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Xenon
Welcome to Xenon
Creator: Bally
Designer: Greg Kmiec
Year: 1980
IPDB Link:
http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=2821
Date of Writing: 7th February 2005
Back in summer 2004, I started searching for a classic pinball game. I did
this after looking through the list of machines that Bally and Williams
produced from 1980 to 1999. I wanted to find out which games I could be
interested in and found some classics from the 80s which surprised me since
I'm actually more interested in complex games where you have a lot to do and
where the machine keeps you busy for weeks or months. Still, as I described
in several other articles, some classic machines have themes or designs that
simply take my heart by storm, especially the space pins like Firepower (I'd
love to try this one out), Space Shuttle (gotta have that one soon) and also
Space Station, which I had but dismissed for weak gameplay. As you know if
you read the other articles, I've been searching for "the" pinball classic
for quite a while, but I gave it up with Pin*Bot which was a good game but
too modern to feel old school, and it was the time when I started playing
more and more DMD games in other locations, so I started getting more
interested in those, bought my T2 and later exchanged Pin*Bot with Black
Knight 2000. My conclusion was: maybe the classics I really want to
have (namely Space Shuttle and Xenon) are the only ones from that era which
work with me, and all other machines need to be 1989 and later. By now I
don't think this is accurate anymore since there are System 11 games that I
like, for example Whirlwind (never played it in reality though), Pin*Bot (I
liked it even though it became boring) and Space Station - yes, the game
is great in a way and maybe I will get it back some time in the future
when I've got five or six machines already and another "not that good but
still nice" game will not hurt. I think the problem with all these classic
games is that they cannot stand on their own in my room and that's why I
needed three other, more complex games first. But then I also had tried
these classics already and didn't want them back, so what next? Could it be
anything next at all, seeing how full my room was with three machines? This
winter I decided that yes, it could be, and it should be a classic I never
had before, and this time one of the really old games with the full
character. I decided to get Xenon.
Acquiring the Game
I posted in the Pinball Network forum that I was looking for a Xenon, but
nobody responded. After all, while there were 11,000 units produced, Xenon
is a sought-after game because many of the old pieces are garbage today and
the remaining models are collectors' items. I got a hint from Hobbykoch that
a specialist in Berlin was putting up his Xenon for sale and it was all
made, with a touched-up and clear-coated playfield, new parts, tumbled
metal, all new rubbers and lamps and whatnot. The photos looked awesome, but
the price tag was way too high for my taste as Xenon is a simple game no
matter how good it looks and spending 600 bucks for a simple game is beyond
me. Of course I saw that the price was justified given all the hard work
that was put in it and the cult status and rarity - still, my aim was to
find a Xenon which needed work I could do myself. This way, it would be cheaper, it would
keep me busy beyond the simple gameplay (it becomes boring game-wise but is
an adventure when I start working on it, giving me back the pinball
atmosphere) and it would become "my" Xenon once I'd be done.
I found such a game when somebody posted that he had a Xenon for sale or
rather exchange against a Flash Gordon machine, but since nobody offered one,
I told him that I absolutely wanted his Xenon for cash and he saw what I
meant and agreed. A few phone calls and private messages later, the deal was
set and two weeks later I had trans-ferred 300 Euros to his bank account.
Now came the adventure with the shipping company. I used the same that
shipped Black Knight 2000 to me because many pinball fans recommend this
company and they don't cost much, plus they are one of the rare enterprises
which still do ship pinball machines at all. However, when I called and
later wrote the order via e-mail, I had a feeling that this time it could be
as troublesome as it was with BK2000 last year, when first they needed more
days than planned to get it here and then they forgot to call me to tell me
the delivery day and time. Guess what happened with Xenon? Right, they
forgot to call me, so on Thursday I called the woman who was my contact
per-son for this order, and she called me back on Friday while I was at work,
telling me the machine was in Berlin and their partner company was ordered
to call me for delivery time. Well, I did get a call from them, but they
said that the driver stood in front of my house and wondered why nobody was
there. Realizing that they had messed it up, I quickly ran home from work to
meet the driver, unpack the two parts (cabinet and backbox as single parts)
on the street to carry it inside, pay the driver a tip for his work and
waiting, and rush back to work. Once the evening came, I rode home again to
greet my new baby.
