Maybe I've said this before: I've owned pachinko machines for almost as long as I've owned pinball machines.
My first pachinko machine was a Nishijin model B with a Frog center feature. I still own it. I still remember the day I got it. What I was wearing (blue cammo combat pants and a thrift store lilac color Lacoste shirt (before they became cool again) I had bleached hair) that was year 2000!
I also like bingo machines. So the natural progression is to combine both interests and get an arrangeball game. Funny that both Pinball machines and Pachinko machines evolved from the bagatelle games. Funny that from Pinball and Pachinko evolved Bingo and Arrangeball machines respectively.
There's this phenomenon in biology called Carcinisation where non crab crustaceans evolve a crab like body. There should exist a term for Coin / Amusement devices phenomenon of convergent evolution into card matrix games.
I have a strange relationship with my Arrangeball games. I can be a year without playing any of them and suddenly I get the urge to play them. Except for Hustler, I got all my Arrangeball games from Yahoo Japan Auction.
Some time in early December 2024 I got bored and saw this Satomi Buffalo Miracle Arrangeball up for auction. I first became aware of this model Arrangeball when I was assembling a Youtube Playlist and I thought the concept was novel so I went for it.
The game was derelict (Derelicte!) but in all the good ways. Listed as a parts machine, with missing parts. It was missing the power cord, which scares off a lot of buyers and stops lazy sellers from actually testing the game. It had dried up tape glue residue over the coin slot (the universal sign of a broken coin-op machine). It had signs of rodent habitation. It had rust and was filthy. I looked like it was salvaged from some abandoned place like this.
I had a good look at the auction pictures and it didn't seem that bad to me. All the board were there, the buffalo feature was intact. It had the number apron which is a deal-breaker for me if it's missing. It was missing a red plastic speed nut holding the card lamp board and it was just left dangling. Save a few bulbs It looked pretty complete to me.
I lobbed a disinterested sniper bid and won it for about $180 Canuckistan dollars. Pretty good for an Arrangeball I thought.
It took forever to get to the Buyee warehouse where, once there, I got hit with a re-packaging fee. Last time I had to pay a re-packaging fee for an Arrangeball it was around 30 bucks, that was a couple years ago. The fee now was around 100 bucks. At that point you get the option of either paying the fee of having the package disposed of. I hindsight I probably should have gotten the game disposed of.
The thing with these proxy bidding services it that they hold you by the wallet. Once you win an auction. They just throw at you all sorts of fees and you have to pay.
Somehow the scene towards the end of Matilda when the Trunchbull flees the school and gets pelted with food and stuff came to mind. Pelted with buyer fees, more fees, shipping fees, duty, taxes more fees, etc.
By the time the game got to my door it had cost me little over 700 bucks!
The game arrived by the usual method. All wrapped up in cardboard covered with Japanese language notices.
The outer box
The inner box
I carefully unboxed the game. Gave the insides of the game a good vacuuming where it lay for the cabinet was full of dirt, mouse turds and general filth.
For some reason there was a bagged drape runner (not the silent kind) and some random piece of black plastic included with the game.
While doing the initial cleaning, my impressions from the game were generally good: "I can work with this" I thought. But, judging by the rust, it was obvious that the game was either operated or stored outside for some time. It's not uncommon to see dagashiya games operated outside of shops in Japan.
I took out the control board insert to take out the payout slide which was rusted solid. I figure, the game being operated outside over time, rain and drizzle got into the coin slot and made it's way into the payout tube and coin box. The coin acceptor was equally rusted but it still accepts 26mm tokens so I mostly left it as-is but finding a replacement would be an option.
I soaked the payout slide mechanism in penetrating oil for a couple of days and eventually got it apart and cleaned up.
Before
After: The parts aren't pretty but they work nicely.
The control board was is good condition. I cleaned the edge connector(s) and replaced the three bottom filter capacitors. This model board has the 5 or 10 token maximum payout adjustment switch. My game has the 5 Token max notice sticker at the top so I left it at 5.
There was some rodent damage to the wiring loom but ultimately only one wire was severed. An easy splice fix, shrink tube and some wire wrap did the trick.
Then I replaced a resistor (1000 Ohm 1/4 W) on the winner transistor logic board. There's a piece of foam holding the board in place. The foam, soaking up moisture, in contact with the resistor, made the resistor corrode out and fail over time. I found a replacement in my old electronics science fair kit. The adjacent resistors looked bad but tested good.
I also replaced the foam pad to prevent the board from shorting out on the metal bracket. The original foam having completely failed.
