Ripley's Believe It or Not!

Identity and evidence precedence

This definition covers the single 2004 physical product and all 25 PinMAME 3.00, 3.01, 3.02, 3.10, and 3.20 English/French/German/Italian/Spanish drivers. The optional UK three-post board is configuration-dependent hardware, not another product. The known-working VPW v1.3 script is controller-facing semantic and causal ground truth; the official Stern manual governs physical construction, wiring, parts, coils, bulbs, and boards; pinned PinMAME governs public routing, clone identity, and native display layouts. Runtime traces validate the exact ROM, public callbacks, GI, and display availability without treating inactivity as proof of absence.

Four-ball path, shooter, scoop, and lock

Four balls initialize on trough switches 11-14. Q1 ejects the ball at 14 through stacking opto 15, and the proven table advances the remaining balls at 100 ms intervals. Shooter switch 16 supports manual plunge and Q2 auto-launch. Side-scoop entry 28 leads to held VUK switch 29 and Q12 eject. The Vari-VUK is a separate ball device on 52/Q3. Q5's proven LockDiverter feeds the visible lock, whose top/middle/bottom seats are 44/45/46; Q13 ejects from that lock path. Preserve sustained occupancy, actual containment, hidden paths, and release causality rather than pulsing all ball-position switches.

Seven-detent vari-target

The 515-7322-00 vari-target has seven mechanical stops and three optos on board 520-5234-00. The proven script uses a 267-unit lever, 50-unit target width, 0.3 spring factor, 600-unit/s return, and sensor thresholds at path-length 1/6 for 42, 1/2 for 43, and 3/4 for 41. During travel it clears all three and asserts only the deepest crossed threshold; at boot it deliberately initializes 42 and 43 closed with 41 open. Q21 resets toward the 15-degree home angle. Recreate physical detents, spring/ball energy transfer, threshold order, and the overlapping boot state. The adjacent VUK 52/Q3 must remain a distinct ball device.

Idol Eye and Shrunken Head magnets

The lower Idol Eye path closes opto 24. Q19 drives the Idol magnet to hold and throw the ball, while Q22 separately powers the opto emitter as a switched-ground LED; do not render Q22 as a decorative lamp. The Shrunken Head closes opto 23 and uses Q20 to hold then throw the ball. The proven virtual implementation samples at 150 ms, centers on tick 3, kills velocity/spin on tick 4, and releases/cools after tick 12 with bounded upward correction. Those timings are a reliable virtual baseline, while the manual's physical assemblies govern placement and field interaction.

Flippers and Whitestar public-output traps

Q14 is the ordinary upper-right flipper output at public solenoid 14, with DS-5/public switch 88 as its button. The working table directly drives its virtual flipper from that key; its generic sURFlipper callback is not a Whitestar remap and must not replace Q14. Physical Q15 left and Q16 right are removed from public 15/16 and moved into PinMAME's lower-flipper pairs: Q16 uses power-phase address 45 and canonical sLRFlipper callback 46, while Q15 uses power-phase 47 and canonical sLLFlipper callback 48. PinMAME synthesizes each canonical callback's hold bit whenever the power bit is active. Bind the single physical right/left devices to 46/48, never instantiate 45/47 as extra coils, and retain normally-closed EOS inputs 81/83. Public 15 is synthetic fast-flip/game-on, while public 16 is unused.

Diverters, post, pops, slings, routes, and optional hardware

The proven table binds Q4 to TempleDiv on the manual's left-ramp path and Q5 to LockDiverter on the right-ramp path. Energizing either callback rotates its collision primitive to the end position; release returns it to the start position. Recreate Q4's Temple branch and Q5's feed into lock seats 44-46, while treating ramp switches 31/53 as ball-passage sensors rather than diverter-position feedback. Q23 controls the unsensed top post. Six pop pairs are Q6/SW25, Q7/SW26, Q8/SW27, Q9/SW49, Q10/SW50, and Q11/SW51. Slings are Q17/SW59 and Q18/SW62, with two physical contacts per switch address. The upper mini-playfield has left/center/right contacts 38-40. Build every named orbit, ramp, spinner, lane, jackpot loop, head/tombstone target, and shared Tombstones 2+3 switch 32.

