The Shadow

Coverage: partial. Every address is enumerated and named, and construction, polarity, mechanism and variant facts are validated from the factory operations manual, pinned PinMAME and the retained VPW table, and no conflict is open. It stays partial on spatial placement alone:

• Every coordinate comes from one table lineage. The VPW build and its older Skitso ancestor share most of their geometry, so their agreement does not confirm it independently.
• The manual's location drawings have legible callouts. The main lamp drawing (printed 2-39) has been fitted to 29 table lamps, every one within 0.015, but no validation rule has been applied yet, and the switch and solenoid/flasher drawings have not been fitted.
• Flashers 21, 22 and 23 each print two playfield sockets, and the table models one.
• Flashers 17 and 18 are not placed: the VPW table models no bulb or dome for them.
• The ramp-ring lamps 81-84 are placed on the table's ring models, not bulbs; the drawing is consistent with 81 and only roughly checks 82-84 (to within 0.04-0.06).
• The playfield G.I. sockets come only from the table's G.I. collections.

Identity and drivers

• Midway Manufacturing Company under the Bally name, model 50032, November 1994 (IPDB 2528, OPDB G4jPX-M85YZ). WPC-Security (WPC-S) hardware with a DCS sound board and a 128x32 DMD. A five-ball game.

• PinMAME drivers: ts_lx5 (parent) and nineteen clones, all declared in src/wpc/sims/wpc/prelim/ts.c with wpc_mSecurityS and one shared tsGameData:

  • the Bally LX-4/LX-5, LA-2/LA-4/LA-6, LF-4/LF-6 (French), LH-6 and LM-6 ('Mild') game ROMs;
  • the community d* LED-ghost-fix builds and the LH-6 text-index patch;
  • the PA-1 prototype (ts_pa1, plus its ghost-fix ts_pa2), which differs only in its U2 sound ROM.

  All are the same physical machine; no retained source says whether the prototype machines differed.

Evidence used

• Operations manual 16-50032-101 (183 pages, IPDB Manual_Bally_1994_The_Shadow.pdf, an image-only 300 dpi scan that IPDB notes is missing printed pages 2-47 and 3-9), OCR'd with Windows OCR for search. The lamp, switch and solenoid/flasher tables, their location lists, the DIP chart and the mechanism assembly pages are transcribed with native-resolution crops under evidence/excerpts/bally.the-shadow.1994/.
• VPW table The Shadow VPW Mod (Bally 1994) 1.0 (VPU file 31690, submitted September 6): runtime bindings and all geometry. It refactors Sixtoe's VR mod of Skitso's detail mod of Alessio's original table, with a new physical build and a rebuilt Battlefield.
• Older Skitso table (Alessio, Skitso, Markrock76, Bord; Thalamus sound patch): the same bindings; its script is the only one that ties flashers 17/18 and the ramp-ring lamps 81-84 to objects on the playfield, which are glow images; the ring lamps' bindings identify which table ring model is which.
• Pinned PinMAME 8371478a: address routing, the inverted-switch mask, the Battlefield motor model and the magnet countdown.

Controller facts a recreation needs

• Switches use WPC column/row numbering 11-88, coin door 1-8, Fliptronic 111-118. 83 is not used, so there is no Mini Right Standup 2 switch, although lamp 73 (Mini Right Standup 2) is fitted. The mini-playfield inset of the 2-41 switch drawing labels the right standups 84, 83 and 81 and draws no 82; its "83" is a misprint for 82.
• Opto switches. The printed shading marks these as optos: 31-33, 36-38, 41-47 and 85-88, plus the cabinet flipper optos. PinMAME's mask for this game normalizes exactly the matrix set (columns 3 = 0xE7, 4 = 0x7F, 8 = 0xF0), and the Fliptronic column is complemented by the platform, so public 1 always means beam broken / ball present / button pressed. Do not invert again.
• Cabinet buttons.
  • Gun Trigger 11 launches the ball; there is no plunger.
  • The blue Phurba buttons above the flipper buttons are 34 (left) and 12 (right).
  • Start is 13 and Buy-In 23; their lamps are 88 and 87.
• Solenoids. 1-28 follow the printed table.
  • 19 and 20 are printed as flashers but are the Battlefield motor (right and left).
  • The Fliptronic upper-left circuits drive the magnet (35) and the Battle drop target's knock-down coil (36). 33/34 are the real upper right flipper.
  • 45-48 are the lower flippers.
  • 51 is a PinMAME simulator channel (the magnet countdown, see below), and 37-44, 49 and 50 are unused.
• Lamps 11-88 are all fitted. The ramp rings 81-84 use a 24-8855 bulb that the manual's legend does not decode.
• G.I. Strings 1 (bottom), 2 (top left) and 5 (top right) are playfield strings with #44 bulbs. Strings 3 and 4 ("Insert") are backbox strings with #555 bulbs.
  • The power driver board connector list (printed 3-28) says the opposite: J120 (strings 3 and 4) "to playfield" and J121 (strings 1, 2 and 5) "to insert".
  • The G.I. table is recorded. It is printed three times with the same columns, bulbs and names, the VPW script lights only strings 1, 2 and 5 on the playfield, and the connector list misprints two J121 pins.
• DIP bank SW1-SW8 sets the country (America, European, French, German, Spain) per the chart on PDF page 2.

