Pachinko Parlors in The U.S.

[danno66]

Hi Leo, Thanks for the heads up, I had outfit batman with a counter on the ball drain, I figured if I subtracted the ball drain number from the screen and then counted the stuff in the
trays it would equal out, turns out the exit counters are only 80-90% accurate so it's a bad idea. We've been "Converting" hard core pinball players over to hard core pachinko players, this is a very cool idea. At first every single person tries to shoot the balls by turning the controller and letting go, after a long period of discussion it seems to make sense to make the pachinko free for 10$ worth of play with the caveat that it's prize exempt. This way, people who would never touch the machines get to try it and get to enjoy it and then they can buy balls like everyone else. So far I'm up 4 players, these 4 swore never to touch a machine and now they are buying more balls than the others do, the free 10$ of balls is based on the fact we charge 10$ an hour to play pinballs so 10$ credit towards pachinko is right, it's is working well so far and we're not even open yet. The sad part is I had one person hit large on Superman and I told them they would not get the prize award, it was right then they gave me the card back and bought the paid card instead, then they won smaller later in the day. I am using counters for a selfish reason, I have a scale I could use if I had to but it's not that good, instead I have a 1000 ball measuring pitcher for an emergency. The ball counters drain out the back, the back connects to a tube which dumps into ball supply, this means we only have to lift 2000 balls one time, my staff is like me as in neither one of us can lift over 20 lbs without severe medical complications, I'm the worst so this way I have a way to keep myself on the job. The counter I have in the rolling chassis is the main one, it's a nacol supercounter it looks like it counts 600 balls a second, it prints a ticket after each dump so I don't have to prove what was dumped, the little issue I have is it uses 60mm thermal paper which is a Japan only product, I was lucky to find 24x rolls on ebay for $19.99 since it's 80$ for the same thing shipped. Then if the Nacol dies, I have a Hypercounter 2100 Tabletop as backup, it's slow and it drains out the side, if I ever crash I'll have to quickly build a drain connector.. This weekend I have Friday all day and Saturday all day at the arcade, I'll be giving you a call during the downtime...
Peace, Dan