn't resist asking
the staff if we could turn her on and play a few games, and there was no
problem. So, every evening when some of us had a few coins left (you know
money is thin when you're a youngster), we would go down and play The
Machine. It was actually the first time that I played pinball on a real
machine with open eyes. Before this, I had only played it for fun, not
really knowing where I was aiming, regardless of the score I'd get, and so
on. Only a few months before this class trip, I had started to play pinball
simulations on the computer and had learned about the common rules, features
and score opportunities in pinball games, and now I tried to use this
knowledge to my advantage with The Machine. The result was that I got the
2-ball multiball after completing the second face, however I lost both balls
very quickly and was amazed at the speed this feature was offering. Plus,
since I was so interested in how pinball machines worked, I spent quite a
few minutes standing around the turned-off game and inspecting it closely
for everything it had on the playfield. I once even found a small sheet
of paper in one of my old document stashes which had the measure-ments of
the ball, flippers and bumpers handwritten on it. I remember taking those
measurements from The Machine back then, just because I wanted a reference.
Yeah, I'm weird XD
Whenever I thought about pinball machines, this game was the only one stuck
in my head with prominent features I kept remembering: the wheel on the
center of the playfield, the head, the voice and the quote "I can speak",
the 16-digit displays, the ramps and the grayish spacey colours. Once I saw
photos of the game, I also remembered the name (yes, I had
forgotten it no matter how simple it was), the shuttle, the helmet, the
backglass, the cabinet art, you name it. It came all back to me from the
rear of my head and that's why I decided that this machine absolutely had to
be mine someday.
And
after one month of playing the F-14 and getting bored by it, I quickly had
an offer in my PM inbox on the Pinball Network forum: a man named Peter from
Berlin had a Machine for sale, but he wanted 400 Euros which I didn't really
have, so I agreed to exchange my F-14 plus 200 for The Machine which was an
equal value. 400 is not bad since there are Machines that go away for far
more than this; however the optical condition justified the fair price
(however, he's a fair price guy anyway). The playfield was worn down
especially around the inserts, had crowfeet all over and the person who
removed the mylar years ago obviously didn't know how to do it correctly, as
many insert letters and the paint around them were worn down or taken off
with the mylar. However, the playfield played excellently without the mylar
compared to my mylared F-14 which was a mess and slowed down the ball quite
a bit. Strong, crispy flippers and a high playfield angle made the game fast
and precise and gave me a very cool feeling when I played it for the first
time. I thought, "wow, so this is what it can be like", being totally used
to weak flippers and the open playfield of the F-14. Plus, when I first saw
The Machine in reality again after seven years, it was such a beautiful
reappearance that she took my heart by storm, and this time I knew she would
be mine soon. A week later after I had graduated from school with my final
exams completed (wow, graduation again!), I had the cash and we brought The
Machine into my room.
Assembly
Apart from the standard backbox-legs-move thing, my friend Lars and I had to
reinstall all the plugs and cables in the backbox since it had been removed
by Peter for transportation. The weight was so much lighter without the
backbox that carrying the game around was quite easy. Thank god he had
marked all plugs and sockets, so assembling the backbox was like painting by
numbers and after half an hour The Machine was ready to be turned on.
Everything worked fine except for a flasher in the right side of the helmet,
the helmet lamps and the head: it turned to the right only, never to the
left, which gave some strange results during the game when the face changed
to something that was obviously wrong. The same night I found out that we
had missed one tiny plug in the backbox that was still loose and controlled
the rotation to the left plus the helmet lamps. Moral: a single little plug
or wire can disarm half of the solenoids (this should be very true later
when I installed the new playfield!).
Theme
The
Machine is what the title says, a machine, a female robot. She is Pin* Bot's
bride (hence the subtitle), so there are similarities in the theme: like
Pin*Bot, she must be awakened by the player, but she must also be
transformed into a human (or something close to that). The initial message
that is displayed in attract mode sums this up with a few words: "Make me
live, make me sing, make me feel like a woman..." It sounds alluring and a
little erotic, and the fun part is that the game is indeed spiced with some
mildly erotic voice samples and graphics. If you look at the artwork on the
backglass and cabinet, you instantly see how the designers wanted to give
her a full female look, especially around the legs. Why she is built by
astronauts in space is beyond me, but the combination of space and a huge
cyborg coming to life makes for a nice playfield design which gives you a
very sci-fi-like atmosphere. If you listen to the sounds and especially the
music, this atmosphere is enhanced because the sound is very special in this
game. Using the traditional sample and synthesis system for audio, Williams
created a mind-blowing soundtrack that cannot really be placed anywhere.
It's neither rock nor techno, it's somewhere between the two, but there is a
pop flavour to it as well. If you want to know what I refer to by this, check
out the media section.
Also, lighting is very defined. The lamp inserts are extremely sharp and
crystalline, delivering a prism effect that enhances the light greatly. If
you don't like the gray look of the playfield (which undoubtedly adds to the
space theme, though), you have to watch the machine light up when it's
turned on. The GI is extremely bright (at least on my model) and cold white,
the inserts have all sorts of vivid colours and are nicely arranged. The
flasher effects look really spectacular.
 
