One more scene I just had to share, and assuredly a relatable for most women in pinball.
Perhaps in the last post you noticed there was an Attack From Mars next to the Twilight Zone? Let's check in on that machine.
as always, Japanese pages go right-to-left. Flip-Flap is a 2008 manga made by 豊田実 (Minoru Toyoda)
 |
| Twilight Zone, but obviously they're trying to avoid copyright issues, so "Twilight Place" |
 |
| who doesn't love a solid candy-cab row? |
the machine was paying-and-playing just fine, but then it started only giving 2 coins when 2 cherries showed. What was up with that?
 |
| turns out the screw was missing, allowing these plates to slide around and misaligning the payout arms |
I got a pile of 10¥ coins from a coin dealer in Vancouver, where they are plentiful thanks to the proximity to Japan. Washing them with one of these dishwasher baby-bottle holders
 |
| I prefer to take off the grime |
There was a slight "click" that could be felt on the handle and I found that was the stop nail on the inside being a bit too bent inwards. I think it being used as a the Stop for the knob means it will slowly move over time. I used needle nose plyers to bend it back ever so slightly.
 |
| that nail should stop the metal on the bottom right, but should not rub the metal nub currently just above it |
I have found a lot of 30mm tokens on ebay and I was quite happy to start getting payouts!
 |
| cool tokens! |
 |
| my first paid-out win! |
...but after a while, I encountered a problem: the coins were jamming inside the feeder tube!
 |
| at first I figured this happened when I moved the machine while rearranging my shelves |
 |
| JAMMED!! |
 |
| after opening up the back track and clearing out the jam? It happened again. Time to give up on these tokens. |
I found an advertisement for this machine in Game Machine
 |
| Game Machine (ゲームマシン) magazine1977-04-01 |
This advertisement is a bit ominous as it turns out that it was Homerun King and Circus that both appeared as New Old Stock in Japan! Too bad there also isn't a stash of other similar machines, as there is at least one more 10¥ I'd love to get my hands on.
One thing to note here is that it says the prize tokens are supposed to be 2.2 mm thick!
The 30mm tokens I purchased measure at 1.65mm, and that's why they are getting stuck. So now I need to find more appropriate-sized tokens somewhere.
My hope is that the size works out so that I can alternate, thicker token, thinner token, thicker token, etc, and not get coin jams. Worst case scenario, I'll get rid of the thinner tokens.
My gameroom is a galley kitchen setup: over 20 feet long, but just under 7 feet across. It's been a long journey of tiny optimizations, find a few more centimeters here and there. I took some time during the pandemic and redid the modular shelves a bit, expanding the vertical games that are up at chest level, and the pantry absorbing more of the lower space. (this is actually more efficient as it gives us more shelf space for storage, as the upright games are shorted than just the shelf height divided by 2)
so the lineup went from this:
