On my journey into researching Japanese machines it took me a while before I discovered Arrangeballs. I was watching some Japanese youtuber visit a retro-gaming parlor ("Shōwa" era games) and paused the video, grabbed a screen snap, and had to ask, "What the heck is that on the wall behind him"? It looked like a pachinko at first glance, but it had a row of numbers along the bottom, and didn't have a normal feeder tray. What's going on here?
The machines turned out to be called Arrangeball, and outside of the background in a few retro parlor shots, I couldn't find much about them. I eventually discovered a small fanbase for them outside of Japan and fell in what might be love, but probably was more accurately lust.
Instead of the traditional abstracted gambling currency of choice in Japan (pachinko balls,) these games worked on tokens. It must have been unfortunate timing because legislative changes spelled their demise about a decade in. After they passed however, integrated circuit machines saw the rise of pachislo machines, which also operated on tokens. Coulda shoulda woulda, arrangeballs had their tiny moment in time.
It reminds me of the short window of American pinball machines that paid out coins. They too lasted about a decade before being legislated out of existence. The American gambling pinballs went on to have credit counters and evolved from there. The innovations of arrangeball machines were mostly lost to time as the rise of solid state machines, spinning digital reels, and electric shooters would pave the way for the 1980s modern pachinko boom, and subsequently pachislo.
Legislation would be repealed and elements of arrangeball would continue into the solid-state era, under the guise of arepachi machines, but their numbers pale in comparison to contemporary digipachi (deijipachi / デジパチ) machines, and even to the humble (yet delightful) hanemono machines.
the basics
who: JC (pachitalk)
where: America
what: Japanese Arrangeball & Challengeball machines
when: "I started collecting them in 2010 or so"
how many: "I have 7 left out of 20 or so different models I've owned over the years. A handful of the models I imported myself and as far as I can tell, are the only copies in the U.S."
Taiyo electron "Full Throttle 2" |