Pachi Fever - Final Bunny 1997 Pachislo

Final Bunny
ファイナルバニー (Final Bunny)
Olympia - 1997

After picking up my Ultraseven pachislo back in the summer of 2022, I had been keeping an eye out for other machines that looked interesting. Pachislo machines tend to weigh more than most pachinko machines, so local pick up was the only option I was considering. The "Bunny" series of games by Olympia were always of interest, as bunny girls are one of my favorite pop culture creations, and I like the classic aesthetic of the machines. Over on the PachiTalk forums I had an open inquiry thread regarding any of the machines in the series, but the leads that were graciously returned were either overseas or across the country.

The original Bunny Girl was released in 1988 and was a popular machine in its day, as it featured a small secondary Fruit Game mode in addition to the standard big and regular bonuses. It was followed up by Super Bunny Girl in 1990, which played in a similar manner but featured more frequent action due to symbol realignments on the reels. Although the payout values for small wins were reduced to counter the more frequent hits, it appears that more Super Bunny Girl machines were manufactured than any other in the series. Bunny X.O. followed in 1992 and was the least popular in the series. It removed the bunny girl theming, and due to changing pachislo industry regulations restricting game design, it also removed the Fruit Game mode but was similar to Super Bunny Girl otherwise. Five years later Final Bunny was released in 1997, restoring the bunny girl theming but Olympia was unable to reintroduce the Fruit Game. Final Bunny was not as popular as the first two games, possibly due to being a comparatively standard pachislo with no new features, during a time when Olympia was lagging behind other manufacturers in terms of innovation. However, as it marked the return of the Bunny series after many years, it still did well enough and is an interesting combination of the art and design packages of Bunny Girl and Super Bunny Girl. The Bunny series would later be spun-off in 2002 with Space Bunny, a more modern game that completely leaves behind the gameplay and aesthetic of the earlier Bunny games. A couple footnotes are Bunny Girl 7, a version of Bunny Girl with a large American-style pull handle, and Super Bunny Girl Z. Super Bunny Girl Z was to be a modern version of Super Bunny Girl, including a version of the Fruit Game, but it never made it beyond location testing around 2008. Another spin-off was a pachinko machine released in 2004 by Heiwa, CR Bunny Girl, which is my personal holy grail when it comes to pachinko machines. (Seriously, if you're reading this and you have a Heiwa CR Bunny Girl, email me - I will pay a crazy amount for one of those machines) With the history of the Olympia Bunny series covered, let's get back to my Final Bunny.

The machine the night I picked it up, absolutely filthy and needing attention, but functional.

Late one Sunday night In July of 2024 I was doing a general slot machine search on Facebook Marketplace. It brought up a listing for an "Olympia Slot Machine" with the first picture being a handful of medals. Just before calling it a night I decided to take a closer look at the listing, scroll through the pictures, and sure enough the machine being sold was a Final Bunny. The seller was local enough, about two to three hours each direction depending on traffic, right around my limit for travel time. The machine was listed for $250, which again was right around my limit for what I'd like to pay for a pachislo, but since it was a game I had been looking for I decided to pursue it. I messaged the seller, heard back the next morning, and arranged to go get it after work that day. My wife and I drove out to pick it up, incredibly hitting pretty much zero commute traffic, making the journey about an hour and forty minutes each direction - not bad at all.

The seller was a nice enough gentleman and the machine was in a partially finished basement out in the country. Honestly it might as well have been a barn find - not thrashed or stored outside or anything, but certainly more along the lines of spending the past decade in a shed or outbuilding. Still I was really thankful it was located out in the country part of Stockton and not in the city core or else I may have not went after it. Upon getting it home I gave the machine the usual initial inspection. It was pretty filthy (they always are it seems) and needed a few consumables, in addition to the usual full rebuild and deep cleaning I perform on all my machines. I will say though, this one gave anything else I had ever encountered a run for its money in the "nicotine soaked" department.

Initial deep cleaning revealed that the foam gasket that runs around the cabinet had deteriorated into little more than dust. When I was first working with the machine I couldn't figure out why there was a black powder on everything until I brushed my hand against the foam stripping. It peeled off easily enough and then I was able to hit the entire edge of the wood cabinet with some isopropyl alcohol to get it totally cleaned off. Near the end of the rebuild I replaced the stripping but I have yet to find a replacement that is as thin as what Olympia originally used.

