Smart Ball in Shenmue 3

Someone brought this to my attention over in this pachitalk thread, but I thought I should repost it all here.

The videogame Shenmue 3 apparently has areas where you can go to an arcade and play Smart Ball variants.

from the thread:

Shenmue III takes place in rural China in the mountains along the Lijiang river in the year 1987 and across your martial arts journey you find a few places where you can play Smart Ball, they are completely optional and have no bearing to the games plot but you can play Smart Ball and win prizes.

I am not sure if Smart Ball machines were ever imported into China, but certainly it could be that they are making references to the spa towns in Japan where you can still find retro smart ball parlors.  (though only a few retro parlors remain)

If you have any info on machines like this being in China, I would love to hear about it!   I've found so incredibly little about any 20th century coinop machines in China.   The only related thing I've posted was this bit about the Hong Kong Museum.

There are three general "periods" of smart balls that I can see:
the hand-operated ones (1930s to 1960s)
the automatic payout ones (1960s to 1970s)
the solid-state redemption ones (1980s-present)

Shenmue seems to combine a lot of these things together in varied ways.

The hand-operated ones had the balls cleared out manually with a latch accessed at the back.  Most allow balls to fall to a tray at the front, but in some cases the ball rack was handed to you by an attendant.
These did not have backboxes / backglasses.

1930s style smart ball at the Pachinko Museum

1950s style smart ball

The automatic payout ones used similar mechanical technology to the automatic dispensing pachinko machines, just scaled up the larger marbles.

These are my favourite as they winning are dispensed from the head.  The balls roll down the glass and can be fed into the shooter lane easily.

1960s/1970s style smart ball with automated payout

Then the solid-state machines offered scoring on discrete games, with the chance of winning a prize.  I am not sure if some of these ever had "ticket dispensers" like North American redemption machines.

if you can score 10 points, a prize ball will be dispensed out of the bottom slot

There is also a market of people making brand new 1930s-style smart ball tables.  Well they aren't quite like the 1930s machines, they have a very fundamental layout, but it's the same principle of operation.

they are sometimes found at fairs, where it seems the cost is now 300 yen. :)