the most important thing i learned from my birthday during the opening of my
Elektro Arcade™ was the fact that it sucks when people don't how how to start a game which can't be set on freeplay. it's either "ully, i want to play that game, can you start it for me?" or i have to add credits en masse manually beforehand, but by doing so i'm killing the attract mode on some games.
therefore it was time for the task of the day (or week or month or whatever): coin mech conversion of the games which don't offer a freeplay mode!
one of my ultimate goals is to have my individually designed tokens, but for now it'll have to do with pre-exisiting ones. you guys should know me by now: things have to look
good, therefore i've been on the lookout for some nice tokens for quite a while. basic requirement: they shouldn't be recognizable as tokens at first glance, but once the players have realized that it's not money they are using here but tokens, they should say "wow, those look cool". a couple of months ago i found what i was looking for on ebay, they are from a company called
tuning electronic entertainment and look like 1 or 2 euro pieces. one side has the name of the company, the other side one of seven (don't know if there are more) different motifs: clover, dolphin, pegasus, papiyon, indian, crown and venus. when i began my hunt for them, i only found a few of those, but i've been checking ebay regularly and in the meantime i have a nice stash of around 1000 tokens - enough to justify the coin mech token conversion!
but let me show you those tokens first
the first problem you encounter when you want to convert your mechs is that not all coin inserts are large enough for the tokens to fit in, e.g. the ones on berzerk
what you have to do is take a rasp and widen the opening a little bit
same problem on midway coin inserts
same solution
problem solved
now on to the coin mechs themselves - here are four of them removed from my gauntlet cabinet
let me show you what to do on most mechs on an exemplary mech: basically the goal is to get the token down from the top left corner to the bottom in a straight line. normally the coin drops in, is moved to the right where it is weighed and checked for size and then either accepted or rejected (or stuck
).
the first thing you have to do is get rid of the moving parts, the cradles, so that the token bypasses the coin control system
movable parts removed
(on all four mechs)
this should allow the token to simply drop through,
BUT if you don't do something else, it gets rejected nevertheless, because in the lower third of the mech there is a bent piece of metal which blocks the token from entering the correct exit chute (you can see that piece of metal right underneath the token on the following picture)!
what you have to do is remove the entire metal piece ...
... and give it a good beating
- problem solved (again)
what else could go wrong? well, the token could get stuck in the chute where the microswitch is being triggered
what to do? first remove the chute, ...
... put it in a parallel vise and add pressure ...
... until the blocking part comes off!
now there is enough space on the right for the token to pass through!
those are the basic steps, sometimes you have to do a little bit of adjusting and filing to make the tokens pass through, but so far, i have managed to convert all my coin mechs to accept my tokens. once i'm done with each conversion, i'm doing a test run of 50 tokens with the converted coin mech installed. of those 50 tokens, a maximum of 2 is allowed to be either rejected or getting stuck - if the rate is higher i'm doing some more adjusting. for now, it works like a charm!
with that being done, all my games are now either running on freeplay or are set up to accept my tokens - and i have to admit: it feels great!!!
next step: exchange the original coin inserts for
the freeplay / token inserts etienne is working on!