Mechanisms

Trough and gun launch

• Five balls sit on the trough optos 41-45 with Top Trough 46 above them. Ball Release (13) ejects one into the shooter lane, onto the Shooter switch (48).
• Pulling the gun trigger (11) makes the ROM fire the auto launch (1).

Phurba ramp diverters

• Each ramp has a dagger-shaped diverter with one coil per direction: left 3/4, right 5/6.
• Each side's blue button toggles it.
• The branch the ball takes is reported by 75/76 (left ramp) or 77/78 (right ramp).

Inner Sanctum

• The center wall target is an extended target raised by solenoid 8 and pulled down by 16. Switch 51 closes while it is down.
• Behind it a magnet (35) sits under an opto (33) that sees the ball.
• Locks. Hitting the wall target lights them; three balls in the rear-right lockup (63-65, kickout 2) start Shadow Multi-ball.

Battle drop and Battle popper

• A single drop target is raised by 25 and knocked down by 36. Switch 55 closes while it is down.
• Behind it, the Battle popper (68, solenoid 14) lifts the ball onto the Battlefield.

Battlefield mini-playfield

• Kicker head. It rides a slide driven by a DC motor through the A-16120 motor control board: solenoid 19 drives it right and 20 left. Opto boards under the assembly mark the left (37) and right (38) ends.
• Kick. The head carries its own coil (15) and an opto (36) that sees a ball in front of it.
• Play.
  • The player steers the head with the flipper buttons, and it fires automatically.
  • Targets: the side standups 71-74 (left) and 81, 82, 84 (right), then the four back drop targets 85-88, reset by 24.
  • The ball leaves through the Mini Exit Tube (58).
• PinMAME model. A 19-step linear mech: 19 alone moves toward position 18 and closes 38, and 20 alone moves toward 0 and closes 37. It runs only when mechanics bit 0 is enabled, as the retained tables do with HandleMechanics = 1.
• Table simplification. The tables show the head at one of nineteen positions from Controller.GetMech(0) and pulse 36 from walls at those positions. They never fire solenoid 15.

Other devices

• Left and right ejects (66/12 and 67/11).
• Slingshots (61/9 and 62/10).
• Three Fliptronic flippers (lower pair and upper right).
• A backbox knocker (7).

Manual and table quirks worth knowing

• Lamp grid misprints. Cells 62 and 63 print "MINI LEFT STANDUP 23" (number box "2") and "…12". The locations list names them standups 3 and 2.
• Magnet and knock-down transistors. The main solenoid table prints 35 on Q2 and 36 on Q7. The flipper block prints the same connectors on Q1 and Q5, and gives Q2/Q7 to the upper right flipper.
• Coil and assembly numbers.
  • Item 08's coil is printed AL-23-800 in the locations list and the extended-target parts list, and AE-23-800 in the solenoid table.
  • The back flashers print bulb number 22-8802 where the legend reads 24-8802 (#906).
  • The slingshot assembly lists B-9362-R-3 as the left coil and B-9362-L-2 as the right.
• Solenoid 51. PinMAME publishes a magnet countdown there (8 frames after the magnet drops), but only when mechanics bit 1 is enabled. The retained tables use bit 0 only, so it stays 0 for them and for LibPinMAME's default.
• Table quirks.
  • Both retained scripts pulse the Always Closed switch 24 when a Battlefield drop target falls.
  • The older Skitso script swings the upper right flipper from the lower right callback; the VPW script gives it its own sURFlipper callback.
  • The VPW table maps the ring lamps 81-84 and flashers 17, 18 and 26-28 to helper lights off the playfield.
  • Flashers 21-23 and 26-28 are placed on the VPW table's Flupper dome bases. Flashers 17 and 18 have no dome or bulb object; only the older Skitso script binds them, to the glow images F117 and F118, which are not sockets.
  • The ring lamps 81-84 have no bulb object either; the Skitso script binds them to the glow sprites F181-F184, which are not placed. The table does model the four rings themselves ("shadowring" primitives named Anello..., Italian for ring), each within 0.013 of one F18x sprite.
  • Ramp-ring placements. All four use the center of the table's ring model for that lamp. The table models no bulb, so where the socket sits within each ring is unknown.
    • 81: a least-squares fit of the printed 2-39 drawing to 29 table lamps (RMS 0.005) puts callout 81's arrow tip on the corner of a bracket at the left ramp entrance. The ring model maps onto insert 78, about 0.02 beside that bracket and 0.04 from the tip. The drawing is consistent with the ring but does not show where it sits.
    • 82-84: the drawing shows these only in its ramp inset, whose x and y scales differ by about 21% and whose control lamps are far from the rings, so it is consistent with the ring models to within 0.04-0.06 but cannot confirm them.
  • The diverter, Battlefield kicker-head, slide-motor and mini drop-target reset coils are projections derived from the geometry of the parts they move.

What would complete the record

• A least-squares fit of the lamp (2-39), switch (2-41) and solenoid/flasher (2-43) location drawings, with each callout checked against its placement, to validate the positions.
• The positions of the second sockets of flashers 21, 22 and 23, and of the sockets of flashers 17 and 18 (measured on the printed 2-43 drawing).
• An independent check of the ramp-ring positions, for example a photograph of the ramps from above.
• A playfield G.I. socket list or a survey of a real machine.