Doctor Who, Hey! Doctor Who

Yes, the long national nightmare is finally over. I just finished playing my first complete game of Doctor Who.

While my wife watched the commentary on Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest... not only are we big Disney fans, especially myself as a former Disneyland employee -- somewhere, I should have a sword and some coins I stole from the ride when I worked there 27 years ago -- but I went to school from elementary through college with the guy who plays Pintel... and he actually knew who I was, unlike Emilio Estevez, who I went to high school with but didn't realize it until about 5 years later. Lee knew me long enough that (the last time I spoke to him when we were at UCLA) he still called me by the diminutive form of my name, which for the purposes of this blog is "Joey" (you should have figured out by now that Joe Entropy is not my real name).

Anyway, I reassembled the sticking right flipper, replacing the plastic thing that contacts the EOS switch with electrical tape, hoping it would provide less friction. Not so much. Then I tried a new spring from the flipper rebuild kit. No. Then I attached to spring to the far side of the switch mount. Oho! That didn't do the trick entirely, but it did more of the trick than anything I've already tried did. So now the flipper still sticks every so often, but usually contact with the ball will push it down. And it does hold properly, as does the upper left flipper, which kind of surprised me, since neither of them do so in test mode.

So, how does it play? Like a crappy game that's been on location for a year and the operator has forgotten about it. The Tardis switch is back to not working reliably, so whenever the ball goes there you have to wait for the ball search... but usually the randomly firing kicker will get it first. You really have to whack the Escape targets or they won't register... I think I lit video mode twice during four or five games, and never got it. The mini-playfield was fine for the first couple of games, but now it stops at random points, which doesn't really help. And there are a handful of lines out on the edges of the display. BUT... I completed all the games I played, and my daughter even played one, too. And it only took me just over a year.

So was it worth it? Probably not... but in some future post, I'll have to total up all the money I spent getting to this point. Obviously I still have some work to do. But I have learned a lot... certainly enough to fix the chattering flipper in Eight Ball Deluxe, which I think is my next job. I really would like to put some distance between the Doctor and I for a few weeks. ^_^;

Hey, last thing: I was searching for something Who-related last night and found the history of the game written by Pfutz, the designer. Really interesting reading for someone who's spent so much time with the game. And inside was a link to the Williams promotional video for the game! Neat.