Q24 remains an optional, unassigned 5 V output: the exact script retains a SolKnocker routine but deliberately comments out the Q24 callback, and runtime activity proves only that public 24 can transition. A stock recreation must not invent either a physical or audible knocker. The UK 520-5068-01 board adds left/center/right posts at public 33-35; optional matrix switches 1/8 are sustained left/right UK cabinet buttons. They are rules-facing inputs, not post-position sensors, and no direct electrical/mechanical button-to-post linkage is established. Install all five items only for the UK/special configuration; a standard configuration legitimately omits them.

Lamps, GI, and four native display surfaces

All matrix lamps 1-80 are installed with the exact #555/#44 parts and matrix wiring in JSON. The matrix is eight drive columns by ten return rows, enumerated across each row. Q25-Q32 are the eight flasher channels: Q25 drives two #89 lower-pop/lower-left flashers, while Q30 drives one #89 under the upper playfield and one #906 on the right ramp. GI public 0 is one relay controlling four separately fused physical strings: F24 back panel, F25 upper/mid-right playfield, F26 upper-left/back panel/coin door, and F27 upper-right/mid-left/lower playfield. The script's GIUpdate2 suffix selects the second, modulated callback interface; it is not a second GI address. Recreate the four physical circuits but route their common controllable state through GI 0.

The machine has a main native 128x32 DMD and three independent physical 5x7 mini-DMD blocks on board 520-5236-00. The dispBION layout array exposes them in controller-index order 0 main, 1 left, 2 center, and 3 right, which is encoded explicitly in JSON. CORE_NODISP only suppresses the three small layouts from the legacy composite renderer; it does not make them virtual or absent. PinMAME also writes a backward-compatible 15x7 segment representation, and the proven script consumes that legacy view, but a new recreation should bind the three native 5x7 surfaces and avoid building a single physical 15x7 display. The boot harness received layout callbacks for indices 0-3 but pixel-frame callbacks only for the main DMD, so runtime activity of the small displays is not claimed beyond source/manual validation.

Author construction checklist

• Build four trough seats/stacking opto, manual and auto shooter, side scoop/VUK, three-seat visible lock, seven-detent vari-target and its separate VUK, both ball-throw magnets, both ramp diverters, top post, three flippers, six pops, two slings, elevated mini-playfield, all routes/targets/spinners, optional UK posts, complete lamps/flashers/GI, and all four native DMD surfaces.
• Initialize coin-door memory protect -3, trough 11-14, and vari optos 42/43 active. Preserve ball occupancy, normally-closed lower EOS contacts, vari detents and threshold order, magnet capture/release timing, moving collision, diverter/post direction, visible lock containment, and real release paths.
• Bind all matrix/dedicated/DIP inputs, every physical Q1-Q32 through its declared public address, fast-flip 15, optional AUX33-35, explicit unused compatibility positions, lamps 1-80, GI 0, and four displays. Never instantiate mirror/compatibility callbacks as extra playfield hardware.

Sources

• manual.stern-ripleys.2004: official 191-page manual SHA-256 94a94aef7437fa5f78cadddd66801e96224cfe6a5b8ff643c4c6b09d979fad9e, organized under the external manual cache with searchable text, table extraction, and rendered visual review.
• vpx.ripleys-vpwmod-1.3: exact known-working script SHA-256 3ba739ba81a3f1cad3b1a2b3a7cf7ea8db76eaf1baf4998c920f5a3d361c5ef7.
  • vpx-table.ripleys-jpsalas-1.0.3-uk: retained exact local VPX SHA-256 6c66b8cc355039ae9a4d615608802a92cd087782b16429569c87123894aadc48; the embedded script SHA-256 is 717696937a92b076620c2564982a7b514786e72fdab01d761b3b2a301346e014, the retained extraction manifest SHA-256 is 79cdb19cd01d46d795b32b7638a0f75c19bf824256de89a879d9d5328ce6b61d, and the table is explicitly UK/All-Skill.
• rom.stern-ripleys.3.20: exact external archive SHA-256 092aab171d90eda62411496b387a90de5ca4a3273997ffb64de10c322cf366d3; ROM bytes remain external.
• runtime.ripleys.boot, runtime.ripleys.boot-start, and runtime.ripleys.gameplay: separately hashed LibPinMAME traces with their evidence limits stated in JSON.

Exact-table spatial evidence and fail-closed blockers

The exact byte-preserved source for this pass is Ripley_s Believe It or Not (Stern 2004)1.0.3.vpx, SHA-256 6c66b8cc355039ae9a4d615608802a92cd087782b16429569c87123894aadc48, extracted with vpxtool git:v0.33.3. The retained 1,152-file extraction snapshot has deterministic manifest SHA-256 79cdb19cd01d46d795b32b7638a0f75c19bf824256de89a879d9d5328ce6b61d. Its playfield bounds are 952 x 2115; normalized coordinates use x=0 at the left, x=1 at the right, y=0 at the rear/backglass end, and y=1 at the apron. The table identifies itself as the UK model and includes the All-Skill extra-post configuration. It is authoritative for each named common playfield object and for its direct script semantics, but it is not evidence for a standard-machine-only installation.

The spatial overlay promotes named direct objects for the head/tombstones, spinners, ramps, mini-playfield, magnet optos, scoop/VUK, vari-target optos, shooter, EOS/flipper assemblies, slingshot collision assemblies, six pop bumpers, Q1-Q20/Q22-Q23, direct Q25-Q32 callback objects only where a retained Light or other physical object provides socket evidence, the directly exposed matrix-lamp objects that pass the same rule, and all 39 named GI Light objects. Coordinates are derived from the selected object's exact property: center for direct center-bearing objects, position for hit targets, and drag_points.centroid only for the named slingshot/TopPost collision assemblies. Q25 retains only physical Light.f25; its graphical Flasher.f25b point is withheld. Q28 uses physical Light.f28a, not graphical Flasher.f28; Q30 retains its in-bounds Light.f30 while Flasher.f30b is an explicit blocker. Q26, Q31, and lamp 16 remain unlocated pending physical/manual corroboration. All selected Flasher objects, including the out-of-bounds f27/f29/f30b/f32 callbacks, are render helpers and are not counted as sockets. Switch 32 retains two named physical target positions under one controller address; switches 41-43 intentionally share the exact overlapping vari-target opto-board anchor; switch 59 and 62 each retain one exact slingshot assembly anchor while their manual quantity remains two parallel contacts.

The definition remains schema-v2 partial. Individual trough/stacking contacts 11-15 have no per-seat geometry in the exact table's shared cvpmBallStack; lock contacts 44-46 have no reconciled per-seat sensor objects; Q21 exposes no named reset-coil actuator; graphical Flasher callbacks f25b, f26, f27, f28, f29, f30b, f31, and f32 are withheld as render-helper blockers even when their points are in bounds, while the out-of-bounds points are also withheld rather than replaced by polygon centroids; lamp 16's graphical Flasher.l16 is withheld pending physical/manual corroboration; optional UK Q33-Q35 have no named actuator geometry; lamps 33-35 and 60-62 are not exposed as named exact table objects; lamps 76-78 are collapsed to one shared back-panel render anchor and are withheld rather than falsely triplicated; and no display spatial record is asserted because schema-v2 controls display spatial records as cabinet/backbox non-playfield records. These are actionable authoring blockers, not plausibility gaps.

The exact table's Q24 routine is sound-only, whereas the retained VPW v1.3 script comments out its Q24 callback. The official manual calls Q24 optional unassigned 5 V. The canonical definition therefore marks Q24 no_physical_device and records the script conflict without inventing a stock knocker. The exact table's GI callback style also differs from the VPW modulated callback wrapper, but both drive the same public GI 0; the manual's four fused GI strings remain the physical authority.