I didn't have a large block of time set aside to work on the machine, so I decided to approach it in modules. What I mean by that is rather than stripping down the entire machine all at once, I would pull a region off at a time and get it rebuilt and then either reinstall it in the machine or set it aside. The door looked to need the most work, with quite a bit of rust around the lower edge and part of the side. Thankfully everything came off of it relatively easily and left me a metal frame that I could take outside and get to work on.

Before (left) and after (right), rust on the edge of the door came off nicely, with only a bit of pitting on the inside left behind.

Although it looked pretty bad, I wanted to take a crack at the rust with a simple method first. I used a Scotch-Brite abrasive sponge and some WD-40 to cut through the rust. While I wouldn't ever use traditional WD-40 as a lubricant, I've found it great at breaking down rust in many different applications. There was some pitting left in the metal from the years of oxidization but I was able to buff it to a reasonably smooth state. I gave the entire door a cleaning and buffing in this manner and then polished it to a mirror shine inside and out.

The fully cleaned and polished door reattached to the cabinet.

Having been surprised with how well the door polished up, it was time to turn my attention to the door components. As I previously said, they all came off smoothly but do be careful when removing these components from a machine. Things that look metal are often plastic and parts that one may assume are plastic can often be metal. Case in point, the entire front of this machine is plastic, even though from the outside it looks and feels like metal. Many assemblies will be held to the machine with slotted tabs and these are usually incredibly fragile. Remember that most of these machines are pushing 25 years at this point, with the plastics becoming increasingly brittle due to age, heat, and normal plastic degradation. They also generally aren't meant to be fully disassembled.

This may look metal but it's all plastic - and incredibly filthy.

I get asked sometimes if these machines really need to be fully torn down and serviced. The lower assembly that houses the belly glass and user controls shown above should answer that question. From the outside it doesn't look all that bad. Internally it is another story, with layers of filth - dirt, dust, grime, ash, tobacco residue - you name it. Do you really want that in your house in that state? Do you really want to be touching those surfaces when you're playing the machine? Do you really want to deal with that when troubleshooting a problem that will inevitably come up? Most importantly, fully rebuilding and servicing a machine will give it the best chance to continue to operate for many more years. Not to mention that a dirty machine will almost always absolutely stink of cigarette tar. Thankfully a full cleaning can almost completely eliminate most of these issues.

In this example the lower board has been fully cleaned, while the upper board is how they started out, front and back.

All the boards need to be cleaned as well. Sometimes the flux used when the boards were manufactured can break down into a sticky mess, which then attracts all sorts of grime and gunk. What has worked best for me is using a high concentration isopropyl alcohol with a toothbrush to break up the grime, then wipe it away with a soft cloth. It may take a couple bushings but I've gotten through some pretty bad boards in this way. The dirt and grime create excess heat, which can cause components to fail or move out of operating specifications. It can also cause shorts or breaks, all of which will only lead to more troubleshooting down the line, so it's best to get everything to a clean state and fix issues as you find them. I also clean all the wiring harnesses and use contact cleaner on every connector. All bulbs are pulled and cleaned, and replaced if necessary. Final Bunny uses white PCBs on the door and as can be seen, they were brown when I started cleaning.

The inner side of the upper light PCB, before (top) and after (bottom).

One of the absolute dirtiest boards was that of the upper marquee, which lights the payout table, notes the current big bonus round, and also has chasing lights around the upper glass. There's a lot of heat in this area of the machine from the lights, in addition to capturing any smoke or grime that rises up through the cabinet. It took a long time to get the board clean, but the end result is night and day. They couldn't be factory restored to perfect white since the substrate had become faded around the lights, but they're as good as they can be. Getting this cleaned makes things a lot easier for the machine, since everything on the door of the machine runs through this board (all lights, sound, player interface, coin verification, and display counters), as it links all those systems to the game logic PCB.

The outer side of the upper light PCB, before (top) and after (bottom).

Once all the PCBs, lights, plastics, wires, buttons, and everything else on the door were fully cleaned and serviced, it was then time to address the glass. We all call these panels "glass" but in most cases they will be plastic, especially for machines from the late 1990's onward. These are generally pretty hearty and can be cleaned with glass cleaner, but do be cautious around any places where it appears the print is lifting or flaking away. Additionally the side that the print is screened on is susceptible to having the print scratched away, so don't clean these areas with anything abrasive. The certification and licensing stickers that are usually found in little windows on the belly glass are simple paper, so go easy on those as well. I usually give them the lightest wipe to get any grime off.

