Taiyo Challenge Ball

[emmadog]

picked this up recently and i'll call it the "mars 3" and is the same model that Eddie has. It's in great shape and has amazingly no cigarette burns and one scuff mark on the ashtray which novus 2 will take care of. it's also one of the few machines that i've seen that hasn't been tampered with. all screws and other hardware is in place and the tamper sticker that covers the seam on the pcb cover is intact. it's also very clean with hardly any grime, dust, etc. even the rear cmpnents of the shooter lever are spotless and still silver. the only issue is the bottom of the cel is starting to peel up from the bottom edge of the 16 pocket cut-out and can be seen in the pic but it's an easy fix.
this one has some differences aside from game play compared to my first taiyo mars. the sound effects are completely different than my other purple mars and there are more of them, some of the number matrix colors are different, and the shape of the coin overflow jug has been changed.
game play: top pocket with "2" on it doubles score
lower L and R pockets score one each
lower middle pocket with an "A" on it lights the 6 and 9. not sure why that is significant but i've only played a half dozen games so far. also having the instructions translated now
so the matrix itself is standard with columns, rows, and center four scoring 1,2, and 3. once a game is started the left and right orange columns light up. the lower left block lights briefly then the one above it and so on it's then repeated on the right side then starts all over but does it fairly quickly. when the last number of a column, row, etc. is completed the "moving" light will stop on one of the symbols. the one it stops on is dictated by what light was lit when the ball went into the pocket of a complettion. the player is then awarded whatever that is. if no rows or whatever are completed in a game then the lights just keep moving.
there's 4 zeros which award nothing, 2 one-token awards, one that lights the 2,6,11, and 15, and the last one lights the 2 and 15.
the pics show the front, rear, and some closeups of the machine. it came with a coin overflow jug which is rare plus in and out coin counters which are very rare. also included are a good number of tokens which are smaller than the usual ones that come with these machines.
i'l get vid up soon.