 
Assembly
Since we unpacked the game in a hurry on the street, I had the two parts in
the flat when I came home. Why was the backbox dis-attached? Well, the old
Bally games didn't have a junction between backbox and cabinet to fold down
the backbox for transportation, so the two parts had to be separated and
packaged as one. Now I had to get both parts into my room and put them
together, but first the room had to be completely redesigned so Xenon as the
fourth machine would even fit in! As described in the
"My Room" section, my friend Patrick and I moved the other machines and
furniture to make space, then moved Xenon into the room where we assembled
the cabinet, legs and backbox. We noticed that at least the backbox seemed
to be a lot heavier than those of Williams games, and the cabinet didn't
feel very light without the backbox attached either (where a pure cabinet
does feel lighter with Williams games). Plus, when we attached the backbox,
we had to cope with a lot of dirt as well as the fact that the swing-out
door kept opening because the lock was gone and the door itself was worn out
and needed a good five centimeters uplifting before it closed. To cut it
short, it was a shitload of work to put Xenon together and move it into the
edge, but it did work out by midnight and the game booted up. First we
wondered why none of the solenoids worked, but then we found out that the
tilt mechanism had blocked the solenoids and we got it working and up for a
test game.
 
Theme
Xenon was kind of unique when it came out in 1980, and so was its theme. The
playfield is full of complicated artwork (which makes it all that much
harder to retouch it) and can be read like a silent comic: you see the
robotic and alien-like "blue woman" on the backglass and the playfield, and
she is what seems to be the mistress or goddess of the world that is Xenon.
But what is this place? From what I read on other Xenon fan pages and what
can clearly be seen on the playfield, the story seems to center around
transformation of female and male humans to beings who look similar to the
goddess (look at the shape of their heads), and all the sex displayed in the
art (women wearing tight underwear and men showing their nude transformed
body) leads you to believe that Xenon must be a kind of pleasure world where
the goddess guides visitors through and welcomes them to stay as alternate,
higher beings of life. This theme could even be recreated in animation had
it been produced in a video game or a DMD pinball machine (anyone up for
making Xenon II? ;-)
Xenon
was the first pinball game with a female voice. This voice and all the sound
effects were created by electronic musician Suzanne Ciani who was externally
hired by Bally for this job. Xenon is famous for its theme and game-play,
but the connection between Xenon and Ciani is what fans pay most attention
to. You can find various Suzanne Ciani fan sites with a separate chapter for
her work on Xenon and vice versa. A short television documentary filmed in
her studio and at Bally Manufacturing has made the round to every fan by now
although the version you can commonly find on the Internet has very low
picture quality and is from a Dutch TV source (actually the documen-tary was
American, but the only recording on the web is the Dutch version). What this
means is that the narration is Dutch, however Ciani's interview snippets are
raw English (without subtitles; the Netherlands must be very friendly
towards the English language?) and there is also a translation for the
narration available on the websites which offer the video for download.
Since I am hosting the original AVI video on my webspace whereas most other
sites only have the even-lower-quality QuickTime version, I have also
included the (slightly edited for spelling) translation in the "Media"
section of this article.
The video shows how Ciani created the sound effects, music and voice samples
(using her own voice) with a lot of analogue equipment which is very
interesting to look at, compared to how music is made today. The focus of
the video's narration is explaining the then-new Vocalizer chips Bally built
into Xenon. Those chips were superior to previous ones since they could
store more units of information and therefore could contain female voice
samples. This means that Xenon wasn't advanced only thematically and
design-wise, but also technically. Of course this advantage and modern image
is lost today since the game is an ancient classic by now, but you can see
how modern it once used to be if you compare it to machines of the same
year.
Xenon's
theme is not only conveyed through images and sound, but also the lighting:
the backbox features two glasses; one being the normal fine-printed
backglass (which hasn't lost any paint in 24 years on my machine) and the
second set before the actual backglass to cover it from the front. But this
glass actually has a transparent mirror layer in certain areas which is used
for an infinity effect: a frame of lights built between the backglass and
the mirror cover glass runs around and speeds up with the music as your game
pro-gresses, and the lit lamps are double-mirrored in the two glasses so
that you see an infinite "tunnel" of lights. As far as I know, this effect
was only used on one other machine (Vector) and then discarded, which is
quite sad since it's a real eyecatcher the first time you see it.
The lighting specialty continues when you look at the playfield: bumper caps
are completely custom and have blue colour instead of the usual red or
white, giving the lamps under them a smooth, cold and futuristic look.
