![]() ![]() In the case of Jungle Lord, it also allowed us to know that there were more like 400 red cabinet Jungle Lords and not 100 as was originally suspected. Allow tracking of specific game traits (like cabinet color, or other minor changes that happen throughout the production run of a game) along with serial numbers, so collectors could see trends on those game traits and understand if they were specific to the production run. Allow people with owners lists to easily incorporate my serial lists directly into their sites (using simple inline javascript and HTML) so they no longer had to maintain the “serial listing” portion of their sites.ģ. Allow submissions of serial numbers to my database which was ‘in-sync’ with IPDB games.Ģ. JA: Circle back to the original Jungle Lord owner’s list project and its inherent problems–my goal was for the new IPSND to do three things:ġ. From that, I had my first database of serial numbers.ĬD: What was the original philosophy or goal of the serial number project? ![]() Next, I got the full listing of old pinball serial numbers from the deprecated and outdated Pinball Pasture/Internet Pinball Project, from Daina Petit (you can still find the original Internet Pinball Project on if you want to peek at it). I wrote a little application that programmatically started at game number 1 and went all the way up to something like 4500 (which was the “newest” IPDB entry at the time) and screen scraped the data off the IPDB web server responses (Sorry Wolf!). I also had to get a listing of all the games on the IPDB along with pertinent info (number of players, manufacturer, release dates, etc). I knew I didn’t want to conflict with the already established Internet Pinball Database, but I used their game identification numbers as my key for simplicity sake. ASP.NET was the first challenge, Microsoft SQL Server was the second. JA: It sat for a few years until I decided that I would create the Internet Pinball Serial Number Database proper, and use it as a “practice site” for learning all the new programming technologies that interested me in my professional career. Askey’s Jungle Lord site that preceded the IPSND project. The red Jungle Lord cabinet, taken from Mr. People of course e-mailed me their serial number and I asked if the cabinet was Red or Blue and I updated the owners list until, just like every other owners list out there, I stopped updating it due to lack of interest and lack of time. I then did what everyone else did at the time for the games that they were interested in–I made a game owners list and rule sheet for Jungle Lord (archived here). The guess at the time was that Williams was making about 100 or so sample games for each title. It seemed that the running knowledge amongst the RGP community suggested that the sample games were red and the production games were blue. A quick posting to revealed that the majority were blue, only a few were red. However, all the Jungle Lords I’d seen in my hometown were in red cabinets when I was a kid. He said I was crazy to think that it should be red. I shot him off an email and he said that all Jungle Lord games were blue. It shipped the old fashioned way: Forward Air, no palette required! When it arrived, I was very upset because the owner had clearly painted the cabinet blue (with red and yellow stripes) and not disclosed this information in the listing. Back then, it was very rare for auctions to have photos but I found a good deal on one and decided to buy it. Jess Askey: Well, I suppose it all started sometime in 1999 when I decided to buy a Jungle Lord from eBay. ![]() Askey unravels the history behind the numbers.Ĭredit Dot: How did you originally become interested in pinball serial numbers? It’s kind of a strange fascination… In my opinion, the site is an underused resource in the community and deserves the attention. Askey a series of questions about the IPSND’s history and vision. Ever since I started doing interviews for Credit Dot, I’ve wanted to ask Mr. Personally, I have been a member of the IPSND for over two years and have recently volunteered my time to take care of some of the site’s administrative and moderation duties. Askey presents his own analysis and identification of trends, and, since the data is open source, allows visitors to identify trends of their own. IPSND webmaster Jess Askey has created a project that collects serial numbers from pinball machines and pinball parts, mostly through user submissions, and compiles them for public record. I don’t consider myself a numbers guy, but there is something fascinating going on over at the Internet Pinball Serial Number Database (not to be confused by the equally useful Internet Pinball Database). ![]()
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