transitional electric pachinko machines

This page is a work-in-progress in hopes to document the late-70s transitional electric pachinko machines.

With the start of the 1970s, arcade machines took their first baby steps towards solid-state technology that would eventually lead to the videogame revolution.  Pong machines came from numerous manufacturers in the early 70s.  EM arcade machines started including sound board and limited circuits.   Pinball manufacturers slowly started including solid-state circuity:  first for sound effects, and eventually for scoring and game rules.

Pachinko felt the same pressure, and the 70s gave us a fascinating period of incorporating electricity in to machines.  Previously machines would only have electricity for lights:  one for jackpot payout, and one to indicate low balls in the upper tray.

There were a few super quirky innovations, like pachinko machines with tiny TV sets in the center so players could watch while playing, but those were not pervasive.

My favourite era of pachinko ended when electric ball shooters became the norm.  And once Sankyo released Fever in 1980, things changed forever for pachinko, a revolution that would lead to the digipachi (deijipachi / デジパチ) dominance of pachinko we have now.

This page will NOT be including arrangeballs, challengeballs, pachinko baseball, pachinko mahjong, and other early solid-state pachinko variants.  This is just machines that "play + pay" like normal pachinko machines.

I will put them in chronological order as we verify their year.  If we don't know the year, they go to the end.  When possible I will link videos.  Thank you to everyone who has helped with this, and/or has unwittingly had their posts/images used as a resource.

1974 Nishijin Special Elec 'D51' aka The Train

features: Hitting the center feature lights up bulbs 1-2-3, then the gate over the center feature opens and makes it easier to hit a win pocket.

1974 Nishijin Powerflash 'Thunderbird'

features:  Balls in the Queens (yellow tulips) close the open tulips on their right or left side.  Balls in the upper left and right orange tulips open the orange tulip up, as well as the two orange tulips beneath it. A ball into the center opens all 9 tulips.  A ball in the center feature that uses the right or left entrance opens 4 tulips on the right or left.

1974 Nishijin 'The Fish' aka Piranha

features: a ball in the center hole of the top feature opens up the mouth of the fish, which slowly begins to close whether you get balls into it or not.  Balls in the left or right holes of the top center feature only opens the left or right tultips.

1974 Nishijin Powerflash 'Chinaman'

features:  Same machine as the Thunderbird, but with different graphics.  Balls in the Queens (yellow tulips) close the open tulips on their right or left side.  Balls in the upper left and right orange tulips open the orange tulip up, as well as the two orange tulips beneath it. A ball into the center opens all 9 tulips.  A ball in the center feature that uses the right or left entrance opens 4 tulips on the right or left.

1975 Nishijin 'Circuit Racer'

features: hitting the center pockets opens the center feature.  Numbers 1 through 6 are lit up in the center as you progress making 6 jackpots.  A ball to the center bottom tulip prematurely closes the center feature.

1975 Nishijin UFO

features:  center shot opens the UFO up.  After each next jackpot a playfield light advances, and then the UFO closes after 6 jackpots.

1976 Nishijin Kan-Less 'Clown'

features: balls in the center spin in the clune.  If they enter the middle hole all 4 tulips open.  If they open the left or right, they will open the left or right tulip respectively.

1976 Nishijin Elec Rotary Special Electric 'Boxing'

features: rounds are counted by the lights.  Animated punch.  Boxing gloves open for extra scoring.

1976 Nishijin Model C 'fishing'

features: solenoids open tulips based on where they end up in the center feature.  The large fish at the back gobbles the ball.

1977 Nishijin 'The Battle' aka The Tank

features:  after 12 jackpots in the center the 6 blue tulips will open up.  Currently unsure as to the conditions that cause them to close

1977 Sankyo 'Invader'

features:  unknown but appears to have an early LCD screen.  I have never seen this in real life, picture taken from the Sankyo company history page.  Kind of looks like Space Invaders (1978) HMMMM...

from the Sankyo history site, can we really trust this came out in 1977?  A year before Space Invaders?