Futuristic, that's what Bally had in mind for Xenon's lighting when blue
inserts and star posts were added to the playfield which was indeed new at
the time - and still today you don't usually see blue inserts on other
pinball games!
Gameplay
Xenon's gameplay is simple, but that's expected for a machine from 1980. It
does keep you busy for some time though and can be a great time killer if
you've got nothing to do and just want to play for points instead of the big
adventures you get on modern machines. As I said above, I'd never want such
a simple game as the first, second or even third machine and that's why I
kept away from it till now. But if you want to add classic value to your
collection and see what pinball used to be in the "good old days", Xenon's
gameplay does give you that. The playfield is very bare with the usual drop
target bank at the right, typical shooter lane, four rather unusually placed
bum-pers, two kick-out holes, two standup targets for bonus advancing, a
spinner and the "tube shot" which is basically a shallow ramp with a hard
edge and a plastic tube the ball rolls through. This tube is accompanied by
a chase light row which runs after the ball, however my machine is missing
this light row, so you can't see it on the photos. I will install a brand
new blue LED light row in the future since some-body in the forum produced
some. Note that the original light row was white, not blue!
You play for points, so you can practically do whatever you want. However,
Xenon was also one of the first machines with multiball, so going for that
is the best option. To achieve multiball, you have to hit the kick-out hole
(called "saucer" by Bally) above the bumpers three times to light three "X"
lamps (visible on the picture of the goddess on the playfield). This enables
the tube for ball locking and a second ball will be served to the plunger.
Shooting another three "X" lights releases both balls for multiball.
The drop target bank on the right awards several values including extra ball
and special.
 
Technical Difficulties
As I said above, my Xenon didn't come without problems. The thing is that
not only optical, but also technical issues are present at the time of this
writing and I want to solve those first before I start touching up. However,
it's not as easy as it seemed in the first place. For starters, the left
kick-out hole does not work. It reacts towards the ball with a sound but
never kicks it out. Measuring the voltage at the coil proved that there was
current flowing through it and the coil doesn't look worn or burned, so it's
probably a problem with the controls on the power driver board since the
coil doesn't react in the tests either. This will have to be tested more
thoroughly and maybe some parts have to be replaced. I'm making heavy use of
Marvin3m's 1977-1984 Bally
Repair Guide for this.
The next problem are the displays. All five displays feature either too
bright digits (something in the controls is broken and too much voltage
flows to these digits), ghosting (you can see an unlit digit being slightly
lit next to the normally lit digits) or bleeding (the upper right display
has bleeding commas). This problem is not only electronic since the displays
seem to be worn and starting to outgas, i.e. they won't live much longer and
display replacement costs BUCKS. So, the next step is to get rid of the high
voltage as quickly as possible so they will display some stuff as long as
possible. It might take some replacement of parts here too. All in all the
technical side will keep me busy for a while until I can get started with
the optical stuff.
 
Restoration That is Due
If
you look at the playfield, you will agree that this old girl needs some
fresh-ness cream in the shape of isopropanol (a lot), lighter fluid (to get
rid of the few mylar parts), sanding paper (to hopefully erase some of the
crowfeet), lots of new paint and finally a good layer of lacquer so it will
all become shiny and be protected for future use. I don't know how long that
will take, but it will probably be longer than the technical things.
However, since I've tried and succeeded with optical touch-up on The
Machine, I'm more looking forward to doing it on Xenon than looking away
from the difficulties. After all, this will be a great challenge I can learn
a lot from.
After this is done, all rubbers will be replaced, the 80% of broken lamps
will be removed and new lamps will be added, and then I'll also try to find
blue posts instead of the reddish ones that are currently installed. I don't
know why it is like this, but I've seen photos of other Xenons with the same
issue. The fact remains that blue posts are what Bally intended and the game
loses a lot of character without them. The problem here is that the Bally EE
posts have another shape than the normal star posts Williams used all the
time and replications of these posts are rare just like unused originals.
Unfortunately, I know where to get red Bally posts, but blue ones are not
offered there... maybe installing blue Williams posts would still be better
than nothing and I have seen a photo of this solution where it looked quite
good.
What's Planned for the Coming Weeks
First I'll buy some testing equipment and solve the problems with the tech.
After this, I'll see how much dirt I can get down from the playfield with
the tools I have, and then I will buy more stuff to get the restoration
started. It might not happen all too regularly though since everything you
do on a pinball machine takes time, and you know how rare time is these
days.
