This machine was in my personal collection. It is a great machine designed by Steve Ritchie. It has great flow. I had a couple of issues with the machine and with the design though. First, when you hit the ramp (a very well designed shot) the ball travels through habitrails (which I love) into kickout holes. I found this cause a start/stop to the flow of the ball. I much prefer a ramp that flows back into the playfield or to the flippers so you keep playing. In the end, this is why I parted with this machine.
The second issue was the placement of the traffic light. this machine has a traffic light positioned sideways over the entrance of the ramp. The traffic lights where I live are positioned up and down, not sideways. This seemed silly to me. In addition, it blocked the view of the entrance to the ramp. I like to see where the ball is going in the game.
Solution: I moved the light to the left side of the game, positioned it up and down, and painted it yellow so it looks like a real stop light. I also cut off a lot of the clear protective guard on the top of the ramp to increase ball visibility. I found that the ball never few off of the ramp, so it was unnecessary in the curved section.
Here are some pictures of the customized traffic light:
You can just see the edge of the clear plastic ramp protector in the upper right corner of the second picture. It used to cover the whole corner of the ramp.
The plastic just to the right of the curve in the ramp was custom. My daughter painted it to match the other ramp plastics.
I remote mounted the batteries to avoid acid damage.
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