I especially love the theme of The Machine because I'm interested in both
space and artificial intelligence, respectively robotics. I also love her
voice since I get a kick out of the game every time she laughs in ecstasy!
XD
Gameplay
When
you're not used to playing pinball in reality, The Machine is surely not the
best way to start it as it's one of the tougher games that can make you go
nuts with the outlanes if you are not trained. However, if you like the theme
and are willing to spend some hours of practice, The Machine will probably
satisfy you since she keeps everyone coming back who has tried her at my
home. As is common with early WPC games, the ruleset is not all that deep,
but there are some nice objectives to complete plus the one big goal which
is always a plus, and the shots can be greatly timed. There is something special to
The Machine you can dive into once you start to
play, generated by the visuals and sound, the lighting, the voice and the
flow that is quite adrenaline-rushing and fast. Why is that
so? Well, a huge part of this feeling comes from the narrow playfield since
more than 50 percent has stuff on it, like ramps, loops, lanes and targets.
The only open part is the wheel in the center, everything else is close up
front for you to shoot at. This makes The Machine still faster than
Terminator 2 which is generally a fast game, but because it's a lot more
open than The Machine, you don't notice the speed of the ball so much. The
Machine however has the ball bumping from one edge to the other in no time
and keeps you at your toes at all times. If you are fast enough, you will
have a blast playing the game; if you don't have the practice yet or the
reaction time (like some of my friends), you might get a little frustrated
after a while. Like Peter said, "The Machine forgives no mistakes."
This is also the reason why I admire my girl friend Janine who was able to
make a whopping seven million points on her first ever pinball game
in life! From then on, I called her the Pinball Queen because this proved
she has the talent to become a great player (and yes, she still plays well).
What's also nice about the playfield design is that it looks very
unconventional, meaning that lamp inserts, the general colouring and the
details of the artwork are very different from the norm that Steve Ritchie
and other designers use. There are no arrows, circles and triangles here,
but every lamp insert is "installed" into the body of the Machine that
covers the whole playfield. This body idea was taken from Pin*Bot where the
playfield is surrounded by his body and the arms and fingers go down where
the flippers are (his fingers are shaped like flippers). The Machine's body
is naturally gray, but it doesn't look bland at all, making for a very
spaceship-like appearance if you play the game in total darkness and the
general illumination on the playfield is the only light source. Every
plastic and device including the flippers dives into this cold yet
friendly light and the gray steel body of the Bride emphasizes this. If you
look closely over the playfield, you will also discover many little
astronauts who sit on the metal body stages, enter the Machine from a space
shuttle, or fly to her head in a rocket. All those details tend to get lost
when playing, but they are still there and make it all the more cute if you
have the time to admire them.
 
In
general, the objective of the game is to awaken The Machine (or the Bride,
whatever you call her) by transforming her into a human in four stages,
presented by her changing face in the head at the top of the playfield.
This is done by shooting the Shuttle Ramp, mostly twice. Once you shot it
twice the first time, the ball runs into her open mouth and the head spins
by 90 degrees to reveal the second face which has a closed mouth but open
eyes to load two balls in. By repeating the double ramp shot sequence, you
get the current ball into one of the eyes and a second ball is thrown to the
plunger to shoot into play by you. Making one ramp shot with this ball leads
it into the second eye, locks both balls in the neck, spins the head to the
third face (full face with mouth and eyes) and releases both balls for
2-ball multiball. If you can manage (it's tough!) to keep both balls in
play and balance them up the ramp again, you get the metamorphosis, the
ultimate transformation into a humanoid woman, and the fourth face. Then
you can spin the Big Wheel and get either really big points or even the
billion shot. With some practice, getting the metamorphosis done is not so
hard at all, but spinning the big wheel after watching the transformation
(which is breathtaking when you first see it) is all the more difficult.
 