1978 Nishijin Special Elec 'Super Don'

features:  You add balls to the two columns on either side of the plane.  You can press the orange button on the left of the machine to drop the balls, and at the same time the bottom 3 tulips are opened by a solenoid.

1978 Nishijin Special Elec 'Power Roulette'

features: a ball in the top pockets causes the roulette wheel to spin.  Press the button on the left of the machine to stop it on a number.  A 1 will open the center tulip will open with a solenoid.  A 3 will open the left and right tulips additionally.  Hitting a 5 will open all 5 tulips.

some of these have been found with electric shooters

1978 Nishijin Special Elec 'Hungry Monster'

features:    The monster raises and lowers its hands, and opens and closes its mouth, eating the balls.  Different tulips open depending on the path the balls take inside the mouth.

monster hands in down position

what the hands look like when raised

1978 New Gin Special Elec 'Gondola'

features: both center circles rotate

1978 Nishijin Special Elec 'Pagoda'

features: a ball in the top opens the center feature.   Tulips are controlled by a solenoid.

1978 Nishijin Special Elec unknown machine 1

features: two fish move up and down and the pockets to the left and right of the lower tulip at the bottom open and close

1980 Nishijin 'Kachi kachi achichi achichi' aka The Bunny aka The Rabbit

features: the center rabbit rotates, the bear arms and bird beaks open.  (specifics currently unknown)

1980 Nishijin Elex Tulipline 

features: the end of the transitional period, this late Elex machine has an electric shooter knob and spells the end.   Get a ball into the center GO pocket and all 6 tulips will open up.

Nishijin Super Janken-Man

features:

from the patent

Nishijin Special Elec Super Bang

features: getting a ball into the left or right submarines starts a faster animation in the center.  Center has LCD-animated ships to fire at, shots controlled via the buttons on the left.  Hitting ships opens 1 (lower center), 2 (lower left and right), or 7 tulips.  Unsure what hitting the top center pocket does,.

Unknown LCD game seen in promo video

features:  Super-Janken Man and Super Bang (both above) used to be just the only 2 LCD-screen games I had well documented here.  (a stub entry for Sankyo Space Invaders is also included above)  I have found one more, in this youtube video at timestamp 22:15.   At 22:25 you can see footage of Super Bang.

Nishijin 'hourglass'

features: I assume balls in the center open all 4 tulips.  It appears the hourglass rotates, but unsure if that's mechanical or electric.

Sanyo Automatic 'Daisangen (大三元)'

features: similar to the Powerflash machines.   It has upper left/right pockets instead of just cell openings on the Powerflash machines.  Bottom center tulip is also a pocket on the Powerflashes.  But this machine has less solenoids than a Powerflash, and so a ball into a yellow tulip closes ALL open tulips, not just the tulips on one side.

NON-ELECTRIC "Special Elec" machines:

There are machines with the "Special Elec" logo that aren't actually electric!  Here is one:

Nishijin Special Elec 'Cowboy'

features:  this machine is not actually electric.  Including it here for reference only.

Other 1970s machines that use electricity

Some 1970s machines are also "electric" and would have a power cord, but we're not including them in the main list since they don't have interactive electric playfield features.

For a brief period around 1977 they made pachinkos with small TVs in the center, but these proved to be detrimental to "people focusing on playing more pachinko", and so their popularity was short-lived.

picture from pachinko Masamura Collection museum in Nagoya

The coolest pachinko machine with a CRT screen has to be this mahjong pachinko.  What impresses me the most is that they got this large CRT game while still using a mechanical shooter.  I will eventually do a post covering mahjong pachinko, aka Sparrow Ball.  This takes the framework of an arrangeball  / challengeball machine and adds a screen and a huge array of tile buttons.

Satomi Mah-jongg Ball Game (unknown year)

There are also "Recycler" machines that use a motor to raise discarded balls into the reward tray, thus minimizing the amount of reloading the machine needs.  You can spot a recycler with the mid-height tray and the metal ball tube connecting the top loader tray to the middle-height tray:

This video is a Kan-Less Golf machine and has great footage of a recycler mechanism in action.  It is very similar to the Kan-Less 'Clown' above but you can see it doesn't have the solenoids the Clown does.