 
Update, 27th March 2005:
It seems
that I'm running out of luck with my pinball fixing skills - Xenon has been
a b*tch with me in the past six weeks and I still cannot figure out what
causes the problem with the displays and the non-functioning coils. I have
exchanged the solenoid driver board and replaced the acrylic tube with a
fresh one plus a new blue LED light strip from
www.flipperfrance.com, but even
though I tested all of the transistors and circuits that could create
problems, I'm finding that I do not have either the patience or the
knowledge to diagnose precisely what's happening. I made great use of
Marvin3m's Bally pinball
repair guide, but everything I learned from there didn't help me. People
in the Pinball Network forum started giving me hints and tips what to do,
but this happened after I had made the decision which still stands: Xenon
will go and be replaced by a machine I want so much more at the moment and
hope to win in another eBay auction, and since I need space and money and
Xenon is not giving me much fun at this time (I wanted a machine with a
few flaws that are easy to fix) but rather disgusts me more from day to
day (it stands around and doesn't work), I have lost all the heart I had for
it - that might change later should I see the day when I want a Xenon again
in better condition and when the timing is better... after all, my life is
turning upside down in this moment and while it seems stupid to sell a
machine I wanted so much, I only learn from this experience.
Media
The Dutch version of the documentary about the making of Xenon's audio and
its then-new chip technology can be found
here. The inter-view
with Suzanne Ciani was left untranslated, so it's pure English, but the
narration is Dutch and a translation can be found on several websites which
still offer the QuickTime version of the video. My version is the
original, better quality AVI file with MP3 audio. I converted the audio
to MP3 because it saves a good 5 MB on my webspace and your download time.
The audio did lose a little detail from compression, but it can't be better
as MP3 and since it's only spoken language, you'll hardly notice.
The AVI video file uses the old Indeo Video 4.4 codec which should be
installed on any Windows system, so no additional video codecs are necessary
and as long as you have Windows Media Player 7 or higher, you will also be
ready for MP3 playback.
I provide a slightly edited version of the Internet translation with
spelling and grammar correction here:
---
Translation of the "Making of Xenon's
Audio" video clip
0:00 s
The next subject in our program is about a woman in the USA, Suzanne Ciani,
who is busy getting voices in equipment like this. Look and especially
listen...
0:29 s
This is Suzanne Ciani, a componist of electronic music. In a studio crammed
with synthesizers, amplifiers, computers and recorders, she does all the
compositions herself.
0:52 s
Her specialty is making background music for films, but now she faces a new
challenge: a manufacturer of pinball machines wants special sounds for their
newest game.
1:22 s
A double challenge: sounds and voices both have to be integrated.
2:34 s
The "pinball symphony" is a new phenomenon, but where do the sounds come
from? The secret is hidden in a microprocessor: a com-puter as large as a
domino. There are 48,000 units of information stored in it. If you connect
it to an operating computer, they will be played with the speed of sound.
3:05 s
The woman's voice in a pinball. But how does it get into a chip? Besides,
women's voices have a higher frequency than male voices and therefore need
almost double storage space. This chip gives Suzanne five seconds of speech
time.
4:51 s
The recorded sounds were analyzed, measured and crunched in order to fit
into the chip. Then they were programmed like a computer in a way that they
react to the lamps and the scored points.
5:23 s
Finally, the chips were mounted in the pinball machine.
5:54 s
Sound chips are reasonably new. We will hear Suzanne's voice for five
seconds, but maybe in the future we will have sound chips that contain
entire symphonies.
---
I don't know who created the original
translation, so I cannot credit them. Just be aware this is not my
translation but only spelling and grammar editing.
If you have VobSub
installed for active video subtitling, you can download
this file which I
created from the above translation, put the file into the same folder as the
video, make sure the names of both files are the same (only different
extension) and when you open the video, VobSub will automatically read the
subs from the file and subtitle the video for you.
If you want to read an interview with Suzanne Ciani that was taken by a
Ciani & Xenon fan via e-mail, go
here. The interview was done not that long ago and thereby reflects upon
the year 1980 and beyond from Ciani's today's standpoint.
A very nice documentation of a full-blown playfield restoration including
decal reprinting and playfield repainting (!) can be found on
this
page. Note that this is an extreme example of restoration that was
conducted by a professional artist.
And finally, if you still can't get enough, look at some info and nice pics
in the Internet Pinball
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