Pachinko Queen Implosion

I took the softcore hetero porn film Pachinko Queen Explosion and edited it down to just the parts that teach us something about modern pachinko or show off the parlor.  There is nothing remotely pornographic in this clip.

Pachinko Queen Implosion from Caitlyn Pascal on Vimeo.

I've noticed that embedded video doesn't show on this blog if you're on mobile, so if you're on a mobile device click the link to go right to Vimeo.

Here's the cover art from the original movie

Pachinko Queen Explosion (2007)

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. :)

Niche Mechanisms 001: the drop shelf

A horizontal bar, but you push a button and it recedes.  The ball or coin on it then falls.  That's it!  A delightful little gameplay mechanism that has been around for decades but is still barely known.  Machines here span almost 100 years.

Let's start with a basic machine, and the earliest.  There's a whole lot more under the cut.

1900 The Halfpenny by Price and Castell

when you push the button the shelf retracts, allowing the coin to enter the winning slot

Niche Mechanisms 000: an introduction

I'm starting a new series of blog entries where I just post up a bunch of media illustrating cool arcade gimmicks and mechanics that span decades and continents.

These are not going to be a definitive works, nor meticulously researched things.  But if you have more stuff to add to them please reply to the bottom and perhaps I'll update them with new entries as I go.

These are all cool little things I've noticed in my research of coin-op machines and that I've fallen in love with.  There are a bunch of topics in classic coin-op that I could include here, but won't because they are just too massive:  pitch-n-bats, physical horse-racing games, shooting gallery machines, bowling games, EM arcade games, etc.

But stay tuned for a handful of small Niche Mechanism posts in the future!

operator hacks: slot machine mod

I'm fascinated by all the way devious operators tried to make their machines more profitable.

With EM machines the mods can be smaller and less intrusive, but here is an example of a purely mechanical hack.  Taken from a facebook group about slot machines, this hack is much more intrusive.

Someone has taken one of the pay wheels for the slot machine and spot-welded one of the gaps, closing it off.

Each of the 3 reels on a mechanical slot is attached to one of these plates, and the holes line up to the symbols you see on the spinning reel.  If the holes line up, the pay fingers can enter them and that permits the related payout.

With the hole closed, that position on the reel no longer pays out.  The operator then modified the correlating symbol on the reel, changing it from a lemon to a "Bell-Fruit-Gum" icon.

If this symbol comes up, you've lost!

Any gambling machine with a microprocessor controls the odds that way, and is of no interest to me.  But it's always cool to see how nefarious operators might have tilter the odds further in their favour on these older gambling machines.

This hack would have required disassembling the full machine and remove the reel parts to do the weld.

new arrival

 

(pinball) Love in the time of Covid

with apologies to Gabriel García Márquez...

Pinball aficionados are statistically the least likely to be heavily effected by this pandemic given the hobby's demographics, but still there is a yearning for the silver ball despite the tragedy of the times.

While Canada is not quite out of the woods (we are 76th in cases per capita, 26th in deaths per capita,) Ontario has had some significant success and entered "Phase 3" of the re-opening plan.   Pinballers yearn, and pinballers get creative.  Some hunkered down in their basement arcades, acutely feeling the absence of friends to challenge and celebrate their scores.  Many have gone months without machines, and not flipping at all.  

The first sign of life came was the reopening of The House of Targ, implementing new safety protocols: barriers between the spaced-out machines, directional arrows for movement, limited attendance, and all games now set to Free-Play.

But a pandemic brings less customers, and they have begun selling their famous perogies online, alongside their sides, t-shirts, beer, and hot sauces.  They have continued working with other local businesses, doing pop-up markets at Big Rig Brewery in Kanata.  Whatever can be done to keep any cash-flow going, and the lights on.

But what about tournaments?  The competition!  The packed houses of players clamoring to get their plays in!  Surely these are casualties of the pandemic!  unless...

There is some hope with pinball junkies like Craig willing to think outside-the-box (outside-the-house) and present Ottawa with what will be remembered as a legendary tournament that faced down a pandemic.  Craig has used his resources to find a way to bring back competitive pinball.

F-14 Tomcat and Count-Down (straddled with a livestream camera)

Safety first:  4 machines are setup in the garage with ample space between each of them.  Only players competing are allowed in.  One player per game.

