This Williams AZTEC Pinball Machine Is SO Beat Up.. But They CLAIM It Works! - After 45 Years????

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Joe's Classic Video Games back with another cool pinball repair video for you this evening. We are working on this cool Williams Aztec pinball machine. Now this thing has a very special place in history, kind of, a little bit. This was the first game that Williams turned into a solid state game, but they only did 10 prototypes and none of them were released. I believe most of them are out there floating around where everybody knows where they're at, but when Williams went from electromechanical to digital, this was the game that was on the line. So they made a prototype of this game that was their first digital game, but they didn't release it. So that's kind of cool. I have never had this particular cabinet, but I gotta tell you, just looking at it, it looks pretty cool to me. The art's pretty neat. So you got this Aztec guy here in the middle. He's like part hawk or something and, you know, they got the typical bonus ladder is what it's called a lot of times. It has the, kind of, the Spanish art. I guess that would be Aztec art, right? It's got a cool spinner. That's pretty wild. I'll bet on the other side there's, like, a mirror of that and it makes both of them appear whenever it spins. That's the only reason they'd have one of them on one side. Same old setup with the three pop bumpers, but they are at the top of, like, an Aztec pyramid. When you shoot the ball, looks like all it can do is go through one of three rollovers at the top. So that's cool. And then if you make this left spinner shot, it goes back out to the top. Some of the bally ones were just like that, too. I'm sure they all, kind of, did the same thing. And then you have this little area over here on the right. If you make that shot, it lands here and then there is a kicker to kick it back out. It'll be interesting to see how that kicks it out. It looks like, if you look at the dirt, it's going to kick it right into that pop bumper. They have done the double rubber thing on the slingshots. That was very common back in the day. People would put two of those on there. I always take them off, throw them in the trash, put one on it. And then there are just four stand-ups here at the bottom and that's it. There's not a ton going on, but that's an EM. You got a spinner shot. You got your standard layout down here. They call this an Italian bottom. Did you know that? This is called an Italian bottom. Whenever you have an in-lane that feeds the flippers and one out lane. The standard, you know, real classic one. Now you might say, oh, they're all like that. They're not all like that. A bunch of them are different, but they call it that supposedly because in Italy, that's the style that the players really liked. And so there was some distributor in Italy that kept complaining that they weren't like that. And so you got the designers. Now I was never a designer, so this may all be nonsense, but you got the designers going, hey, design that one with an Italian bottom. They're complaining again. Supposedly that's where it came from. But yeah, cool game. The art's awesome. And it's one of these Williams with an incredibly long list of coils of score reels there. I think there's really only five of them. And then there's this fake one here that the little sticker is missing from. But it looks like you can get a really long score because they put five score reels and one fake one. So let's take the glass off first and see what it looks like inside. All right. So it's not super complex in the bottom. You've got the traditional thing where you've got the two stepper units and just a handful of coils. I mean relays. Got a game over interlock relay here. I'm going to turn you sideways. Whoa, you made it. You've got the ball index relay. Now you're upside down. The outhole relay, the player reset relay, the reset relay, the coin relay, and the lock relay in the back. It looks a little toasty like usual. And then you've got the tilt relay, the extra ball relay, the 10 cent relay, the 25 cent relay, and the coin setup relay. So that's coin type stuff. You've got the score motor, which on these is just a simple little thing. Eight cams. And you've got the typical chimes. They look like they've seen better days, but those will ring again. Don't worry about it. Look at the... Here, let's do this. Look at this one. The wire's cut off. Plunger's missing and everything. We'll get it. So here's the one that you can... that still has the plunger in it. Oh boy, that doesn't sound too good. What in the world? Oh, here's the plunger. I found it. Okay, so one of the chimes still sounds decent. You've got a bunch of Jones plugs, and then you have electromechanical dust all over everything. Everything's cool. Looks good to me. Here, you want to see something go back how it ought to be? That's not a pinball. It's actually too small to be a pinball. Bam. That's