Boomerang (Bally 1974)

This table has a few innovations (details below) built into it including:

Accurate spacial sound positioning for playfield objects with stereo or quad playfield speakers

Score motor based reel resets that exactly simulate a real EM

Animated spinner drive rod

Top arch ball hit and rolling sounds

Apron side drain hit and rolling sounds

Newly recorded sounds from Tropic Fun and Darling

PinballY High Score File

As usual for my tables, holding down the left flipper button for a few seconds after loading the table and before game play will bring up the Options Menu. Step through the Options with the left flipper button and select Options with the right flipper button.

The table has A-D targets that when hit light up the A-D rollovers in the captured ball lanes.  If all are lit, the Special lights at the top of the captured ball lanes turn on.  Hitting the targets at the top of the captured balls when the Special Lights are lit awards the Special.  All lights reset with a ball drain.

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This table is the first to use new sound Subs with equations that accurately position a table object’s sound at its playfield location.  The new sound Subs also provide Constant Power pans and fades.  They are in effect for all of VPX’s Preferences / Audio Options.

The table options menu gives you the option of setting up the playfield speakers in one of three configurations:  Stereo front/rear (front playfield sounds come from the front speaker and rear playfield sounds come from the rear speaker), stereo Left/Right and quad Surround Sound.  In desktop mode, the stereo Left/Right configuration is automatically selected.

The table has a score motor routine that calculates the value of every reel and sets them back to zero stepping once for each score motor position in groups of 5.  While this has no bearing on game play, it exactly mimics EM score motor reel resets.  This works in both desktop and cab modes.

The table includes a B2S backglass with: sound1=””, sound2=”” . . .  sound10=”” added to each score reel in the table (open B2S in WordPad and hand edit each) and each reel has the delay set to 0 ms.  This removes all of the reel click sounds created by B2S so that the backglass doesn’t make grinding noises when setting reels.  It also removes delays in reel resets induced by the B2S delay settings.

The spinner rod is just too cool, thanks to Bord for the primitives.  Rip the spinner and you’ll see what I mean.

The table has a new feature that makes a realistic sound when the ball hits and rolls along the steel top arch of the table.  This is a sound that most EM tables lack and those few that have it, implement it into the plunger fire sound file.  This feature takes into account the ball’s position and velocity.

There is also a new apron rolling sound routine to mimic the sound the ball makes as it hits and rolls along the top edge of the apron after a side drain.

New sound files were recorded from my EM’s to replace the stock sound files that we all use.  I especially like the “boing” sound from the spring on the plunger fire sound and the dissimilar left and right flipper sounds and buzzes.  If you want to increase or decrease the volume of any sound, just edit the last value in the PlayfieldSound or PlayfieldSoundAB variables.

Lastly, MJR has added EM high score display capabilities to PinBallY.  Boomerang saves a special .pinballyhighscores file that can be read by Pinbally and used to display the game’s high scores on the DMD during the front end’s selection mode.  I think this is the first EM to take advantage of this functionality?

Thanks to Whirlwind for the awesome sound routines and hours of testing, Bord for the primitives and lighting effects, Editoy for the plastics and TXT11 for testing.