With the glass all cleaned up it was time to reassemble and repopulate the door. I gave the machine a quick play to ensure that everything seemed to be working correctly, which it was. I then removed the door and set it aside. This model of Olympia machine allows the entire door and hinge assembly to be easily lifted off, almost like removing a pachinko door from its frame, which was really nice to have during the restoration. Before moving on from the door, I have to mention that the door lock on this machine is a little strange. The door lock catch is reversed from every other machine I've seen, even later Olympia models. Instead of having catches on the door that latch onto a stationary bar in the cabinet, the cabinet has a pair of stationary catches that a sliding bar on the door slips under. This wouldn't be much of a problem but the importer who sold this machine basically beat the snot out of the lock and included a "key" that catches on the lock and rotates it - barely. The lock cylinder slides around in the barrel and just doesn't feel good at all. This is something I need to address in the future but in the meantime, I have a length of thin wire hidden on the side of the door that I can use to pull the lock bar open if the lock assembly ends up jamming. Usually you can simply reach into the cabinet in one way or another to pop a machine open, but the mechanism on this one makes that a difficult reach.

Something interesting about Final Bunny is that the big bonus will trigger the reels to be illuminated in a soft red color. Since there are chasing LEDs around the marquee in this mode, I figured the reels must use something similar but they do not. Instead there is an additional red florescent tube above the reels, just below the white tube that usually illuminates them. When in a big bonus the white tube turns off and the red tube turns on. I dread having to find a replacement for that if it ever fails. I actually dread having to find a replacement for any parts in these machines.

The red tube illuminated during a big bonus.

Now that the door was complete it was time to address the rest of the cabinet. I remove absolutely every part from a pachislo cabinet when I'm performing a rebuild and servicing, and this one was no exception. Once I had everything stripped off I gave the cabinet a thorough cleaning. It was at this time I realized that the cabinet itself felt rough and a bit worn inside. I chalk this up to spending the past fifteen years in a partially finished basement in California's central valley, which can be subject to pretty big temperature swings throughout the year. The wood integrity looked fine however, so once cleaned I simply painted the bottom two thirds of the cabinet with a semi gloss black paint. The cabinet wood drank it right up and after a second coat the cabinet felt much better. The top of the cabinet has a bit of a downward curve but it's nothing overly severe and probably is due to the wood warping from age. It looks more severe in pictures than it is in reality.

The power cord had seen better days but with a pachislo I generally want to replace it anyway, so that I can have a ground connection tied to the power supply chassis. The mount for the power supply had a lug specifically for this. The transformer in this machine is marked for 7A but the wires are a pretty thin gauge and even after completing the rebuild the lights dim a little during regular play. It makes me doubt if it can really handle the draw that it is listed as being able to provide, but it has run the machine for the past decade, so for the moment I left it in there. The hopper and reel mounts were both cleaned completely, as were all the wiring harnesses, as well as the game logic PCB and retainer. I also inspected the power supply to ensure its components were good to go.

Progression of a fully stripped cabinet getting some paint, then being repopulated, left to right.

With that it was time for the nastiest part of any pachislo rebuild - the hopper. Okay, they're not always horrible, but if there's one part of a machine that always definitely needs to be serviced, this is it. The hopper design on this machine is reasonably simple but it is very apparent that Olympia built it as cheaply as possible. Not only is the hopper pretty small, the quality of materials feel pretty close to the bare minimum. Nothing like the overbuilt hopper Sammy used in my Ultraseven machine. It all came apart and went back together easily enough, but I can absolutely see that if a part of this machine isn't going to hold up, this is it.

The hopper components being prepared to be serviced and reassembled.

I have to again mention that there just isn't much capacity in this hopper before medals begin to overflow and spill down the ramp. It made me realize that this machine will need an overflow container. The more I think about it, it isn't just the hopper that seems cheaply made, the whole machine feels like it meets bare minimums for build quality. That's not to say that it isn't well-engineered or that Olympia should have built them better, it's just an interesting contrast to some other machines I've encountered. Pachislo machines are only intended to last for two years tops, with most being overbuilt for that task, but with this model it looks like they were specifically targeting that couple year window. With the hopper rebuilt and reinstalled, the machine was starting to look phenomenally better than when I brought it home.

This left only the reel cage and associated components on the list for rebuild. While slot reels are generally very fragile, they're also one of the parts of the machine that tend to be the dirtiest. All that tobacco smoke wafts through the parlors, gets stirred up by the reels, and then bakes onto them under the heat of the machine's lights. The reel cage also usually has an interface board atop it, which is the perfect place for all that grime to settle and stick. The reel stop board on this machine is also located on the side of the reel cage and that is one of the most critical parts to any pachislo.