how it ought to be. The coin door has had the coin max removed and one of the coin chutes removed, but we'll probably end up setting it on free play. Or you know what? I think the gentleman... I think he said actually that he wants us to try to get it to work on coins again. So we'll see about that. Underneath the play field, remember how I said, oh, there's not a ton on it, but look under the play field. There's a ton of equipment on it. So you've got a bonus unit here. I assume that's a bonus unit. Why yes, it is a bonus unit. You've got the two flippers. This one has some creative hackerage going on. That's shango level hackage there. He always finds all the crazy hacks that people have done. Two kickers. That all looks good. Now, whenever you mess with these though, you see things like this. Like, see how the one kicker has an orange wrapper and the three thumper bumpers have orange wrappers, but this kicker has a replacement wrapper. You know, so everything's been redone at some point. Stuff's been replaced, burned up, and got fixed. That's just how it is. No big deal though. I don't see anything bad yet. Everything looks pretty solid. So if we do this, C relay, E relay, T relay, Z relay, A relay. Ooh, it spells Aztec! Change relay. That's like the alternating relay. Double bonus relay, shooter relay, and probably bonus relay. So there's an Aztec element to it. That's pretty cool. I'll bet that's fun. Yeah, all this looks nice. I mean, it's dirty and stuff, but it's all there and doesn't look all that hacked up other than this little bit here. That's to hold the plunger on. They've got something rigged up. We'll figure that out whenever we work on it, on that part of it. Yeah, it all looks good. Nothing to complain about. Nothing to get hung about like John Lennon said. All right, let's look in the back box. So here is the back box. One of the things the customer would like us to do is make them a wood back door for it. So we're going to do that. The only thing about the back door being gone is it makes them really dirty and it fades the wires a lot more. Now this one, since it's a, you know, a fairly modern EM, it was 1976, it's not quite as bad as some of the really old ones you find sometimes that have the back door missing. So, and ultimately it's no big deal. A lot of times I don't need to trace wires back here anyway. I just need to fix stuff. This is a very common thing that you run into. See how this is, is off. So that went like right there, but it snapped. So that top blade there is not connected to anything. See how this one next to it is still connected. That one's still connected. That one's still connected. And wait a minute now. Wait a minute now. Oh hell. What have we here? Like a glove? Like a glove? So the solder just came loose. That's crazy. Look at this. I have seen this before. So this is the solder job from the factory. So the solder was just glopped on the top and at some point it broke and the whole thing popped loose. So we'll fix that. I'm sure all the rest of them are just fine. It won't be no problem. So that's a very common thing. So up here I see some hackery, there's some hackage going on here. Now this is what you would call your, this might be, there's two things that people do with this. Sometimes they do this because the wires are stripped and sometimes they do this because something went wrong with that one. So they pulled it out of another machine and then they just, you know, twisted the wires together into this machine. So how would we know? The score reel, to my eye at least, doesn't look a different color. So did that come out of another machine? These have a blue wrapper. Just have to, uh, yeah. Okay. Blue wrapper, blue wrapper, blue wrapper, blue wrapper. That looks a lot more faded than the other one. So that's probably one they took out of another machine. I don't know. Doesn't really matter. We'll fix it. We'll fix it, people. Uh, ooh, there's a sticker on the side. Aha! Well, wait a minute. Nope. I think it's original. Just look, it says a thousand and nine thousand unit. And I said aha because the one next to it says ten thousand unit instead of ten thousand to ninety nine thousand. Um, but the other ones say the same thing. They say, so it says ten thousand to ninety thousand. So does that one. So it's probably original. Uh, no big deal. Everything here looks cool. Just needs gone through and fixed up. Um, there is no way in heck any of this is going to work the way that it is. See these here too? That's the little insulation there. So one of those goes here. There's another one that must have slid off because it got changed at some point. So no big deal though. Yeah, everything looks cool. It looks like everything's here. It just needs to be cleaned and fixed up. And um, that's that. But like I said, there's no way this thing will do anything. So I'm going to plug it up though because uh, we'll just see what we're starting with. Now if I'm fixing one of these for myself