a note on bar billiards

Just because I've been on an "evolution of bagatelle" kick, I watched some bar billiards videos and thought the disparity of them was pretty funny.

For amateurs?  Bar billiards seems tonnes of fun.  Check this great explainer and demonstration video:

For pros?  Wow, if this isn't the most boring thing to watch.  They need a rule where if the playfield is empty, a ball must touch the cushion once for your shot to be validated.

Saida Shokai pachinko circa 1938

Some further updates on the early pachinko machine I got, the Saida Shokai machine is identifiable partially due to the plate around the hole where you insert the ball:

ball entry plate

When I sent this is Kazuo Sugiyama he confirmed that it was likely a Saida machine, and specifically the style that appears in his book on Pachinko history, page 197.

page 197 of Cultural History of Things and Humans: PACHINKO (ものと人間の文化史 186: パチンコ by 杉山 一夫)

This machine is now believed to originally be from around 1938.  What makes it truly special is that the ball you insert immediately goes to the back of machine to the jackpot bin.  On it's way there it trips a lever and a ball is released into the playfield.  Each time you play, the exact same ball is used.  The balls that the player inserts never go to the playfield.

This is similar to the European allwin design, where there would be one ball in the machine, which got released upon inserting a coin.  Instead of a coin, the player inserts a ball, which then falls to the payout section in the back.

For me this is a very special machine to help bridge the history of pachinko to the lineage of coin-op game machines.  The machine is heavily restored and I don't know how much of the hardware is truly original, but that also means I can actually use it for my history booths and don't have to worry about it being a super fragile museum piece.  I also love that it is pre-WW2!

currency

Moving some stuff around.  Here are the 11 types of currency my arcade uses

Twenty One (by Groetchen, 1936)

Hello it's time for more mathematics!   Yes, I managed to get this lovely little restored trade stimulator from 1936:

Twenty One (21) by Groetchen circa 1936

These are devilish little machines designed to trick the player in to thinking it's a skill game.  Please be advised of a little operator secret:  these are NOT skill games.  The fix is in, and it's designed for you to lose, and to hopefully make you think it's your fault you lost.

We'll dive in to the mathematics of that a bit later, but first a gameplay overview:  place a nickel in, pull the handle down, and the reels spin.  The left-most windows (5, 4, 3) will all have a shutter close in front of them.  You have your two cards (windows labeled 2 & 1).  Want another card?  You can press the button under window 3 to reveal it.  Want another card?  Do the same for button 4.  When you are satisfied with your hand, press button 5 to reveal the dealer's hand.  You can't press button 4 until 3 is press, forcing an order.  Once you press button 5, the other 2 window buttons are disabled.  If you stand on 3 cards and reveal the dealer's hand, there is no way for the played to know what window 4 had.

When it arrived it was super sluggish and not really spinning at all.  I went inside:

some updates to older posts

I now own the 1-2-3 from Coin Craft Canada!  A friend of mine is going to be working on it.

check 1929 in the Tamakorogashi - Japanese Roll Ball - 玉ころがし post for a new entry.

New movie added to the exploring pachinko in Japanese cinema... post: 1975 - 濡れた欲情　ひらけ！チューリップ (Wet Lust: Opening the Tulip)

bagatelle notes: Carombolette and more

Carombolette seems to have been a bit of a novelty billiards table.  It took the "pigeon holes" / wooden gates / Mississippi bagatelle arches and introduced a tantalizing playground of pins and pockets you could apply some strategy to, but played heavily on chance.  Perhaps a compromise between the erratic nature of slanted pintable bagatelle and the more traditional billiards games?

This also seems to an early appearance of the stationary bell on a larger table, centered in the highest scoring pockets so to ring when a ball enters it.  Prior tables all have hanging bells that are chimed by the ball passing under.

The slant of the back portion of the playfield ensures gravity takes over and absolute control by the player is a a bit of an illusion.

There was still a strong skill component, in shooting the balls down the table and through the gates, but the randomness offers tantalization, and probably made it exceptionally fun for people to bet on.

To look at simpler bagatelles, go to this earlier post.  And we look at slanted pintable bagatelles.

This is a description given by the auction house.  Please note that auction descriptions are NOTORIOUS for their inaccuracies.  We have no evidence of the Count D'Artois having a pin bagatelle table, that's currently just a folk tale.  Where did the auction house get the 1857 date?  No one knows.

Montague Redgrave Bagatelle Company PARLOR BAGATE
 1857. Impossible to find. This is the only one I have ever seen in the past 35 years of collecting. Complete restoration from top to bottom. This is the forerunner of pinball; first named around 1777 France, by King Louis 16ths brother Count D'Artois. This game has a Solid Slate playfield underneath the new felt covering. Redgrave was the first to make small games with a coil spring and a shooting rod which we now call the "ball shooter or plunger" which was patented in the USA. These games were so popular that he made larger ones like this particular model for Saloons and Beer Halls. This game was originally played with "Wickets" not Cue Sticks. This is a real find for the player and the historian alike. Degree of play difficulty: Very hard because we don't have the rules.
Condition Overall Condition (10). Size 104" L. 
liveauctioneers

This one is fascinating!  It has 9 gates, but after the gates it slopes downward!  12 playfield holes, plus 3 pegged areas with bells inside!

