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Thread: Jankyu - 1993 Sammy Sparrow Devil III

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    Blind Shooter Pachiela's Avatar
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    Default Jankyu - 1993 Sammy Sparrow Devil III

    So, this is a unique game. There’s been a few Jankyu style machines made, both mechanical and modern like this one. Released in 1993, this is the first LCD model, the 雀魔王 (Sammy Sparrow Devil III per Google Translate). Interestingly, the machine is labeled Sammy Medal Game World Arrange Jankyu Pachislot. Thus, I’m not 100% sure the best place to post this. It is definitely a pachinko style machine where you shoot balls. It is also an arrangeball style machine where you are trying to arrange certain patterns, and like old school arrangeballs, it runs on tokens. While I’ve never seen a pachislo in person, I was surprised when the machine came in. It looks like how I’m envisioning a pachislo appearing. A fairly wide fully enclosed box with a door that swings out from the front and a coin hopper in the middle of the back of the case. So technically the machine calls itself a pachislo. I’m posting here in the pachinko group as my preference, but I guess any of the three work.

    Getting this odd point out the way to begin with, as you can see in the photos if you look closely, the nails are aligned…interestingly and definitely not sticking out straight. There are quite a few bent ones, but it does not appear to affect gameplay much (though a ball gets stuck in one spot at the very top of the playfield. I’ll fix that eventually). I’ll comment more on this later in another post.

    I’m going to give my commentary on how it is played. This commentary is entirely based on what I have witnessed thus far as I can find nothing online to assist for this particular machine. As I play more, I’ll have more data points and more to share. I’ll share a post with some photos of homemade instructions that came with the machine (roughly translated by me), but they are in no way all inclusive and essentially just get you in the direction of shooting the balls, turning the machine on, and loading the coins.


    For sake of simplicity and comprehension by those not familiar with mahjong, I’m going to use the Americanized Wikipedia description for the tiles (dots, bamboo, characters, winds, and dragons). In this game, the 2-8 of bamboo are excluded and the winds, 1 and 9 bamboo, and dragons are the hard tiles to collect.

    The game is played, in simplicity, as follows:
    Insert token. Then you shoot 14 balls into the mahjong themed tiles. After you have 14 tiles, you can discard one to target a scoring pattern and shoot again. You can shoot up to 10 more times, discarding one at a time, for a total of 24 shots.
    If during shooting you get four of any one tile, you cannot get any more of that tile (like in a game of mahjong). Should the ball land in the same tile slot again, you essentially lose the ball. It makes you re-shoot and takes one from your remaining ball count. This occurs even if you discard one of the four and if it happens during your initial 14 ball shot. Once you have four and then discard one of them, you can never get back to four of the same tile. It automatically discards the tile if you land in again and subtracts one from your remaining balls. Thus you have to be careful here to not discard one you might want later.

    You score by completing a mahjong hand. So far, I have only successfully scored with four sets of three (either a three straight (for ex. 2,3,4 dot) or three of a kind (1,1,1 dot)) and a pair. There are many ways to do this and as I play I’ll come back and summarize all the different scoring mechanisms we discover and what all of the buttons do. This machine does have a reach mode and a CHANCE and BIG CHANCE mode. I have a suspicion on how to activate a CHANCE mode, but have yet to do so. I haven’t discovered a way to extract the balls from the machine (they are circular) without opening the glass and shooting them one at a time and catching them as they fly across the room. Coupling that problem, the machine either has a timer or tilt function built in as well. There is a deep ledge in front of the LCD screen (screen protected by a piece of plastic) where balls can get stuck if the machine is not leaning forward (currently it is propped on almost a dozen pieces of cardboard stacked under the rear of the machine). When you shoot a ball and it gets stuck there, I have to tilt it ever so slightly forward. This lets the ball go into a tile slot, but the machine does not count it at all (neither as a tile or as a used ball. You essentially reshoot it). It either fails out on tilt (my suspected option) or time. So, when I’ve had the glass open and dropped caught balls in so far, I have been unsuccessful in scoring a tile. I’ll have to try again sometime, hopefully after finding a way to drain the balls instead of shooting them out all over the place. Consequently, it will take us a while to play and try to find all the features (which adds to the fun anyway). We have about 4 hours of play so far and about 8 wins across those four hours. We’ve also only played about 45 games (~10% win streak) in that time period. It is no wonder it was not popular at the parlors and few were bought. You have to know mahjong to play, you have to take your time evaluating and discarding tiles, and you can shoot up to 11 sets of balls, most one at a time. All of which combine to a low player count and low profit for the parlors. I suspect that as our knowledge of scoring patterns increases, our game time will not decrease. We will be evaluating the hands for more patterns, but we will be more knowledgeable of the tiles so I suspect our current time per game will remain pretty constant.

    We’re still learning mahjong rules enough to try to have some idea of what is going on. I’m hoping it uses Japanese Mahjong rules (http://arcturus.su for those curious to learn), but I’m not even positive of that.

    There are other mechanisms for scoring as well. It is a complex machine, not just using hands of mahjong, but also featuring Dora features, what I’m calling a dominant wind (still learning what it is as I learn the rules), and if you enter reach mode (I think it is reach mode), it adds another tile to the screen (I have not translated this yet…coming soon).

