Taiyo "Mars" Arrival

[emmadog]

On this machine I've sanded away and polished the damage from the cigarette burns on the ashtray (I had never sanded plastic before getting into this hobby and for this I used 600 all the way to 2000 wet/dry paper. Still, I didn't think I'd be able to get that high gloss shine back but using a dremel and novus it is just as shiny as it was prior to sanding and easy to do), cleaned the cel, polished the chrome frame, repainted the painted areas on the plastics. In short, it looks like a different machine thatn when it arrived. Still gotta make a number plate for the bottom and I finally started the computer work on that yesterday.
Anyway, my eyes were always drawn back to the 4 yellowed pockets on the playfield. The "A" and "B" pockets are held in with normal spiral-end pins. The lower left and right pockets are held in with silver nails. First I had to remove the covering over those pockets. Luckily the decorative covering is not a decal but actually a fairly thick metal disc. Both discs came off with an X-Acto knife and a little prying. The adhesive was like a rubber cement so it was easy to deal with.
With the parts off I prepared the retr0bright solution and here are the results after 36 hours. I also did the bumper cover for one of my Satomis. The first pic is of the "B" pocket and the lower right pocket with cover removed, exposing the two nails. So the first four are the "before" pics and the fifth is the last. I'll post pics later today of these parts after painting.

[Drunkenclam]

thats really come up good
excellent work

[emmadog]

I didn't get to do all the painting I wanted to do today and these took long enough to do anyway. I removed the old paint off of the pieces as then did the usual plastic prep. I then used liquid masking to cover all areas from paint. Once that dried I painted three coats of bright red followed by two light coats of metallic russet followed by two clear coats, all with an airbrush.
They turned out very nice and are a huge improvement over the condition I received them in.
First pic is a repost of the now-white pieces I am referring to but after old paint removal. Last two are of after repainting and installed back on machine. I'll post the other pics of parts when I.m done with those.

[emmadog]

An interesting sidenote to this machine.
So it's here with me on a work related trip to expose the guys to pachinko, entertain, and raise money for charity. Well it turns out a crafty individual figured out how to beat the machine. His strategy is to utilize the 4 corner payout which pays the max of 10. He would just wait until he had both bonus banks activated ( the bonus is retained from one game to the next until its utilized). Once both banks were lit, all he had to do was shoot the 16 balls to hit just the 4 and 15 to complete the corners.
The machine was up 80 coins after 400 or so games until its "weakness" was discovered, now it's up 5. So I had to figure something out. I didn't want to tweak the pins so I decided to manipulate the 7 position dipswitch on the main board. Until very recently I had never touched it. I removed the 4 screws holding the board's protective cover in place and proceeded to move the switches. Switch 1 in the up position limits the max payout to 5 coins. That was good but I was still curious so after experimenting, I discovered that switch 4 in the up position activates the diagonals for a payout of 1 each. That's how I left it after resetting the counters so we'll see what happens. I'm thinking too the max payout can be made to be more than 10... It'll be interesting to see if the machine pays out more overall with a max of 10 or if keeping the max at 5 but adding both diagonals is in fact less profitable for the player. I still have not altered the remaining switches to see what they do.

[Lt Teddy]

I realize that you machine is newer than mine but I wonder? The bonus on mine machine pays one coin and does not carry over. If you use it in the round it still pays the bonus and whatever else you get. Interesting to say the least. My Jan ball will play tight for quite awhile and then all of a sudden you just hit the right numbers and it has a good win streak. I think that is why I like the old machines with the manual flippers. You have alittle more control and alot shorter games.

[emmadog]

This Taiyo has always been a consistent 75 percent payout since I've had it and its easily had several thousand games played. Using the four corner strategy it becomes a winning machine for the player. Since limiting it's max payout it has regained it's lost ground since it typically takes more than 5 plays to score both bonus banks even with someone intentionally trying to hit them.
My Satomi Robots and San Diego pay out about 110 percent. Since I imported them direct from Japan I wonder if they functioned as loss leaders in their parlor?? I'm assuming here that after their parlor time they sat in storage with no further pin tweakage.
Thats interesting that your bonus does not carry over. After watching dozens of people play this machine I can say that the carry over feature influences the player to put another coin in 90 percent of the time. It's hard for people to walk away with a "sure win" win right around the corner. It's a simple yet brilliant idea.