My approach to the reel cage is to completely disassemble everything at first. Then I rebuild as much of the actual cage as can be done while the reels are removed. Some machines use the reel supports to actually make up the cage, while others slot into an outer frame. After the cage was cleaned I turned my attention to the interface board at the top of the cage. There was an expectedly sticky layer of grime on this board and I cleaned it away with isopropyl alcohol and a toothbrush as with the other boards. The board cleaned up remarkably well and was left looking almost factory fresh.

Before (top) and after (bottom).

For reels I make a small hidden notation on each mount with a marker of where they fit in the sequence (L - left, C - center, R - right), and take each reel off its stepper motor, one at a time. The reels get carefully scrubbed with a mid strength concentration of Simple Green, a non-bleach anti-bacterial kitchen cleaner, and then finally a polish with Windex. The key is not to saturate the reel strips and to handle everything with extreme care. While the reels are fragile, they can also take careful scrubbing as long as you keep your wits about you. I thought the backgrounds on the reels for this machine were cream colored until I got to cleaning them, revealing they are actually pearl white. Everything else is cleaned as it is with the rest of the machine, including hitting all connectors with contact cleaner. I spray a tiny bit of contact cleaner in the stepper motors and cycle them, and then put a tiny bit of silicone lubricant on bearings.

With the reel cage reinstalled, the rebuild of the back half of the machine was complete. All that was left was to reattach the door. Owing to the simple design of this machine, there's only a single ribbon cable that connects the back of the machine to the door.

As close to new as can be expected.

Once reassembled, I installed a simple volume adjustment control to the single speaker that this machine uses. Everything fired right up without issue and the game ran great, much cooler and smoother than when the previous owner demonstrated it to me. I didn't document the restoration of every part, but rest assured that every single module was taken apart, cleaned and serviced.

I'm always amazed at how brighter and more colorful the lighted elements on these machines are once they're cleaned and rebuilt. They usually don't look that bad to start, from the outside anyway, but they definitely look exponentially better after a servicing. While the game was working great, there was something that irritated me about it. To the left of the bet button there's an area where the game has no artwork, only a large tan patch. My particular machine has a hole in this area, covered up with a silver label on the outside and some kind of duct tape on the inside. I removed the tape from the inside when I was cleaning the machine up, since it had absorbed all kinds of grime. I believe on some other Olympia games this area would have an additional button or something similar, but for Final Bunny it's just that big blank area. My guess is that the cover melted through due to players holding lit cigarettes in the area while hitting the handle / joystick.

The blank area all Final Bunny machines have. This example has a hole that had been patched at one point.

I didn't want to just cover it up with a single color, although honestly it would look fine if it was just black. I thought about coming up with some kind of illustration, maybe just an Olympia logo, but then I was inspired by the belly glass on the original Bunny Girl. I looked around to see if anyone had a good picture or scan of the belly glass and found a pretty good image of the belly glass illustration of the blue color machine.

As much as I think the art package for Final Bunny is well done, featuring real-life models as the bunny girls that have been on the machines since the start, I do think the earlier artwork is a bit cooler overall. I'm also surprised that there isn't anything on the machine that calls out that it is the continuation of the Bunny Girl series. So I took a really close at the Bunny Girl belly glass art and figured out what I could pull off of it to fit in the area on the Final Bunny control panel. I wanted to use as much of the girls as possible and fill the area in as much as possible. That area looks pretty big but in reality it's only about an inch high and four inches long. I also wanted to try to make something that wouldn't stand out too much. So I moved some of the graphical assets around, redrew parts of the text, and changed the background color to black. I considered recoloring the girl's bunny suits but I thought they good looked good against the black, along with the lipstick red of the Bunny Girl logo.

I printed my new artwork on a vinyl sticker sheet and then covered it with an adhesive protective sheet and cut it to size. It stuck down very well and has held up for months on the machine, looking as new as the day I stuck it on. I think it looks appropriate, almost like it was always supposed to be there.

It begs the question why Olympia didn't put something there themselves because without that spot filled in, the machine really looks like it's missing something. In fact I thought the previous owner had peeled a label off until I started looking at other Final Bunny machines.

That completed the rebuild as far as I was concerned. The game was running great and never hit an error state after dozens of hours of testing play. None of the burned out bulbs that I replaced had any problems and the reels are surprisingly quiet for the most part. Reel noise and cabinet resonance are simply part of pachislo and pachinko, and usually aren't heard in a parlor with hundreds of other machines being played.

