Glory Ball is back from repairs!

Yeah!  Back from my friend's shop, Glory Ball is back and playing great.  The game always had issues from the moment I got it, so this is the first time it is working perfectly.

glory will be mine!

This game is extremely obscure as best as I can tell.  I've never seen one quite like it.  Arrangeballs themselves are hard enough to come by, but variant game like this are even rarer.  So no way was I going to abandon it, and I'm grateful now it's fully operational.



The microswitches in it are over 40 years old and probably going to die.  The board has wonky connectors and might not survive.  Some parts run hot.  But let's see how long we can keep this amazing slice of Japanese gaming history running.

The main barrier to keeping this machine alive is the lack of schematics, so I'll use the rest of this post to document what I can.

Inside the back we have the circuit boards under the protective metal plate.  Beneath it the 3 boards are all stacked together, connected by surface-mounted interconnects

delicious

Here is the middle board.  The bottom grid of 20 transistors with resistors turns the lights on.

the upper 2/3?  I am thinking it's a logic setup for maintaining the states of the cells.

now here is both sides of the main board that handles all the fancy payout logic.  This is all done with TTL electronics, no ROM chips to be seen here.  My Satomi Miracle ArrangeBall has an obvious ROM cartridge inside it, so it's interesting to see what they did with far less abstraction.

some day 15 years from now someone is going to find these photos and reverse engineer a boardset for their machine, I just know it

When I got the game home a few lights were out, a few switches were broken or intermittent, and upon game over, it would always pay an extra 3 coins out.  Obviously not ideal for a gambling machine.


One thing to note:

This little jumper set has "5" written on it, and you'll also note the front of the machine has "5" on it at the top.  Some arrangeballs had upper limits of the max coins that could be paid out per round and that jumper is how it was accomplished.
This was probably in relation to some kind of legislation.  My Miracle Arrangeball doesn't have an upper limit on what the payout can be AFAIK, but my old Hustler machine was also limited to 5.



Notes on machine operation:

Overview of Glory Ball:

Insert token, and the game starts. Solenoid pulls in and releases the 16 balls to play.  First flick just loads the ball, subsequent flicks keeps firing them.

balls that don't make it up or go to the right out holes are returned to the shooter queue.

The goal is to light up the grid with your 16 balls and get paid.  Most pockets advance a single column.

Main pocket advances each column once.  left and right upper pockets each advance 2 columns.

Mid playfield center tulip also gives an instant one coin payout.

When you press the button on the left or insert your next coin, the "game over" state is initiated and the payout occurs.  If you inserted a coin, the next game then begins after payout, with the balls descending again.

TECH NOTES:

the smallest board is just the lights.

the middle board I call the "light controller"

big board, I call "main board"

LIGHT CONTROLLER BOARD

4x5 grid of transistors controls each of the 20 lights.

the microswitches are wired to this board via the connector, so the chips seen are probably just to turn on the subsequent transistor in the column. (I am guessing)

lighting board main connector pins:
1-5: 5 normal switches from normal pockets that advance a column once  (beige, red, green, blue, yellow)
6 brown center pocket switch, goes to this lighting board but immediately travels through interconnect to award payout
8 black ground

MAIN BOARD

large interconnect feeds the transistor states into the logic here.  Power comes in near the big bulging capacitor. (eeep)

main  board top connector pins:
1+2 greenish blue coin trough empty switch, coin empty light
3+4  orange pachinko ball release (game start: this pulses on and is held for 2-3 seconds)
5+6 pink coin dispenser solenoid
7+8  grey coin inserted switch
9+11 maroon front of machine button to cash out / end game

When the coin cute switch is activated, the ball release (pins 3+4) fires, and the payout sequence is initiated.

When the front button is pushed (pins 9+11), the payout sequence is initiated and game over light goes on (red and white wires leaving the center of the board)

white + red wires coming from main board:  lights payout light at top right of machine / game over
main board 4-pin connector: power supply