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The Classic Pinball Podcast
The Classic Pinball Podcast
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#88 Stern Stars - The Classic Pinball Podcast

PodcastAnalysis updated 2d ago1 hr 16 min listenBy George
From the creator

This episode features John Day, a friend and local restorer who built a customized Stern Stars. We talk about the installed arduino and Beehive Pinball alternative playfield. They then play a game....

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Highlights

  • Beehive Pinball (Mike Lund) hand-cut silk screens for only 15 custom Stars playfields with reimagined artwork combining Galaxy, Stars, and other Stern designs
  • John Day has converted at least four Meteors (possibly five) in Massachusetts and New Hampshire to the Ballystern OS Arduino system
  • The Ballystern OS Arduino implementation includes 93 sound bites and supports 9-13 simultaneous polyphonic audio tracks
  • Dick Hamill designed the Ballystern OS as an open-source Arduino solution plugging into the J5 connector without modifying the original MPU
  • Pinball Life manufactures second-generation Classic Stern flipper mechanisms as replacements for original Stern games
  • The Ballystern OS is available for at least Meteor, Stars, Flash Gordon, Mata Hari, and Galaxy
  • A good score on this customized Stars is over 100,000 points; a really good game is over 200,000
  • The original 1978 Stern Stars is a chimer (electromechanical sound) game with EM-like characteristics including a bonus ladder

Notable quotes

“So this is really boutique. It is. Yeah, it's extremely boutique, actually.”
John Day and Dave
“And I'm like, that's brilliant... And so I went for it... And that is a brutal game to play, and it is so nice to have precise flippers that are so powerful and so precise in that game.”
Dave
“I was very careful. I'm a woodworker, so I made a very nice – I copied a meteor, so I copied the same – there's like a square mount for the speaker. So I copied all the dimensions from a meteor so it would look normal. It was karmically correct.”
John Day
“So Dick came out with a base operating system, which he published on GitHub. So it's available open source. You can grab it.”
John Day
“And I think Dick Hamill calls it reimagining.”
John Day
“So this guy, Dick Hamill, does he have a website or a Twitch channel or a YouTube channel? I don't know. Where do people – because other than playing here and I don't remember again... I don't think so. Yeah. I don't think so. It's really awesome.”
George and others
“And so the game actually has a switch, which is kind of interesting in the head, where you can run classic rule sets and the Arduino is disabled.”
John Day
“The Arduino thing is more of a rewrite and doing whatever you want with it... The Scott way is more like taking the original ROM set and tweaking it.”
Dave

Entities

  • Beehive Pinball· company
  • CPR (Classic Pinball Restoration)· company
  • Pinball Life· company
  • Attack from Mars· game
  • Firepower· game
  • Flash Gordon· game
  • Galaxy· game
  • Knight Rider· game
  • Mata Hari· game
  • Meteor· game
  • Pinbot· game
  • Stern Stars· game
  • The Classic Pinball Podcast· organization
  • Dave· person
  • Dick Hamill· person
  • George· person
  • John Day· person
  • Maureen· person
  • Mike· person
  • Mike Lund· person
  • Scott· person
  • Ballystern OS· product
  • GitHub· website
  • Pinside· website/community

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