Except for keeping your aim on the Shuttle Ramp, you can always take
repeated shots at the loops, the Heart Ramp, the bumpers, the far left lane
shot which spins the Small Wheel, and the standup targets to increase your
bonus multiplier. The great thing about all returning shots (i.e. loops and
the Heart Ramp) is that you get more points the more shots you take. For the
loops this means a timed increase from 25k to 500k, for the Heart Ramp it
means first 500k and then even a full million per shot. If you know how to
do it, you can pump up your score this way! And then there is the Shuttle
Skill Shot every time you launch the ball into play, the increasing bumpers
that raise their value about every 50 hits, and the plastic mini playfield
above them, which is accessible by the first Shuttle Ramp shot and takes the
ball to a random location where it might come down to the plunger again.
Then, you can try the skill shot another time and the value is doubled, next
time tripled etc. So there are way enough opportunities to make the score
big!
Restoration
When
I bought The Machine, I got a used spare playfield with it. Peter bought it
since he obviously planned to touch it up and install it in the cabinet
since the original playfield was in bad shape as I described above. He gave
me that playfield for free (thanks Peter, could make good use of it) and it
sat up on the closet for five months until the time was right. I had
planned to touch up and restore my Machine since I was very annoyed by the
wear on the instal-led playfield, and even though it played well, you could
feel the uneven spots and the missing coating when you slid your hand along.
After I was close to getting my third pinball machine, Terminator 2, I
decided that now was the right time to start restoring The Machine. Actually
I looked away from instal-ling the spare playfield since it would be a big
pack of work, first restoring the thing including mylar removal, then coping
with the yellow tone it got over the years, and last but not least
disassembling the whole machine and reassem-bling it on the spare playfield.
But in the end, I couldn't avoid doing all of this because no matter what
I tried, the wear and the crowfeet that were all over the installed
playfield were so damn deep in the paint that sanding or wiping it down
would have resulted in a lot of paint going with it. Thus, I decided to do
it the hard but effective way, and I started using my school's art class
knowledge to touch up the wear spots with acrylic paint and a few hours of
close looks and steady hands. After this, I did the critical job which was
removing the mylar. It was so bad that you could see the scratches on it
without looking too close. I re-moved it with the traditional heating method
by using a hair dryer to make the mylar and the glue under it soft enough to
pull it apart. I spent two hours almost burning my fingers because I wanted
to be extra safe since I had seen the damage that was done to the installed
playfield by mylar removal, and I wanted t o
prevent this from happening to the spare playfield. In the end it worked
and I had a still almost perfectly sealed playfield without mylar, but with
a lot of glue on it. Rubbing the glue down involved lighter fluid,
isopropanol (pure synthetic alcohol from the pharmacy) and a dish towel. I
had to experiment a lot to find out that lighter fluid on a 3 cm spot plus
intensive rubbing with the towel gave me the result I wanted. However, the
glue was not entirely removed, but just dissolved and rubbed beside, which
meant I had a lot of traces on the play-field after the process and those had
to be removed using isopropanol and yet another towel. My fingers hurt even
more after this and it took me two nights to complete. However, after this
was finally done, the result looked very cool - 99% of the coat under the
mylar was still on the playfield and looked like new. Now it was time to do
the final touch-ups of the few spots where paint had come off, put new
lacquer onto the retouched areas so the acrylic paint would be safe from
contact, and apply three coats of carnauba wax (normal car wax) on
the whole playfield. Polishing the wax after the final layer made the
playfield look all shiny and sexy, and it felt like a woman deserves it!
 
So,
next up was installing the retouched playfield into the cabinet, but first
the old one had to get out. I got a little help from my friend Elias, but I
had to find the right tools for all the inch screws and buy them, which took
me a day or two (Europe isn't all that inch-friendly). Stripping the
playfield from the visible top components plus all the metal holders was
easy and took only a few hours. I actually had to use a saw to get the head
out because one of the four holding screws was totally unable to move and
the small part of wood had to be sawed out so I could attack the screw
outside of the playfield.
I was amazed at how easily the complicated bottom side went down.
In less than 24 hours we had stripped the top and bottom down, I had a lot
of wires, lamps and coils lying in the cabinet, and I could install the new
playfield with ease. The only thing I had to figure out first was the
circuitry for the bumper lamps which is hard-wired on the bottom of the
playfield and can't be taken off, so I remade it by soldering (first time in
my life that I seriously soldered) a few wires in the same way like it was
done with the thick flat wires on the old playfield.
Before installing the new playfield, I took some time to clean up all the
plastic and metal parts, especially the ramps since those were extremely
dirty. If you look at the following comparison shots, you will see what
isopropanol did to the dirt. Thank humanity for inventing this liquid; it's
an all-in-one wonder. Note: I have recently read that cleaning ramps with
alcohol is not widely recommended since it's said to cause tears in the
plastic. Quite a number of people recommend stove cleaning spray for ramps.
 
