Blues Brothers pinball

No, I'm not ditching my project.. I'm just throwing ideas at the wall since Jimmy stated on a recent podcast (gameroom junkies) that one of his dream themes is the Blues Brothers movie.  Now I have to preface that this movie is near and dear to me (and ironically my wife is one of the VERY few people that hates it).  Not sure why, perhaps she thinks it's an insult to musicals?  Anyway, this is one of the few movies me and my dad really bonded with when I was a kid.  Being filmed in Chicago, obviously the historical factor alone is enough to like it.  In fact, sometimes I'll watch it just for nostalgic purposes (Oh look at how the highways looked back then).  In particular, the scene right before they get pulled over (SCMODS), just cruising on the highway listening to Sam & Dave - soothe me brings me back to when my dad would bring me to work with him downtown Chicago (3am), and he'd be listening to oldies and it was very dark outside.

Anyway, so I've thought about this the past few days, and I think the best approach would be Stern's jukebox concept, while pulling certain elements from the movie into the playfield.  If you look at Metallica, most things are based on album art rather than songs.  AC/DC, the bell is from hells bells (but also album art), and the canon is most certainly album art.

First and formost, targets should be heavily used (and re-used) in the game.

They can be used to collect items (beginning jail scene where the clerk is listing his items.. One timex digital watch, broken.  One un-used prophylactic.. one soiled.  boots, black.  belt, black.  one black suit jacket, one pair of black suit pants, one hat... BLACK.  One pair of sunglasses, 23 dollars and seven cents.. Sign here).

Targets can be used to spell "jake", and "elwood".

Targets can be used to collect band members (Murph and the magic tones, GI turns to red for the lounge, Mr fabulous plays classical music while the lighting flickers like candles.  Blue Lou and Matt Guitar Murphy Aretha Franklin sings and trivia video mode starts to gain those band members).

During Jukebox song selection, the quote "oh we got both kinds, country and western!" should play from bob's country bunker.

Orange Whip - I'm thinking a glowing orange drink with a slice of orange, sort of like lebowski's white russian.

Bridge jump scene (car's got a lot of pickup) - This should be similiar to the jump ramp on America's most haunted, but have it actually actuate and tilt up like in the movie.  There would be a wall in the middle, and the ramps would have to move up enough to clear it (so you'd have to time your shot.. Too soon, and the ball hits the wall.  Too late, and the ball doesn't make it up the bridge ramp).

Lastly, the car chase scenes are what made this movie memorable.  There's the mall chase scene at the former Dixie square mall in Harvey (new oldsmobiles are in early this year), and then the ending when they flee from the concert, and drive all the way to downtown chicago (driving down route 43, then to I-90, past McCormick place, through lower wacker drive, then under the EL-train).  I'm thinking 2 directions for this concept:
1. Simply have a dodge monaco toy.. Maybe have it as a scoop that ejects balls.  One thing is for sure, that engine sound NEEDS to be included, and a nice subwoofer speaker.  The sound of that engine is so low and gutteral.  Seriously, go back and watch it, I bet you'll find yourself imitating the sound.  Perhaps there could be some sort of multiball where there's specific colored balls that represent the cops chasing them (red and blue), and you have to manage to not drain your ball until all the "cop balls" drain first.
2. This gets a bit more elaborate.  There would be a mini section of the playfield (perhaps just an upper playfield), but it would be specific to car chase scenes.  I'd want to do an LCD screen for the back and side showing speed, and perhaps somehow do projection mapping on the playfield (the bluesmobile would be between the flippers), and the video would show turns, and you'd have to flip the ball to that side of the playfield (standup target, perhaps a spinner lane?).  You keep going as long as you keep making your shots.  As soon as you miss, the scene ends.

Last idea: If you're playing a multiplayer game, while the ball sits in the shooter lane, a clip of jake and elwood standing in the elevator at Daley Plaza tax assessor, and plays with muzak in the background until the next player shoots the ball.

ramp FAIL

So the glue definitely made it stiffer.  Then the 1/2" walls started to curl and bend over every time I hit it with a ball.  So then I beefed it up with 1" tall steel walls, and that made the opening just a little too tight (ball would either get stuck, or bounce back at the flipper).  After bending the opening back, it started to tear a little bit.  I tossed the ball at the ramp in frustration.

So what did I learn from this?
1. If you've got an aggressive shot where the ball has to make a sharp turn, make SURE your walls are high enough
2. Even stiff walls that are very thin need reinforcing (or just make it out of thicker cardboard to begin with, perhaps a double thin layer
3. I really don't think I can reliably have a side loop shot, PERIOD!  Even if you can occasionally hit it just right (which I did get maybe 3 out of 10 shots), while it might be rewarding it's going to be very frustrating and NOT fun, and the ramp is probably going to get beat to hell during all the missed shots.  So I think my solution (since early prototypes worked great this way) is to implement this ramp so it can be shot up and down, not side to side.  If you watch people play Gottlieb Gold wings, even that ramp is somewhat hard to make, and it's as vertical as can be (and has tons of guides to keep it on track).

So that's my next goal, figure out where I'm sticking this ramp (after I rebuild it one more time).

If it plays crappy in cardboard, it'll play crappy in metal

So.. I've been told this by Mr Popadiuk.. Ben Heck repeats it because I'm pretty sure Dennis Nordman says the same thing (both taught by legends that built pinball before they did).  So I didn't take this advice, though I had my reason.  It felt like cardboard just wasn't stiff enough, and I was losing power when the ball used it's energy flexing the cardboard (hence why the ball wasn't getting through the loop everytime).  Well, after painfully building it in metal with walls on both sides, it worked only marginally better.  I'm realizing that a 4" diameter is just too large for the ball speed, plus the exit isn't nearly tight enough so the exit can sometimes aim well at the VUK, other times not so much.  So, I've re-made the loop (YET AGAIN) out of cardboard (YET AGAIN), but this time going with a much tighter 3" diameter loop.  I've made the entrance nice and wide (easy to aim) with a chamfer to direct the ball into the path, and then the exit is nice and tight (just slight clearance) to make sure the ball goes to the same path everytime.  It seems to be working a lot better just from tossing the ball into it, but to really stiffen it up I've gone ahead and brushed on elmer's wood glue all over it.  My thinking is that I'll be mimicking the same process as Papier-mâché (which creates a nice hard surface when applied to soft newspaper).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papier-m%C3%A2ch%C3%A9

Ideally I wanted to use epoxy (and maybe my final ramp will), but this is a good test (plus epoxy resin isn't cheap).  We'll see how it looks in the morning after it's cured.

TOO big of a loop :-(

 Wet ramp: