For Amusement Only E.M. and Bingo Pinball Podcast

General
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Hi everyone, I run a podcast regarding E.M. and bingo pinball.

I discuss mechanics, troubleshooting, cleaning, maintaining, playing and more.

Last year, I did an episode a day, bite-sized snippets of information regarding one of the above topics, a game-by-game review of all of the bingos that Bally produced between 1951-1980, and many in-depth interviews with notable personalities and interesting folks in the E.M. or bingo sides of the hobby. I’m up to episode 377 as of today, with a current bi-weekly release schedule.

I’ve been lucky enough to interview guests such as:
Steve Young - Pinball Resource
James Willing - the E.M. Dungeon
Jeffrey Lawton - author of ‘Bally Bingo Pinball Machines’ and ‘Bally vs. United - the Bingo Pinball War’
Sal Mazzeo - slot machine restorer and collector
Vic Camp - notable bingo player and E.M. collector
Gordon Hasse - pinball historian and woodrail aficionado
Phil Bogema - bingo pinball restorer and player
Hugh Kown - bingo pinball restoration expert and one of the most highly-regarded technicians
…and many more - no insult intended to any of my other guests if I didn’t list you - there’s a lot!

My goal is to further understanding and appreciation of electromechanical games and purely mechanical games. When I started the show, I saw lots of talk of people writing off E.M. games. Bingos have always been under-appreciated by the flipper community, and I want folks to at least understand some of the very unique and ingenious mechanisms involved in gameplay.

I do the show by myself, which makes scheduling easy, but I understand if it’s not your cup of tea. :slight_smile:

If anyone has any feedback or requests for coverage on the show, I am more than happy to discuss.

You can reach me at foramusementonlypodcast@gmail.com or call me on the ‘bingos line’ 724-BINGOS-1 with suggestions or requests for help.

Your emails or phone calls will not be used on the show without your permission.

Thanks for your attention, and I hope to hear from you soon!

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This is an interesting niche for sure. I don’t know much about Bingo Pinball as I never really wrapped my head around it but I do see them from time to time – mostly as decoration objects though.

I’ll definitely take a listen to your podcasts. I downloaded the very first episode and the newest one. If you have episode suggestions for beginners, let me know.

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Thanks for giving it a shot! If you ever start playing them, you’ll find that they are some of the deepest, most complex games created.

As far as episodes, I’ve tried to give them appropriate titles - I have episodes dedicated to tech or troubleshooting (reading schematics, figuring out best approach to fix things, etc), maintenance, and interviews. I think any of the interview episodes are pretty good places to start.

My initial interview with Steve Smith (episode 4), sets the tone a bit, and my initial interview with Vic Camp tends to get people excited about the topic (he’s a great ambassador of bingo pinball). Episode 46.

If you want to hear more great bingo on route stories, check out Phil Bogema’s first interview (episode 89).

From an EM perspective, I have really enjoyed speaking with Gordon Hasse and Steve Young. 194 and 376.

Let me know what you would like to hear, and I’ll have some more suggestions.

Most general topic episodes are about 10 mins. Most interviews are an hour or two (or more).

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Of course, if you’d like to hear about the types of games, I have some episodes covering those as well -

Episode 2, 3 and 4 cover some of the more popular bingo types, and episode 6, 7, 8 cover a few more (or modes within).

There’s a solid amount of info in there, and in these early episodes, I tried to put some tech information in there, too.

I got some feedback early on that I was putting too much info into each episode, too quickly, so I slowed it down to one topic per episode.

Listening in order certainly helps up till about episode 100-200. I tend not to repeat a lot of information until after about episode 200, when I started doing a game-by-game retrospective on every Bally bingo produced!

Now that I am on a bi-weekly release schedule, I tend to move around a bit more per episode. Most are not a single subject per any longer.

A different topic, but there’s a LOT of talk in recent episodes about the game I’m building. I’m showing it off in public for the first time at York in about a month! I’m super excited. If you happen to make it to York, I’d be happy to show you a bingo and how to play if you’d like. I’m even running a competition to win a free ‘Bingo Row’ t-shirt, illustrated by Ryan Claytor! If you’re not able to attend York, then just know that I’m always doing something interesting (at least to me) and electro-mechanical. :slight_smile:

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I have just posted a very interesting interview with Wayne Neyens, the prolific pinball designer at Gottlieb.

He is most well-known for the large number of machines produced in the 50s and 60s, but was involved in coin-op from the 1930s - early 1980s.

He has so many great stories and was very generous with his time.

Check it out at http://foramusementonly.libsyn.com/episode-392-interview-with-wayne-neyens-01-18-2017

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Highly recommend this podcast!

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Agree. Nick has created a fantastic series of episodes here. I hope he keeps the show running for as long as there’s content to support it.

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In the luxuriously lengthy interview with Wayne Neyens, he mentions using data from test machines to determine that the 3 and 4 player games rarely happened. He understood this to indicate that less-expensive 2-player machines would actually be more profitable for operators, but neglected to mention this to higher-ups because he preferred to make 4-player games.

Gotta wonder how the competitive scene/formats would be different these days if they had scrapped 4-player designs back in the day and the industry standard had become 2-player games.

2 Likes