Reinstalling all the coils, lamps, circuit
boards and sorting out the cabling was easier than the stripping part. I
only had to follow a few photos I took with my new digital camera and
especially the numbers and letters I had written on each lamp socket, plug
and coil to know what goes where. Especially when you unplug the ramps,
microswitches and flashers from the top of the playfield, you should mark
the two connecting plugs with the same number or letter to know they fit
together.
 
All in all the stripping and reassembling
took me four days, faster than I thought, plus I learned quite a bit. I
mean, not every pinball collector has gone the hard way and tried to
exchange a playfield with all of this work, so it's an experience that will
help me with future projects.
What My Machine is Today
When
I turned The Machine on the night of Halloween after tightening the last
screw, I was surprised and joyful that it booted up without hesitation. A
few contacts had to be readjusted, but the one thing that had me looking and
guessing for 30 minutes was one tiny wire which had gone off the soldering
point of a bumper coil. This wire, since it was part of a larger circuitry,
dis-abled two bumpers, the head's eye poppers and the slingshots! Remember
the moral from the top of this page? Same goes here; if it's part of a
circuitry, you have to make sure that every point in that circuitry is
correctly installed or it will lame quite a number of parts.
The next afternoon I came home and played the first game after two weeks. The
last fourteen days were rather spent with the new T2 machine while I was
still touching up the spare playfield, and I didn't want to play The Machine
anymore since I knew I was about to install the other playfield anyway. Now
that I got used to the new slick feeling of T2, I really had to find my way
back into the groove of The Machine. However, even though it was difficult
to feel the difference between old and new after two weeks, I knew that the
ball was much faster, reacted a lot more precisely, bumped a lot more from the
posts and slingshots, and it was a very cool feeling to play on a
fully restored playfield that looked far from what the old playfield was
like! This was by far the most satisfying restoration process I went
through, not just because the playfield looks great, but also because all
the plastics and metal parts were cleaned and The Machine screams at you
with the light effects through the transparent plastics. Before this, so
many plastic parts (especially the ramps) had completely brown dust traces
all over the back, and the difference now is so great that photos cannot
fully show it. Still, I hope they give you an impression of the advantage
this restoration can bring you. It greatly enhances gameplay and breathes
new life into a game that you played a thousand times already.
On top of that, my model of The Machine definitely has some advantages
I am very happy about. First of all, the cabinet is close to perfect with
only a scratch on the Bride's body on the right side. The colours aren't
washed out like they are on countless models and even the backbox almost looks like new. Then, things like mechanics and electronics had no
problems from day one and never created any. The displays are extremely
bright and sharp, the backglass has some more gloss and colour depth than
what I have seen on some other models, and with the restored playfield it's
still not perfect (especially since this playfield will not always look
freshly restored; it has already begun to degrade), but it's close to that
and if I get an NOS or mint condition playfield one day, I'll happily put
down money to spend my Bride the final upgrade.
 