Instead of a normal bracket, the tournament format was switched to "card" based, which you might be familiar if you've ever seen or played in some of the larger tournaments' qualifying rounds.  But the effect is that everyone plays solo.  (Entry is limited to the 4 cards, which I love.  None of this spending $200 and 12 hours trying to put up a solid card, like you see at so many major tournaments.  Best bring your A-game from the beginning.)

Ample hand sanitizer provided for before and after games.

And oh hey, how about a machine on the front porch?  The end-of-summer breeze feels amazing while you play, and quality outdoor airflow is one of the strongest correlations to reductions in potential Covid transmission.

Stranger Things is pretty great with the new code!

Lots of players continued to distance and wear masks.  Safety and respect, first and foremost.  (Fun comes #3 for sure)

Foot traffic is an inevitable issue though, which was solved through good old-fashioned labour:  6 slots were open for signup, over the span of 5 days.  Never would there be a crush of players hanging about.  The card system allows people to get in there during discrete times, play their games, and move along.  

The tournament also featured a major surprise, the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Pro) by Stern to hit Ottawa, brought here by Player One Amusement Group!

TMNT and Seawitch!

If you're an Ottawa player that wants to get in on the action, it's running until Saturday night and all of the info is up on MAACA.  Weather dependent of course, but it's looking to be a good week so far.

The event is being livestream by Ottawa's own PinBallers, and you can follow the result online.

Mike of the PinBallers, safely distanced in his broadcast booth

Kuujjuaq Arcade 1982

Here are some excerpts from Taqralik, "The Magazine of Northern Quebec", circa October 1982.   I was sent this amazing magazine by my friend Amy Prouty (PhD candidate, Inuit art history).

It features a write-up, and 2 photos, from the Kuujjuaq arcade that was opened October 23, 1982.
The magazine is in Inuktitut and English.

Taqralik magazine - 1982-10

photo credited to Willie Adams

finding Oriena Currie, The Pinball Queen of Canada

Oriena Curie: The Pinball Queen of Canada
1978-04-09 Toronto Star - original photo by Hal Barkley

It all started with a message from my mother-in-law.  Apparently a friend of hers mentioned that way-back-when he had written a book on pinball, and would that be of interest to me?  Yes.  A few months later, I received a lovely gift of 1979's Special When Lit, signed by the author himself!

3 issues of Canadian Coin Box magazine from 1974

I scanned in 3 issues of Canadian Coin Box magazine, loaned from JF.   They'll be of interest to anyone interested in pinball, EM arcade games, video games, and jukeboxes.

Canadian Coin Box Magazine - 1974-04 (PDF)

Canadian Coin Box Magazine - 1974-08 PDF

Canadian Coin Box Magazine - 1974-12

Bally Skill Roll manual

I scanned the manual for the 1956 Bally Skill Roll.  Enjoy the PDF!

research pays off!

Love these photos that Mr. Sugiyama sent me!   He updated the signage in the Pachinko Museum thanks to research I sent him.

His Japanese pinball machine seems to be a copy of Genco's Official Baseball.  Genco was sued by Rock-Ola as their design seemed cribbed from their World's Series.

pinball-themed album covers collage

pachinko museum supplemental material

There was lots of information on the walls at Sugiyama's Pachinko Museum but I don't know any Japanese, so I wanted to include all of the extra historical details here for all of the Japanese-reading fans.
Again, thanks to nazox2016 for all of these photos!

If you can translate any of these please email me (at thetastates@gmail.com) or respond below, and reference the picture #

Niche Collections: Mr. Sugiyama's Pachinko Museum

Each of these Niche Collection entries has made me very happy to write, but this one I am by far the most excited about.  Across continents, across language barriers, and through a pandemic, the stars aligned and I am happy to present one of the most important collections of Japanese machines that exists.

I first discovered the work of 杉山 一夫 (Kazuo Sugiyama) when I bought his book パチンコ誕生―シネマの世紀の大衆娯楽 and dove into it with my poor little translator app (I don't speak any Japanese).  It remains one of the best books on the birth of pachinko available, even for English collectors like me.  I then discovered he had two e-books as well so I had to snag those.

Sugiyama was working to correct the mistakes of the past.  So many "pachinko histories" had huge missing gaps, and often incorrectly traced pachinko back to early 1900s bagatelle games.  Articles sometimes quip that "pachinko is Japanese pinball" and that's a lazy description that should forever be laid to rest.  Sugiyama has documented pachinko to the start of the 20th century, AS WELL documented bagatelle / corinthian/ corinth and it's developments in Japan.