    As we have time to learn more about the machine, translate screens, learn Japanese mahjong rules, etc… I’ll keep updating this thread in case anyone else comes across one of these amazing machines.

    I’m very much so looking for another Jankyu now, with the two most recent ones being
    Hand-made sparrowball evangelism kaiji (手打ち雀球伝道録カイジ)
    Dream Djembe Gas (ドリームジャンベガス)
    And a couple test models that did not undergo wide release (for ex. Hand-made speech ball Kamen rider aim! Daichi Moto (手打ち雀球仮面ライダー狙え!大三元) and Gyubuwa self-centered (ぎゅわんぶらあ自己中心派)
    If anyone comes across another Jankyu, either the above two or an older mechanical one, please let me know as I’d like to purchase it and willing to pay the price matching its rarity.

    Feel free to ask questions. I know there are a ton of gaps and probably some incorrect statements above, but I’ll keep updating and share as I learn. Eventually maybe I’ll learn even 75% of what this machine can do, but it will be a slow process as I learn organically and focus on one scoring idea at a time and hope the luck of the balls is with me at that time.

    I have more photos and info to share, but that will come another day. This long post has already taken almost an hour to prepare, so more to come as time allows.
    Attached Images Attached Images

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    Blind Shooter Pachiela's Avatar
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    Default Re: Jankyu - 1993 Sammy Sparrow Devil III

    Chance modes:
    It appears to enter a chance mode, you have to complete one of the items written underneath the mode text on the screen. They change each game, though there are not a ton of different possibilities. I speed played through 50+ games today to try to see all of the different patterns. I’ll update if I come across any new ones later, but this is definitely the majority. So far, I’ve won a game on two of these combinations, but never at the time when it was the chance pattern unfortunately. BIG CHANCE features one winning combination per game while CHANCE features three. They are sorted in order of Japanese Mahjong hand difficulty, according to http://arcturus.su. Only Ikkitsuukan is Easy of the three Big Chance. The other two are Very Hard. Shousangen to Tanyao are Medium, Medium, Easy, Very Easy, Very Easy in order. Rest are hard or very hard…you can guess which two I’ve won on.

    BIG CHANCE MODE
    The following are the currently known BIG CHANCE winning patterns:
    清老頭 – Chinroutou (All terminals) – Terminals (1,9) only. No 2-8 or honors
    九連宝燈 - Chuuren poutou (Nine gates) – 1,1,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,9,9 and any one more all same suit
    一気通貫 – Ikkitsuukan (Straight) – 1-9 of one suit

    CHANCE MODE
    The following are the currently known CHANCE winning patterns:
    清老頭 – Chinroutou (All terminals) – Terminals (1,9) only. No 2-8 or honors
    九連宝燈 - Chuuren poutou (Nine gates) – 1,1,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,9,9 and any one more all same suit
    字一色 – Tsuuiisou (All honors) – Only uses honor tiles
    国士無双 - Kokushi musou (Thirteen orphans) – 1,9 of each suit, all honors, any 1 duplicate
    小三元 – Shousangen (Small three dragons) – 2 triplets and a pair of dragons (all 3 dragons used)
    七対子 – Chiitoitsu (Seven pairs) – Seven pairs, no duplicates
    一気通貫 – Ikkitsuukan (Straight) – 1-9 of one suit
    平和 – Pinfu (All sequences) – Only straights
    断幺九 – Tanyao (All simples) – 2-8 only. No 1,9 or honors

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    Default Re: Jankyu - 1993 Sammy Sparrow Devil III

    Well another reason why this machine wouldn't have been popular...it uses oddball size tokens

    These are the dimensions I measured, but my calipers are not perfect. They are bigger in diameter and thickness than normal pachislo tokens

    1.99 thick

    26.01 diameter

    If you have something really close, I'd be interested in purchasing them in hopes they work. I'm getting tired of opening the machine almost every time I want to play as I only have the few tokens it came with

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    Default Re: Jankyu - 1993 Sammy Sparrow Devil III

    Alright, so I found a couple Susan B Anthony coins and tried them out today

    From wikipedia:
    Mass 8.1 g (0.260 troy oz)
    Diameter 26.5 mm (1.04 in)
    Thickness 2.00 mm (0.08 in)

    They work! Looks like Sacagawea dollars are the same dimensions, but instead of being reeded on the edge they are smooth, so I will look for one of those to try as well. I have not tried using them to pay out from the hopper yet, but as far as using them to run the game, they work. I'll try forcing a payout from the hopper tomorrow and see how that works. They weigh a tad more (~0.5 grams, but I'll verify again later and post the token weight) than the original tokens.

    Anyone see any harm in using the US coins instead?

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    Gibisans - Japan West compirate's Avatar
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    Default Re: Jankyu - 1993 Sammy Sparrow Devil III

    Only possibly from a legal standpoint.

    人生は恐れなければ、とても素晴らしいものなんだよ。
    人生に必要なもの。それは勇気と想像力、そして少しのお金だ。

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    Eye Shooter cait001's Avatar
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    Default Re: Jankyu - 1993 Sammy Sparrow Devil III

    these are so cool, thanks for sharing
    WANTED: 10¥ games, pre-1950s machines, スマートボール (Smart Ball), payazzo/kronespill, Pickwick-style (~1905)
    if you have any of these in North America, let's talk.

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