Strategies
There are not so many strategies you can develop since a lot of the ball
action is random. My way to success, if it can be called a stra-tegy, is
shooting left and right loops alternately to pump up their values in time
without having to wait for the ball to return to the correct flipper. I
especially like to shoot the left loop (very easy to aim at) followed by a
Heart Ramp shot from the left flipper (yes, I can do this a lot easier than
shooting the ramp from the right flipper) and repeating this sequence. I
also like to shoot the balls into the bumpers instantly after they are
released from the lock in multiball. The advantage of this is that you gain
time and hopefully only one of the two balls will come out of the bumpers,
go down to the right flipper, and be shot up the Shuttle Ramp, followed in
time by the second ball. This seems to work best for me; however, I have
lost so many balls in such a short time when multiball started that I cannot
really recommend any strategy other than to "feel" where you shoot at and
giving the table a gentle shake here and there. Shaking it slightly from
left to right and back also helps me prevent a center drain when the ball
doesn't make it up the Heart Ramp and comes back down. If you don't shake at
this point, the ball will be lost - guaranteed.
Keefer has made a nice guide to the game's rules and strategies that are
similar to mine. You can find his guide
here.
Flawless?
Why
did I call this page "Absolutely Flawless"? Because I saw the George Michael
music video on MTV only a few nights after I had The Machine in my room.
While I'm not a George Michael fan, I like some of the stuff he makes and
this song grabbed my attention because of the robotic "ab-so-lu-tely flaw-less"
voice sample in the background that sounded so old-school, just so much like
The Machine's look and feel, that she as a robotic woman fit to it so much
(I do know that this voice sample and the groove were taken from The Ones'
song "Flawless"). The song stuck in my head from then like so many songs
that I connect with the weirdest things for simple reasons. Now even the
title of the song fits to my personal feeling towards my Machine - now that
she is restored, she's flawless. She will always be my favourite,
the best pinball game I have in my collection, and she will never leave me
because I have too much of a memory in me from the past that connects me
with her. So, flawless, huh? Maybe not to everyone, but to me, a true
Machine fan.
Now call me whatever you will, as long as you stay on my site! ;-)
 
Media
Stephanie Rogers is undoubtedly The Machine's voice. Nowadays she is a great
rock and pop singer and songwriter and has a ton of acting experience on her
back where this little voice job for Williams must have been in her early
days.
I have a more or less regular e-mail contact with Stephanie, and I met her
in person in July 2005. It all began with an e-mail I wrote to her in 2004 when I had
heard that she was responsible for The Machine's voice, but her website does
not list this job since it gives you only a brief excerpt of all acting jobs
she has done. In the mail I told her that quite a few fans of the pinball
game would like to know what she thinks of it and what she felt like when
she recorded the lines for the Bride. Sadly, she never replied - until April
2005 when I suddenly found a mail in my inbox from Stephanie. It said that
she had read the old version of this article and liked my site, and that she
had in fact replied to my e-mail from 2004, but it seemed that it got lost.
So she summed up in this new mail what it was like to record The Machine's
voice - check it out, you'll be surprised!
"Recording Bride of Pinbot was very low-fi (as were all pinball
recordings at the time). I think the year was 1992 [it was 1990 - Max]
and it was me and my boyfriend in my parents' living room with a portable
DAT machine. (No special mics or sound filtering devices.) We did about two
or three takes of each section and it went very quickly. I'm pretty sure I
made about 50 bucks from it, though it may have been slightly more. Fifty is
what I usually got from Williams for these things, which, at the time,
seemed sufficient, especially since these recordings were done "off the
record."
The character had to be sexy and we did work on that a little bit. Rich
Karstens (my boyfriend at the time) gave me some direction and I added some
of my own ideas. I remember I had to speak loudly, for recording purposes,
which was a little bit of a challenge (sexy *and* loud?). We had many laughs
while recording it, getting the character just right. Then we did the clips.
It was quite fun, lively, silly and rather quick. I did not know it would
become so popular; I had done many of these and no one ever asked my name or
cared... until I became a man-slaying sexpot!"
Great, huh? ;-) Thanks a lot, Stephanie!
After we engaged into a more regular contact via e-mail, I met her in
Frankfurt in July, and I wrote an article about this meeting.
Stephanie Rogers' website is
www.hipchick.com, her personal recording label. She is an independent
artist whose albums you can only purchase locally or on the Internet in a
special CD shop. I highly recommend listening to some
MP3 samples on the site
since the music is freaking great and if you like The Machine, it's a must
anyway!
I also created a nice clean wallpaper out of a few photos and a flyer scan.
Flyers and photos can be found at the
Internet Pinball Data-base.
Using info from there, I was also inspired to make a custom pricing card for
the game that shows general information about The Machine instead of the
useless pricings. You can print this card (at 200 dpi) and cut it out to put it into the
card holder. It's not the best, but I'd still have to do better than that!
 
Back in the days when I was still using the
old playfield, I recorded two video clips with a cheap digital photo camera
and my PC's high-quality microphone. The result is not pretty, but the
tripod we created for the camera to film from this spot was awesome. I might
use my new digital camera later to record short clips of a few key scenes,
but for now I have uploaded one of the two game recordings for you to enjoy.
You need DivX 5 to watch this.
And finally, if you want to hear the great audio side of things, you gotta
listen to this mix that fan Marcel Gonzalez (e-mail) created from the game itself, obviously using
a direct link to the sound ROM and mixing some sound effects and voice
samples into the songs.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4 |
|