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 lialac colour Lacoste shirt (before they became cool again) I had bleached hair, long-ish center parted) 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.
After: The parts aren't pretty but they work nicely.
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.
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.