that I'm going to sell or something. The police have arrived again. The church across the street, they help people by letting homeless people sleep in front of the daycare. And then the police had to come out because, you know, something's going down. So anyway, um, I think, yeah, we'll plug it up and we'll see, uh, we'll see if, uh, if it does anything. I didn't used to ever do that. If it was my own machine, I would not do that. I just, you don't have to fix anything, everything anyway. But I'm trying to think of it the way the customer thinks of it. So the customer, you, of course they're going to plug it in. They want to see, they, you know, they want to see if it works. Whenever people, you know, buy an old radio and then the radio repair guys get all mad. Oh God, don't plug it in. That's the worst thing you can do. Look, people, everybody has plugged in all of those radios. Unless you find it at the top of a barn with 10 inches of dust on it, more than this, the damn thing's been plugged in recently. Every time somebody sees it, they're plugging it in to see if it works. So, you know, and on an EM, if you, if you kind of know what's going on, I kind of a little bit know what's going on. I don't want to call myself an expert, but if, if I plug it in and something locks on, I'm going to turn it off, you know, before it burns something up. Worst case, if it does burn something up, I can fix it. So, so just for giggles, we'll plug it up and see how the thing plays. Like it's going to play. All right. So I set it back down. Sometimes they're turned on when you plug them in. So I'll do the one-handed squeeze here. This is dangerous, by the way. Don't do this. If you, uh, oh, look at this. What the hell? Here, let me electrify that. To hell with it, people. I'm gonna put the camera down and do it with two hands so I don't get killed. You'll just have to deal with it if the thing's turned on when I come back. All right. It doesn't seem that, doesn't seem that it was turned on. There's electrical tape on the plate. This ain't great. I wonder if the power's off on the wall. I think the power might be off on the wall. We'll see. All right. So it may lock a bunch of crap on if it does, we're turning it right back off. Okay. Power's off. Okay. Here we go. We're going over by the police. Okay. So I'm going to flip on the power on the wall. I didn't hear anything burn up, so it's probably still turned off. All right. So if it does something crazy, we're turning it right back off. All right. So something's locked on and it's playing some kind of exotic music with no power on. Sounds Japanese. Okay. It's not the coin door coil. Is it inside? Oh, it's in the back box. Look at the fourth player score. It was the, the, the second reel there was doing crazy stuff. Maybe it was just trying to get back to zero or something. All right. So interestingly enough, it is at zero, which means that at some point it reset. So maybe it will play. Let's see. It says we have 20 credits. I don't smell anything burning up. I mean, I do smell the faint smell of grease and dust crackling a little bit, but that's to be expected. All right. So that's, none of this is going to do anything because they're all at zero. So let's see on these. I was wrong. Wow. A couple of them did go around back to zero. It says ball and play one. First player can play. Oh man. This one's ready to go. That right flipper bouncing a little bit. Okay. Let's do the one handed play here. I can't play it too much because the, uh, we are scoring ball two and I laughed about it. Look at it. It's been holding on so long. It can't help it. It can't help it that it's ugly. It just wants to play. It can't help it that it's been a booze. One of the chimes works. Play four. I am kind of amazed. Ball and play five. That's pretty incredible. The thing's been holding on for so long. It's still working. They've been limping it along and it finally made its way to paradise. All right. So, uh, that's, uh, that's not bad. I mean, it's actually still playing. You know, I honestly believe that the quality of the gameplay would increase if you just, um, if you just played it a little bit, cause it would work all of the relays and they clean themselves. The score, the score reels, they kind of clean themselves. Like the wipers and everything and the switches will do the same thing. You know, just playing it would probably make it play better, but it needs a lot of work. So we got, uh, we got our work cut out for us. All right, folks, it's viewer, viewer mail time. Now this is not really a viewer. This is a corporate sponsor. We got this from new wave toys. They contacted me and wanted to see if I wanted to try out this thing. Cause they know I like old school stuff. So if you want to send me something, that's our address. We're not soliciting things. We don't need anything, but people like to send people stuff. Sometimes we get letters. Um, you know, we usually try to show you everything that we get in, but we