Williams Jungle Drums gun game

Something else we had a while in our house, an electro-mechanical gun game from Williams. A rifle game made in 1971, 2 years older then I am..

Gameplay

The game is quite simple and there's almost no random factor in most of this type of games. You have a limited amount of shots. Each object it worth a certain number of points, so you have to try earn the maximum amount of points. There are 3 tigers that light up at certain moments and are then worth more points. The monkeys at the sides score different if they're going up or going down. The rotating bird is also worth a lot of points but difficult to shoot at. Certain combinations award more points or extra shots. That's it.

These types of games are fun to play though. Shooting a rifle is fun, even if it's on a game like this. But in home-use the game repeats itself too much.

My game

I had never played an electro-mechanical arcade game like this ever before, you hardly find these machines anymore. In 2002 I had visited an operators warehouse which was filled with EM pins, who also had some of these games.. Unfortunately his price was too high, but it got me interested in EM arcade games. So since a few months I was looking to add one (or more ?) to my collection. I do shoot in air rifle competition, which adds to my interest in shooting games too..

A few months later I met another operator who had one of these games for sale. The price sounded reasonable (later I found out it was on the high side, but as I had never seen one of these games for sale it was difficult to put a price range on it), so we bought it.

The game was in good condition. Backglass is very well, cabinet is ok, and the targets and inside also looks ok.
The game especially looks great when played in the dark, with it's blacklight and fluorescent paint !

We sold the game after about half a year. It's nice to play and own, but it gets tired after a while and we could use the space it took to put something we enjoy more.

Things to look for when buying

Play the game and make sure everything works. See if it registers shots. Most important is to double check all objects move. The internals of this type of game are quite simple so if a certain target does not register it's usually an easy fix. But sometimes motors break down and these are harder to repair.

A lot of these old games use some type of tape recorder to play sounds. Make sure these still play correct.

Tech info

In case you always wondered how the gun knows where you aim at.. here's how.
There's nothing optical involved, the rifle itself does not see anything.
Look at the picture above. This pcb is mounted in the cabinet underneath the gun. The long metal arm (comes from the bottom left in picture) is mounted to the pivot point of the gun and moves when you move the gun. At the end (in top of picture) there is a contact point. This slides over the pcb that has copper traces.
So depending on the angle of the rifle, this contact arm will be in a different position and may or may not rest on a copper trace.

Similar boards with copper traces are also in the cabinet on each target. That way the position of a moving target target is known.
Now when you press the rifle trigger, it will complete the electrical circuit.. depending on what contact point the rifle will rest, electricity goes through it and into the board of the associated target, if the target is in the right position it will further close the circuit to the relays that keep track of scoring.
You also notice that some contact points are larger then others. Large contacts are targets that are easy to score, small contacts are difficult to shoot targets.

Trivia

Yes, you read this correct: 1971. Electronic sound.
There are 6 cards which each make one sound, and one amplifier card. The cards do not have any IC's or eproms on them, so repairing them should be possible at all time..
Aaah.. this sounds much better than working on electronic pinball sound cards with their obsolete parts :-)
 

Click here to see the IPDB entry of Jungle Drums.