I had some replacement bulbs on the way: ba7s 3898, found via Amazon, for the
card and some 100v e10 screw base bulbs for the "GAME OFF" low token light. I
could not source the latter locally and I ended up having some shipped
from Japan.
I cleaned and polished the game and it came out pretty nice considering how bad it was initially. I usually clean the game at the very end of the project but this time I did it towards the start. I must be getting old.
It's not perfect, but I don't go for perfect. This thing has a history. It has presence. It was used and abused and along the way players were amused. I think the term Wabi Sabi would apply here.
I had the game reassembled and felt confident enough to power it up for the first time...
First thing I noticed was a capacitor getting very hot on the #7 feature solenoid control board. The rest of the game played OK. It was registering card winner combinations. Even the payout button worked. So far so good!
Then, suddenly, a resistor in series with the aforementioned hot capacitor went up in smoke... I turned off the game and that was that.
I took out the sub board for a rebuild. The basic game still played without the sub board in the mean time for testing and amusement.
I ended up replacing most components on the sub board.
With the general water damage in the game, the 74121 chip was sketchy with rust puke stains where the legs meet the case, all the electrolytic capacitors were bulged. I had 74121 chips in my stash. I went all out and put in a ceramic one on a socket.
The first real problem was to find the value of the resistor that went up in smoke. It was bulged discolored from time and heat damage. The resistor color bands were difficult to decipher: SOMETHING / BLACK / SOMETHING.
The SOMETHING could only be red or brown. I lurked the pachinko forum in search of detail pictures of the sub board, Buffalo being a fairly common game. But I only found crappy pictures and no technical information. All signs pointed to 100 ohm. Brown / Black / Brown. That I ordered from Digikey.
The large 0.1 uF 600 WV capacitor was a saga to acquire. This value oil capacitor is still used in audiophile circles and are very expensive. General use capacitors of this value are obsolete. Old stock capacitors are a craps shoot. They might be good, they might be bad.
Over a period of a few months I bought many capacitors and eventually found some good N.O.S. ones.
There is no way to express how tedious, costly and frustrating it was to find a good oil capacitor. I finally ended up with 12, so I've got some spares now.
The original capacitor literally went belly up
The way the feature works: When the buffalo horns are up, they funnel the balls to the #7 trail and are processes one at a time, each ball paying out a token.
A ball lands on a leaf switch and stays there by way of some kind of escapement actuated by the solenoid. That switch sends a signal to the sub board to pull the solenoid to free the ball to the #7 pocket and sends a signal to the payout board to pay out one token.
I had the problem of the solenoid "machine-gunning". I think it was caused by
switch bounce.
To remedy:
I cleaned the leaf switch points with 99% Isopropyl on a cardboard strip and I finished it a chamois strip.
Replaced the piece of damping foam between the leafs of the switch (the upper leaf being very thin and subject to vibration) with new 3M double sided sticky foam, but I only stuck the bottom side.
And slightly increased the duration of the output pulse of the 74121 by changing a capacitor from 10uF to 22uF.
Lamp board repair
I fixed up the card lamp board. This game uses mini bayonet bulbs that were used in vehicle instrument clusters way back when. The replacement lamps I could find (3898) were shorter but the base is the same (ba7s) they did the job.
Just like with old pinball machines the lamp sockets, from all the heat cycles, became loose and had poor contact to the common. Some people replace the sockets with LED's but I want the classic look so I bodged all the flaky sockets with a soldered on hard wire from the base to the board. It's not pretty but you don't see it when playing the game. What you do see is the soft orange glow of the bulbs. Even with the repair, some lights flicker from time to time but they stay on, that's what matters.
Playing impressions:
The buffalo feature is novel but the access to the bullhorns when the feature is in motion is pretty tight. I saw some games with some nails removed to make it easier but that's not my thing. Nor is tweaking the nails. I keep the nails adjusted as it came.
Hitting the 6, 7, 10, 11 jackpot is sublime when achieved by way of the buffalo feature.
I find this particular example a bit too easy to win on the horizontal lines. It's the first game I've achieved playing down to the low token light.
Is Buffalo a keeper? That's a tough question. I've sunk too much time, cash and energy into it just to sell it. But, I already have Can Can that has a similar feature... and a couple other Arrangeball games for variety.
Buffalo is a nice game with the brown plastic, that cool cell art and center feature. As a complete package it pretty cool.
Anyway, it's nice to bring back a game that was literally sold as spare parts.
Am I done with importing Arrangeball games? Not quite. I want to fix up an early electro-mechanical model... eventually. Also, I want to branch out into the 90's and get a Fuji Arepachi.
What do you think? How does Buffalo rate?