got this. I think maybe we'll make it where this is featured in this Aztec video since Coca-Cola is so old school anyway. Right? Yes. I'm trying to cut it open with a screwdriver. Look, look, people, I don't want to hear no crap. Okay. I got it enough open. I think I can probably get the top off. You know, this feels real like solid though. They probably doubled. It's double boxed. I'm never going to be able to do it with one hand. So here is our, our sponsor for the, uh, the Bali, the Williams Aztec. Do not fork this side, this side up. Fragile. They kind of, they kind of made it, uh, they kind of made it like you're, you're actually buying the vending machine. The box seems to mimic the vending machine box. That's how pinball machine boxes look. So like, whenever you get big appliances, you know, big coin up stuff. Okay. So let me pull it out. Yeah. Look how cool this is. So this is, it's meant to be like the shipping box that the shipping crate that the, uh, the full size drink machine would come in. I get, you know, obviously they can't read this and it doesn't really matter which side's up on this, but, you know, cause that's inside the box, but pretty cool. So it is a new way of vending replica vending machine, mini fridge. Now, usually we get contacted by people all the time wanting us to do videos on stuff. And we don't really do it very often because it doesn't have anything to do with our channel usually, you know, so we have saved you from so many ads and videos that you wouldn't believe. Now the ads you get that YouTube just adds in that are for, for medication and stuff. I look, I have nothing to do with that. Right. Um, but, uh, so anyway, the gentleman contacted us about that and I was like, that'd be kind of cool. So they were out of this, this, this regular Coke one and they had the new Coke one, but I kind of liked this one. So it took a little while to get here, but I think they were having more of them made. So it says Coca-Cola replica vending machine, mini fridge, replica distributor, mini refrigerator. Yeah, that's right. I can read French. So anyway, it's, it's a copy of the old school Coke machines that you see everywhere, or you used to see everywhere. I guess they're not as common anymore. Um, very cool. Let me pull that out of the box. Features replica Coca-Cola classic vending machine and one sixth scale to 12 ants to 12 ounce can capacity, mini fridge, authentic reproduction, constructive with only quality materials, magnetically sealed illuminated door with integrated prop, mini can storage and hopper functional mini coin Mac credit and drink selection, push buttons, replica dollar acceptor, non-functional error, correct art and advertising slogan. You can't beat the feeling three-way power switch. It's UL certified and it's official product, official licensed product comes with a warranty. Um, very cool. I'll tell you the boxing is nice. If you're a Coca-Cola person, see, I don't drink, uh, liquor. I drink these soft drinks. There it is. Look at it in all of its glory. Very cool. Let me get it out of there. Well, it's pretty cool. I got to tell you, it's kind of heavy, which is cool. I don't know how many of you heathens, uh, have ever tried to pick up a Coke machine. We had somebody give us a full size Coke machine once and we didn't really want it, but we got it with some arcade games. So we put it out behind our shop and plugged it in and, uh, sold it on Craigslist to somebody. We just had it sitting on the sidewalk acting like it was like supposed to be there and nobody noticed. Um, so it's, it's kind of heavy and it has rubber feet. So it like, it doesn't move very easily, which kind of gives the illusion that it's a real drink machine. And look, they've made the, the door hinges just like, or similar at least to how the, the real one is. That's pretty cool. If you're not familiar with this New Wave Vending Company, they do, uh, I don't know if it's New Wave Vending. I think they, they might call themselves New Wave Toys. Um, let me see. Was it New Wave Toys? Let me see. Let me see. Let me see. Yeah. New Wave Toys. Wanted to make sure I got that right. Um, they've done a lot of reproduction arcade games like this. So that are, that are smaller ones. So I think there is a magnet. Yeah. There's a magnet, some kind of magnet that holds it shut. That's pretty cool. New Wave Vending. So I believe this is actually a functioning mini fridge, but it also will dispense little tiny Coke cans that are to scale. So the detail is pretty cool. I've probably told this story before, but I remember one time whenever I was a kid, I was at a, um, my mom was at Kmart and she was at Kmart and I, I wanted to get a drink out of the drink machine. So I went up the sidewalk at the mall, the strip mall that this Kmart was at. And so I go up and around the corner and then, uh, and this place is still down on South Boulevard. I know right where it was. And there was an Eckerd's groceries, uh, Eckerd's, um, um, drug store