Ronnie Raygun's

09/14/2023

Friday evening September 15th , 5-7 there will be unlimited free credits on Killer Queen out in the corner of the brewery. Come on by!

04/17/2023

Greetings all, Ronnie's is adding Payrange hardware to more pinball machines. Currently up to seventeen with 4 more to go.

04/12/2023

Today's PSA. There's a website, pinside.com, which is all things pinball including pinball rankings and they have a top 100 pinball list. Of the top ten most highly rated pinball machines (currently) Ronnie's has nine (1-9) and of the top fifteen Ronnie's has an even dozen. I suspect that Foo Fighters might hit top fifteen in the near future as well.

04/07/2023

FF code update. No major changes but scores will be reset.

04/02/2023

Alright everyone. This is why we can't have nice things. DO NOT PUT CUPS OR GLASSES ON THE POOL TABLES!

03/28/2023

New table at Ronnie's. This a a good one for sure.

03/08/2023

It's been LONG overdue but the pool tables have been re-covered.

02/27/2023

There will be a March pinball league at Ronnie's. The first three Sundays will be pingolf format with an IFPA sanctioned tournament on the 4th Sunday. If you're looking for something to do on a Sunday afternoon around 3-6 this is it! The first three weekends are a self-paced and self-scored pingolf format where you play 9 games to complete a pingolf course. On each "hole" you try to accumulate a score or accomplish an objective and however many balls it takes is your score on that hole. I also added selfie course which can be explained if you play league. For the pingolf rounds you can show up any time during a 3-4 hour window and play your games so this is a very schedule friendly league.

02/17/2023

Godzilla now has insider connect turned on. Still working details but it is on.

02/17/2023

Jerry Pinkas runs the Myrtle Beach Pinball Museum.You might also say he runs an illegal operation.ABC15 asked if he ever had minors playing pinball in the museu

02/16/2023

Greetings all, I'm catching up on game code updates at Ronnie's. Games with updated code are:

Godzilla
Jurassic Park
Elvira's HoH
Black Knight SOR
Guardians of the Galaxy
Deadpool
Batman 66
Star Wars
Aerosmith
Iron Maiden
Turtles
Avengers IQ

02/16/2023

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6_Yjk_dv34&fbclid=IwAR08ieB6c8QmnF4N2-Inb4LpbZqCWI_D53rPbMAXt6lXuUoTQpkX8LjX2M8

An unsettled writer with a fantastic mustache, Roger Sharpe (Mike Faist), finds solace and confidence in one thing he has mastered: pinball. When a police ra...

01/25/2023

New machines at Ronnie's. Two VERY fun tables.

12/17/2022

Interesting night at Ronnie's for the knockout.
Everyone was lively and enjoyed seeing each other.
Great competition until we all yielded to Jay.......Again.
Congrats to everyone who participated.
Remember the Outlanes Christmas party tomorrow!
1,Jay Ramey
2,Dan Fox
3,Tatiana Pinner
4,Rob Lambdin
4,Kyle Roden
6,Jimmy Gable
7,Paul Budko
8,Lisa Cox
9,Scott Fox
10,Chris Peek
10,Neil Cox

12/15/2022

Happy Thursday everybody!
Don't forget to come out the final Ronnie Raygun's Friday Night Knockout of the year tomorrow at 6pm.
I hope to have a great turnout, and strong competition.
A good warm up before the Outlanes Christmas Party Sunday afternoon.
See you all tomorrow night!

12/04/2022

Had fun at the Ronnie Raygun's knockout on Friday.
We welcomed Eric from the Auburn pinball gang. Thanks for coming by!
Congrats to Jay!!!
1,Jay Ramey
2,Dan Fox
3,Stephen Young
4,Tatiana Pinner
5,Lisa Cox
6,Neil Cox
7,Eric McLendon

11/19/2022

Hi everybody. Fun times at the Friday knockout! Thank you to Jeff Sanders for letting us beat the hell out of his machines. ;-) Seriously though, yes we tilted a bunch. We'll get used to the new settings and it'll be fine. Congrats to Tim, and to all who participated. This is the 4th tournament for our new friends. One more and they'll be rated. They're really improving. We all need to pitch in and coach them up. Jay was doing real well.......until Spiderman. Sorry brother. You'll kick butt tomorrow at league final!

1,Timothy Street
2,Jeff Street
3,Dan Fox
4,Jimmy Gable
5,Jay Ramey
6,Chris Peek
8,Tatiana Pinner
8,Joseph Vaughn
8,Jason Vaughn
10,Paul Budko
11,Melissa Vaughn

11/18/2022

2 hours away from a great Friday Night Knockout! Let's have some pinball and beer!!!!

11/03/2022

Hi everybody!!! Reminder about a fantastic pinball weekend ahead. We have the Stern Army Friday Night Knockout at Ronnie Raygun's tomorrow night at 6pm. Then we have the battle for the belt Saturday morning at RCMP! And on Sunday, we have the Outlanes November League qualifying. You can still join the league this month so come see us Sunday at 3!!!!! Love these pinball weekends with my pinball family!

10/25/2022

08/03/2022

New game is in, I only played 1 game because I had to bail after initial setup. Oh my word this is a good one.

04/29/2022

May pinball league, give it a shot if you can.

02/04/2022

Knockout format pinball tournament at Ronnie's tonight. Practice at 5, tournament at 6.

01/07/2022

January pinball league is on at Ronnie's. Pinball, beer, and socializing for a fun time. If you'd like to give it a shot drop by Ronnie's about 3-4 on Sunday and check it out.