First up, here are his books:

Since he had written on Corith, I had messaged him with questions about Smart Ball.  In our conversations he revealed that he would be opening a museum!    Very exciting stuff!!!

But then the pandemic was declared!  Museum opening: POSTPONED!!!

With the pandemic now being much more controlled in Japan, and with the safety precautions much more well known, I encouraged my friend nazox2016 to go visit and he took all of the photos you'll see below.  THANK YOU SIR!  You can read his write-up at his site, part 1, part 2.  Most of the translations below are also his.
I have included all of the signs filled with history in a separate post, and hopefully people can help translate them in the future.

So without further ado, let's get into it...

Niche Collection 007: Mr. Sugiyama's Pachinko Museum

postcards from the museum featuring two of the rarest machines

and this is just a sampling! - Garage exhibition room

spotted at the Hong Kong Museum of History

I found these cool photos on flickr from the Hong Kong Museum of History 香港歷史博物館

photo by iris_709394

 It is from a display of Hong Kong life in the 60s, part of the permanent exhibition.  And hey!  Check out that cool little machine.

photo by iris_709394

Definitely pachinko vibes, but the scoring card on top suggests it's played like bingo.  As my friend nazox2016 wrote to me:

(4 horizontal in a row) 一次(4 vertical in a row) 三次(4 diagonal in a row) 四次
I'm not good at Cantonese, but I guess "五毛一次” means "1 Play 5 cent"."一次",　"三次",　and "四次" means "1 time", "3 times", and "4 times".

So 1 point for horizontal row, 3 points for vertical, 4 points for diagonal?

photo by iris_709394

The machine looks like a modified version of this 1954 Zipper Skill machine (by Binks Industries).  If it retains some of the same hardware, a bunch of the case has been removed + replaced.
But mostly I just love the hand-painted artwork on it.

zoom in on the Hong Kong one:

Rock-Ola's World's Series (1934) resources

Once upon a time I ended up buying 3 World's Series over the course of a year.  I made a deal with a friend in the Montreal area and he took all 3 with the promise that one would be returned nicely restored.
In anticipation of my World's Series returning I wanted to compile some resources for this amazing machine. 
It was wildly popular, they apparently made like 50,000 of them.  And while so much coin-op from the 1930s never survived the last 90 years, the sheer volume of World's Series means they aren't too hard to come by.


Tonnes of reproduction parts are available at the wonderful Buckwerx Rock-Ola site
Chris Hale has a Shapeways (3d printing) store where he has recreated many of the key complex parts

and if you want to learn all about the machine, and even see videos of it operating from the INSIDE, check out Mark Gibson's World's Series restoration page at Fun With Pinball.

Between those three sites you should have every bit of info to take an 86 year old World's Series project from start to finish.

PLAY BALL!

photo by Mark Gibson

Pike's Peak glass template

I needed a replacement glass for my 1940 Groetchen Pike's Peak machine so I made this.
I gave this to the glass shop and they were able to produce it easily.
Download the PDF

game room updates

My friend lent me his extremely rare Power Roulette pachinko so I am temporarily retiring my other 70s pachinko for this one.
My regular 70s pachinko is fun but has no remarkable gimmicks.  This Power Roulette allows you to spin the roulette wheel if you can get a ball in the top center pocket.

Lion Arrangeball, Glory Ball Deluxe, Power Roulette

having owned a number of pachinkos over the years, it's safe to say that I vastly prefer the games with the mechanical shooter.


Please note that all of this is being done with safe social distancing, proper handwashing, gloves, and full masks!
I also got to borrow this cool little MiniBoy poker machine:

During this quarantine I picked up not one but TWO Pike's Peak machines.  The nicer one is above, but it was missing a bunch of the reset mechanisms.
The 2nd one I got was very rough, but had the mechanisms needed, and now I have a full working one and my friend has a project that he will be relatively easy for him to tackle.

This is what this one shelf is looking like now:

I even took time to add more artwork to the walls.  I mean, this is what is BEHIND the machines.  Yeah, running out of room.    New up?  Zarzon and Astro Invader marquees are stunning.   That giant Combat marquee is from Sega in 1969.  And that's a newly added Free Fall playfield on the wall, too.

A bunch more movement coming this summer.
Contact Master is sold and leaving soon.  My Smart Balls are out getting worked on.  and we are all eagerly awaiting arrival of Merry-Go-round and World's Series, which have been out for restoration.