The overflow container to the right of the hopper, beneath the transformer.

Eventually I settled on using a small plastic container for medal overflows, since I was having trouble locating an original one that fit the space properly. The container is the perfect size, as it is tall enough to be close to the overflow chute on the side of the hopper but low enough to clear the transformer. Generally an overflow container isn't a necessity, but with how small the hopper is on this machine it catches medals pretty frequently. I have a single piece of adhesive Velcro on the side of the overflow container that keeps it secured to the cabinet, so it won't slide forward or back. Interestingly it looks like either the parlor or importer cut the overflow sensor wires from the harness right at the power supply connector.

Final Bunny fully rebuilt and serviced, ready to play for another twenty years.

Personally I think this machine is beautiful and has a really swanky and classic look about it. The artwork is a little more simplistic than the earlier games, with the incorporation of real-life models as the bunny girls rather than illustrations, but that gives it a bit more of a western feel. The game is also really fun and is strangely addictive for being such a simple by-the-book pachislo game. The deeper strategy with this game is that of replay removal, where the "JAC in" during a big bonus is intentionally missed to win smaller payouts while still within the bonus mode. Due to game design regulations of the time, replay removal is actually a common gimmick to maximize winnings on games released during the era of this machine. Hitting chains of mid level prizes with this method can earn a big payout over time, an example with Final Bunny is to aim for three bells during each spin of a big bonus. Each time this is successfully performed it will pay out eight medals, which can add up quickly, and a missed shot will put the machine into a regular bonus round - so you win when even when you lose. The extra layer of depth and skill that replay removal adds to games of this era make the objective not only to win, but to maximize how much you can squeeze from each bonus.

The reels after being fully cleaned inside and out.

The reels on Final Bunny are pretty cool and serve as a combination of the symbols on Bunny Girl and Super Bunny Girl. The 7's of Bunny Girl are combined with the SUPER symbols of Super Bunny Girl into a "SUPER 7" symbol that is the target for the big bonus. The bunny ears and bow tie symbol from Super Bunny Girl returns, but this time it has a bit of a hidden visual trick. Rather that being a single flat red and yellow symbol, the "BUNNY" symbol is black with a yellow shadow to the left and a red shadow to the right. The yellow and red shadows make completely unlicensed Playboy-style logo silhouettes on either side, and match the suit colors of the women on the machine. The classic fruit machine symbols fill out the rest of the reels: grapes, cherries, plums, bells, and oranges. Every symbol has a bit of mirrored gold in it, which reflects the light with a nice shine, and gives the reels a polished look.

Although the cleaning, restoration, and servicing are all complete, there are still a few additional things I plan on addressing in the future. The door lock really needs to get sorted. It feels like it's all going to fall apart at any moment and I've been unable to find a drop-in replacement for this model of Olympia machine. Whatever company imported this machine couldn't have done a worse job depinning and adapting the lock. With how much it slides around I almost wonder if they removed something internally. I'll figure that out once I get around to pulling it all apart but I'm guessing that I'll either have to replace part it of it with a more standard keyway or rig it back together more solidly than it is now. Replacing the keyway would at the very least allow me to have some kind of real key for the machine, rather than the bent up improvised key that the machine has currently.

The machine under normal room lighting.

However, the next order of business for the machine will be to swap in a known quality transformer to see if the game runs any differently. I find it strange that reel stopping can cause all the lights on the machine to dim briefly for a moment with an allegedly 7A transformer installed. That should be way more power than a machine like this needs, but between that and how thin the wires are, I don't think it's providing that much power. I have an additional 4A transformer on hand, the same exact model I put in my Ultraseven pachislo, that I'm going to try in Final Bunny. Ultraseven does dim just a tiny bit when the hopper is paying out, but that's almost expected due to it having an extremely robust hopper in comparison, and I can't see Final Bunny requiring more power than that game does. All the more reason why I have my doubts about the transformer currently installed in Final Bunny.

All said and done, this is the pachislo that I play most out of all the games in my collection. I'm still stoked that on my short list of games that I'm always actively looking for, I was able to find this one locally and for a reasonable price. If it wasn't a game on my list I more than likely would have passed it up, since the drive was a little farther than I prefer and the machine was a little more beat up than I like to start with. Yet everything cleaned up very nicely and I love having a Final Bunny in the collection. I'm still on the lookout for a Bunny Girl and Super Bunny Girl, and while they're a bit more difficult to come by stateside, I know finding one is always a possibility.

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Last updated 03/22/2025
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