12/21/2021

Come out tomorrow for our last Killer Queen Meet Up of 2021! Free play starts at 5PM. Make it festive and wear your nerdiest Christmas sweater! See you then!

09/07/2021

Killer Queen meetup at Straight to Ale tonight at 5:00! First few dozen games are free to the early birds.

08/18/2021

Amazing fun at the KQ meetup.

08/08/2021

Games of Ronnie's episode 6, Pirates of the Caribbean (POTC). This is a very highly regarded game which I purchased out of a private collection in Pennsylvania a while back. Of course I bought it sight unseen (a very common pinball thing) and had it shipped. It arrived at STA Leeman Ferry, I set it up, powered it on, and things were NOT right. CPU was acting crazy, tons of inconsistent behavior, etc... so looking around the CPU board I noticed a loose jumper wire. Apparently the early production POTC CPU boards had some issues and required lots of jumpers to make them work.

I called Stern tech support and got Chas (RIP). I described the problem and told him I had a loose wire originating at Pin Xx on U XYZ and he asked me the serial number of the board. He put me on hold and went and got a board from that specific production run and told me that that jumper went to the 4th pin in from the upper right on the CPU.

That's was good news, I had a home for that wire. The bad news was that the CPU chip was surface mount and I did not have the tools or skills to make that solder connection. Fortunately the head dude at STA worked for a high performance circuit board design company and he hooked me up with someone who could make that repair. That company has been doing complimentary surface mount repairs ever since and it's been a life saver for multiple machines.

One of the things I like about this machine is that it shoots great, is lots of fun, and I used to call it a "poor man's Medieval Madness" as it had a great bash toy that you got to destroy in the game play. You were sinking ships vs destroying castles but destroying stuff interactively on a pinball table is always fun.

08/08/2021

So a little known secret at Ronnie's is that a number of machines can be credited up using an app on your phone called Payrange.

Since things are (or were) starting to swing back from Covid I thought I'd let the secret out once again. Just download the app, link it to your credit card, turn bluetooth on, and you should be able to put credits on machines.

Note I said "should", I've had reports of some types of phones not working well with the system (but can't remember which ones) and the process can be a bit wonky and imperfect but it does work just fine most of the time.

08/07/2021

Games of Ronnie's episode 5, The Walking Dead. This is a veteran of Leeman Ferry and while it was there it was one of the most popular machines. There are two things that I LOVE about this game, the skill shot and the playfield art.

The skill shot is easy to get and when you do there's a graphic of you blowing the head off a zombie with a gun. What a great way to start a pinball game.

My love for the art is kind of a backwards compliment. The playfield is browns and blacks and while a bit drab, it hides dirt. (Duh) I've gone in to clean the playfield when it didnt even look dirty and came out with a pile of black paper towels.

The only frustrating thing about this game for me is the prison magnet which grabs the ball and more often than I like has a habit of just slamming the ball SDTM. But, that's a thing you need to know about the game. Nudge hard when the magnet is about to release the ball.

08/03/2021

Killer Queen meetup is tonight starting at 5:00. The first 20 games are free but you need to get there early because they go fast.

08/01/2021

League tournament today. The battle for the c**k begins at 3:00.

07/30/2021

Back in the day......

07/27/2021

Machines of Ronnie's episode 4. I'll admit, I'm on travel and bored so here's another table. I bought this table because I loved the theme and I have to admit, when it showed up pretty much nobody loved it. Music was good, but the game software was a work in progress. Also, people complained that the playfield layout was a ripoff of Metallica. Uhhh, Metallica is a great table, PLEASE rip it off.

Fast forward thru some software updates and it's one of my favorite games. I'm a fan of the movies and the music is awesome, my only remaining complaint is that the music doesn't start until you time out of your current mode. This is one of my go to tables right now just for sheer enjoyment.

07/27/2021

Machines of Ronnie's episode 3, Medieval Madness remake. Considered by many to be the most popular machine of all time (now calm down, I said many, not all) and a while back Planetary Pinball decides to remake it. They owned the licenses for all the parts so they could pull it off. They announced the remake at Pinball Expo and said that if they sold 1000 limited editions they would make more. They sold them all in something like 5 hours (exact time is not known to me).

I caught wind of the remake and parked myself on my usual distributors website until it popped up and bingo, I had snared one. I ended up with #137 and after a month or so of play testing and tweaking in the basement (it needed some help) I deployed it to STA Leeman Ferry.

One amusing story is that the night i unboxed it and set it up I messaged Stephen Young who lives down the mountain from me and I swear he was walking thru my basement door 2 minutes later. Not sure how he warped time and space to do that but he got there fast.

As of now the game has almost 15,000 plays on it and other than a few broken troll brackets and one dead power mosfet its been a very reliable machine. I did rebuild the flippers about 13,000 games in even though they were still flipping strong.

07/25/2021

Machines of Ronnie's episode 2. Stern Kiss. This was the first Spike system (new electronic design) I ever bought and when I got it to STA Leeman Ferry and unboxed it it took me about 10 minutes to find the power switch as it had moved from under the cabinet to under the back box.

This particular specimen has been a really reliable machine with just few broken switches in the demon head to repair over the course of years. When I went to pick it up at the shipping terminal the box had been MANGLED. I checked it out as best I could and there was a forklift fork hole in the bottom of the cabinet and a dime sized scuff on the right side. Normally I'd refuse a damaged shipment but its arrival was highly anticipated by the local pinball gang and I'd get lynched if I didn't show up with it that day. I figured no one is ever going to be lying on their back looking at the bottom of the machine so what the heck, I just refer to the hole in the cabinet bottom as an "enhanced cabinet ventilation system".