Satomi TV JanQ 雀球 sparrow ball game PART II

 PART II of the Satomi TV JanQ Sparrow ball game

Once I got inside the game, I discovered that the tokens that were sloshing about were also jammed everywhere inside the cabinet. They even got inside the monitor frame! Before even thinking of powering up the machine, I had to fish out all those tokens.

I took the board unit and inspected it for hidden tokens.

Once I finished fishing out all those tokens, I had a big pile. It's the first time I acquire this type of game and it came with an adequate amount of tokens. Over 200 tokens!

Payout unit and power module

The monitor has a bit of burn in but it's not too bad considering the age and previous heavy use.

I gave the cabinet a light vacuuming, checked all the connections and fuses, double checked I had all the tokens out and plugged it in my variable transformer adjusted at 100V. It turned on like it should and went into attract mode.

I made a short video of the attract mode and uploaded it to Youtube as a reference since no one had before.

I coined up the game, shot some balls and pressed some buttons. None of the tile buttons were registering. It was at that point I realised I had no clue what I was doing. I can't read japanese and I don't know how to play mahjong!

The balls that came with the machine were absolutely gross, which is a surprise considering they don't even get handled by the player. I changed the balls for clean smooth unmarked balls. The machine uses only 18 balls.

The 14 balls on the right side are released simultaneously at the start of the game to make the pile. The 4 balls on the left are doled out one at a time once you discard tile. The played balls return immediately to the accumulator trail after passing through one of the tile ball microswitches.

The ball trails were very dirty... to the point balls would stay stuck. They required a bit of cleaning and polishing.

Two push on / push off buttons inside the door top right.  Top one is to recall the last game played and the bottom one is for bookkeeping details (coins in - coins out = net total sice machine was last turned on).

The mysterious "tile button" not working:

Turns out that was the major problem with the game. None of the tile buttons worked. All the tile buttons, that are used to discard or to lock a group of 4 tiles were unresponsive.

I took the tile button sub assembly apart and discovered that the conductive rubber pads inside the buttons were contaminated by some type of oil, making the rubber non conductive. I tried cleaning the rubber pads with various solutions to no avail. I tried lightly sanding the rubber, but that didn't work either. I looked it up and apparently that's a common problem with some vintage computer keyboards. There's no solution for contaminated rubbers other than changing them out for good ones. Since that's not an option in my case, my only option was bodgery.

I weighed my bodgery options and opted for aluminium foil. Tiny folded strips of aluminium foil... for all 27 buttons. I actually felt dirty doing this type of bodgery. This is below my usual repair standards. But it's simple, cheap and reversible. Otherwise I'm stuck with a unplayable game.

If in the near future a button fails again, the subsequent fix will be easy. I will have to make do with this "repair" until I can find a good button sub assembly (good luck with that). 

I know I can buy conductive rubber material from various suppliers and cut tiny pieces but that wouldn't work with my situation since the rubber pad have a kind of nipple in the center that acts as a spring for the button plunger. That and the way the material is secured in the pusher.

I reassembled the assembly, tested it and it works great. For how many cycles? Who knows! But the machine will get light use anyway.

The non registering tile ball microswitches:

I took out the microswitch subassembly. Each switch can easily be taken out for service. I had two bad switches. I had to take the microswitches apart for cleaning and adjustment.

That sums up the work on the Satomi Sparrow Ball TV JanQ

  

General impressions:

I like this game. The look is dated, but in a good way. The cell art is a mix between greco-roman kitch and a trucker's girl silhouette. The green CRT's warm glow reminds me of my childhood. The game has an imposing amount of buttons but it's pretty simple once you know how to play the game.

Playing impressions:

Since fixing the game, I learned the basics of japanese mahjong. I enjoy playing the game. It's like playing an arrangeball, but with more control. First shoot 14 balls. Then discard a tile to shoot a ball, repeat. You build your hand, modifying your strategy as the balls land try to get a winning combination within 10 shots. Each game is pretty long, over a minute, for one token. That's good entertainment value for the money. There's a few scoring subtleties specific to the TV JanQ (not mahjong in general) that still elude me but I don't mind.

My first win!

More wins in that glorious green glow

Reference pictures