there. And so out in front of the Eckerd's was a Coke machine or I think it was Coke machine. And so they're sitting out front. And so, you know, whenever you're a kid, a lot of times you just press the button without putting any money in. So I can't remember if I put money in it or if I just pressed the button, but I pressed the button and drink started coming out over and over and it just kept going. Now I've, I've worked on all kinds of stuff like this. I'm not really sure how that happened, but I'm, I've, I've talked with my brother just to make sure that I'm not tripping and just made this up in my head. No, it actually happened. So they started coming out and I'm standing there trying to get the, all the drinks out. And I mean, we're up to like nine of them, right? And so I send Donnie and he goes and gets a shopping cart. He comes back and we start filling up the shopping cart with it. And this thing is just going, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You pull it out. And then it's boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. He pulled another one out over and over again. So we must've, we must've emptied one of the entire things inside, but we ended up getting like 30 or 35 drinks out of it. So anyway, I always think about that every time I mess with one of these. This one's so real, it reminds me of that. Okay. So let's see if we can put it together and plug it up. Okay. So they sent me some miniature dollars and some miniature quarters here. It's pretty cool people. All right. So we'll see if we can put some money in it. I can't quite, my hand's too big. Let's see here. They gave you these tweezers just for this. Maybe I can pick one of them up with some tweezers. I dropped it on the floor. Well, I can't quite, you know, if I just hit the button twice, it, uh, it thinks there's a credit on it. Okay. So you don't have to put the little quarters in it, but from what I understand, they do work. Okay. So which one do we want? Let's see here. We want Coca-Cola or Coke, or we could get, hey, I know we'll get Coca-Cola. That was the, that was the Hitchcock shot there for you. That's right folks. It comes complete with the cans. What a cool little toy. It took my money. Oh, it's in there somewhere. See, this is when you start shaking the machine, gave me my money and then they come out and they kick you out. Let's try it again. Let's see if it's all jammed up. Oh, there it is. I got it. All right. So then you, you write to the vendor and you get your 50 cents back. All right. So I got to say that's a pretty cool toy. And also you're not gonna be able to tell, but it's getting cold in there. Oh, it's freezing. There's a little mat. I guess that's what that is. And there's a shelf. So you can put two, uh, Coca-Cola's in here. Now people, you know, you don't necessarily have to put Coke in there. You can put other beverages, any, anything you wanted to keep refrigerated. So there you go. So that's really cool. So thank you. New wave toys. I think I will put a link down below. If you folks would like one of these yourself, you can go buy one. They're pretty sweet. Um, they have a bunch of other stuff too. So check them out. I like that they're making pretty quality stuff now, long-term, I don't know, maybe, maybe long-term it's not quality, but I've never heard anything bad about them and I've been hearing about them for a while. So I kind of wanted to get one of them to check it out. So, uh, I was excited to get this one. Who knows what they'll have next? Maybe have they done a change machine? That would be really cool. Like a little miniature change machine. I think it'd be cool. But, uh, yeah, check the link down below. Maybe you can get one of these for yourself or check out their other items. New wave vending, new wave toys, quality product. All right, folks. So that's it for this one. We got a good little look at it and even got to play it a little bit. So next time we'll start cleaning through it, but we don't, you know, all we're going to be doing is preventative maintenance basically just because it already works. So, uh, maybe we'll find something that doesn't work as we, uh, as we work through it. Boy, that Neo Geo is cool. It's a cool, cool game. Um, and of course we'll have to clean up the play field and everything. The cabinet art's kind of cool on these too. It has a pyramid on the side. Very cool. All right. So leave your comments below. Make sure to give us a thumbs up for taking the trouble to film it for you. We didn't have to do that. And, uh, check out my brother, Donnie. He has his own channel here on YouTube. Joey and I work on arcade games, spinball machines, jukeboxes. My brother, Donnie works on old cars, old vehicles, old buildings, you know, old cars are old vehicles, but you get the point. Uh, and I'm over there with him on his channel a lot of times having a good time. So we'll see you over there, but we'll see you back in about two days where we'll continue working on this Aztec.