This was my only coin operated amusement road trip of 2022.
I don't go on arcade roadtrips much anymore,
partly because I'm out of space for machines, but that never stopped me before.
But mostly for misanthropic reasons...
Already in 2019 I was completely fed up with everything and everyone. The last three years have been a complete gong show and my misanthropy has grown by a order of magnitude since.
But a repair dude has got to repair and I got bored.
So I looked at the classifieds... and found a lot of two 1969 Midway Sea Raiders. The games were sold as a pair, non-working untouched warehouse finds at a very reasonable price... 300 kilometers from home.
A quick look at at the cabinet dimensions from the flyer: 23 inches deep meant that I could theoretically fit both game in the back of the minivan. So I took a chance.
The road trip was uneventful except for terrible gas station coffee.
The seller was dubious the games would fit in the back of my van but in the end it worked out. With about 1 inch to spare.
I unloaded the games at my Freundin's place and fixed them up over the holiday season.
In the previous post, you may have seen a video of the Super Wild Cat in action. Here's the promised background information about the game.
Why did I get this game? Because...
I like slot machines, but not all slot machines. I don't give a crap about pure mechanical slot machines, no matter how elegant they are and I don't give a crap about electronic slot machines.
That leaves the electromechanical slot machines. From electric consoles to the Money Honey and all it's variations basically. Why do I like electromechanical slot machines: Bueschel summarised it beautifully...
Richard Bueschel wrote:
"The Arrival of the uprights and their circuitry-based play features brought something to slot machine play that had not been there before: multiple coin, double-up, hold-and-draw, multiplier, multiple line payoffs and other advanced features were exciting play generating ideas that the mechanical slot machines of the past could never hope to handle."
More specifically, I like upright flasher slot machines. Flasher slot machines only exist because of a definition of what was a slot machine in the Johnson Act:
(1) any so-called "slot machine" or any other machine or mechanical device an essential part of which is a drum or reel with insignia thereon, and (A) which when operated may deliver, as the result of the application of an element of chance, any money or property, or (B) by the operation of which a person may become entitled to receive, as a result of the application of an element of chance, any money or property...
So what did the coin-op engineers do: they created slot machines with no reels.
It was some sort of cat and mouse game between the LAW and ingenuity that lasted a few years and that gave rise to a bunch of interesting electromechanical games along the way.
I got the Super Wild Cat about a year ago from my "favorite" coin operated amusement equipment reseller in ville Saint-Laurent (Montreal). Here's another game that sat in their warehouse for years.
The business owner kept the game as a keepsake from the good old days in New Brunswick where the game was operated for a number of years. Apparently Super Wild Cat was a great money maker. Over the years I was offered the game a number of times but the price was exorbitant. In the end they were cleaning out the warehouse and I got the game for the right price along with a Midway SAMI.
The fit was tight in the Sienna. The purchase of SWC was unplanned.
I dropped the game off at my Freundin's house and forgot about it for about a year. I just didn't feel like working on it.
The repairs
I eventually got around to working on Super Wild Cat.
All the electromechanical bits are on a insert that can be removed for service, making it easier to work on.
First thing I did was check all the relays and switch points. I look for broken switch blades, pitted points, broken wires, missing insulators on the stack. I manually actuate the switches and make sure the switches open and close properly. I clean all the switch points and check the switch stack screws to make sure they are nice and tight.
Then I clean all the stepper units. Clean off the old congealed grease. Clean the solenoid plungers, change worn out coil stops. Clean the contact dics and wipers. lightly lube the metal on metal pivot points and check the step-up and reset arm for smooth actuation. Making sure the unit can step up all the way and swiftly resets back to zero.
Then I cleaned the flasher units. I had to completely take the units apart to clean and relube the leather clutch washers.
Then I reassembled everything, played a few games, and discovered that the flasher units did not index properly. That's because of excessive gameplay: After years of continuous use the edges of the index cams had mushroomed over narrowing the gap of the slots. The index arm would not index in a number of slots. I had to take the flasher units apart again and go over every cam and give it a quick zip with a small file. Nothing excessive, just a little kiss with the file.
Gameplay impressions:
There's not much to say on gameplay impressions. It's a 4 "reel" slot machine with no holds. Pretty basic.
The super WILD Cat is for the fact that the Wild Cat is a "wild symbol", meaning it can replace any other symbol to make a winning combination. That's why it has all the other animal symbols around the cat. That's why the ad claims 115 ways to score.
Ad for Super Wild Cat from the February 8th 1960 issue of Billboard. Page 76
You might be here looking only for the value of one of these games? Basically these games have no value. They frequently dont sell at auction. One or Two hundred Canuckistan dollars max. depending on condition.
Unboxing a 1970 Allied Leisure Wild Cycle arcade machine.
I had the opportunity to purchase a New In Box (NIB) game, but not just any kind of NIB. My kind of NIB... from 1970!
This is something I've dreamt of doing ever since I started collecting coin operated machines: unboxing a vintage machine.
I had to drive a 1300 km round trip to pick it up but it was worth it. Just for the experience.
When you are buying a vintage NIB it's a bit like Schrödinger's arcade machine. You don't know what's inside the box. You gotta take the risk.
It's not because the machine hasn't been opened that the machine is perfect... Especially after 50 years!
It's a cardboard box. Not a time capsule. It all depends on the storage conditions.
Be aware that rubber parts dry up. Box or no box. There's always the risk of corrosion (switch points and metal parts) or nasty traces left by critters.
I was fairly confident the machine was clean judging by the state of the box but you're never 100% sure.
In the end you're paying a premium for the privilege of the experience of unboxing the game. Once the game is unboxed it's most likely worth only a fraction of the paid price. All in all, I'm satisfied with the machine's condition. Could've been worse.
Here is a photo journey of Wild Cycle's unboxing. Enjoy!
Picked up a few Bally bingo machines over the weekend.
Gotta love a van!
Nothing special. Two Show Times and a Big Time. The price was low but the drive was long. The machines were all water damaged (found that out once I'd driven all the way there) and are pretty much good for parts only. The whole affair was more of an excuse to take a day off work and drive around to be honest.
I noticed the Show Time bingos each had an interesting decal on the top arch:
Bally celebrating its 25th anniversary: 1932 - 1957
A Union stick I have never seen before:
NATIONAL INDEPENDENT UNION COUNCIL
AMUSEMENT & VENDING MACHINE EMPLOYEES
LOCAL UNION No 1
Never saw that before
Also noticed a key difference on the parts Big Time compared to my good Big Time:
My good Big Time bingo machine has a strange setup for the ball trap switches. Actually my machine doesn't have switches. It has contacts and it's the conductive metal ball that completes the circuit to the card number lites. The shutter has NO switches on my good Big Time.
It's a very annoying setup, balls that have orange peel (imperfect surface due to long term play) tend to have poor contact resulting in intermittent and flickering numbers on the card.
A set of contacts 180 degrees across the hole.
The Big Time parts machine has proper switches on the shutter. I speculated that it was a retrofit of some sort: maybe an operator put in a shutter from another machine model due to reliability issues...
But on the underside of the playfield, there is no sign of the contacts. So it's definitely not a retrofit.
Interesting production variations. I'm curious to know which variation is the most common for Big Time.
Which variation do you have on your Bally Big Time Bingo?