9-hole bagatelle notes

This is another work-in-progress post so I can keep a visual log of the different bagatelle styles and bits of information I find.   The "history of pinball" didn't start here.  Bagatelle was just another note in the history of aristocratic gaming that goes back hundreds and thousands of years throughout humanity.  But this is a good jumping off point because around the time of bagatelle is when international trading really picked up the pace, and we can start tracing cultural exchanges from countries around the globe.

There are a few general styles:  The most common is the style of bagatelle that also became "Japanese Rolling Ball" (with a few differences,) where you have an arrangement of 9 pockets at one end.  Board is not slanted.  It is flat like a billiards table.  These all seems to be European here, and would be played with a cue with a mace (cue with a paddle on the end,) or with a traditional-style pool cue.

The main difference of Japanese Rolling Ball is that the balls would be rolled by hand.  And the few examples I've seen have 10 holes arranged more in a grid fashion.

A few here have an accessory to add gates to the playfield.  These variants will be lumped in here.  It wouldn't take much to convert a table like this in to a Pigeon Hole table.

The game from here went in a few branches.  Extra holes added at the ends.  Holes that led to troughs for scoring.  Playfield obstacles added.  Loose pins added to the playfield.  Fixed pins added to the playfield.

What truly marks the beginning of innovation that would lead to modern pinball is when they decided to slant the playing field.  We will get to those in a second posts.

1860 9-hole English bagatelle as seen at Pinball Expo 2024

For now, let's look at pretty bagatelle pictures:

Tamakorogashi - Japanese Roll Ball - 玉ころがし

Here I have gathered everything I can find about 玉ころがし (Tamakorogashi or Tama Korogashi) aka Japanese Roll Ball, or Japanese Rolling Ball, or Japan Rolling Balls, Billard Japonais, etc.  Obviously in Japan it would just be called "ball rolling".

picture from Jost & Cie catalog (see France section)

I am told by Mr. Sugiyama that Tamakorogashi was very popular in Japan from 1880-1930, but very little documentation of it exists outside of newspapers.  Game were not considered important back then, and photography still very expensive.  I am hoping that more and more details will emerge, especially documentation of the game within Japan.

We know quite a bit about games from 1930 onward.  We have some scraps detailing the history of bagatelle from the 18th and 19th centuries, but there is a lot to be learned about the role of Japanese game history in that time.
Building on our current lineage, billiards gave us bagatelle which through many twists and turns eventually gave us all of the arcade machines we know and love.  But the lines between 16th century billiards, 1780 France and the 1930s which gave birth to both pinball in America and pachinko in Japan are still poorly defined.  Tamakorogashi is a part of that developmental history, and it feeds back in to arcade history in a significant way.

Quick overview:

1880-1930 Tamakorogashi popular in Japan.
1901-1920s Japanese Rolling Ball gains popularity in USA and Canada.

1906-1950: Japanese Rolling Ball as a popular kids' toy.
1920s variations of Japanese Rolling Ball tables appear around Europe, at fairs and as part of their robust lineage of wooden table games. Names like "Le Billard Japonais" provide the only connection to its heritage.

1930s Japanese Rolling Ball slowly fades from USA amusement parks but inspires new arcade games, and the redemption model it pioneered thrives.

Gameplay:  balls are rolled down a long playfield towards numbered holes at the end of the playfield.  Depending on the total score, you would be awarded a prize of varied value.
Many establishments kept ledgers, allowing players to build on a score to cash it in for larger prizes.  Some places eventually offered tickets for players to track their score.

Legacy: Japanese Rolling Ball might be the very first "redemption arcade" game.  Ledgers were kept for players to exchange for larger prizes at the end of the season.  It was often used as a way to procure imported Japanese wares before import stores were common.  It was (usually) deemed a fair carnival game and not a scam (like many other carnival games,) and many players primarily enjoyed the gameplay.  

We have examples of points being accumulated and stored on ledgers in North America as early as 1906.  This "redemption arcade" template would later be duplicated by arcades for Skee-ball, Fascination, Pokerino, and all the way up to modern contemporary redemption arcades which dominate the industry worldwide.

Many arcade games took inspiration from tamakorogashi gameplay, some of which can be found at carnivals and arcades today.  Outside of the arcade, it was seen extensively in small community fairs and bazaars, and became a popular children's toy.

Name variants: Japanese Rolling Ball, Japanese Roll Ball, Tamakorogashi, Tama Koro, たまころがし, Japanese Ping-Pong, Japanese Bowling, Japanese Rolling Balls, Japanese Rolling Board, Japanese Ball Game, Japanese hand-bowling.
Each instance of 'Japanese' is sometimes shorted to just 'Jap' in old parlance.  In parts of Europe it was called "Japanese Billiards" or "Billard Japonais".

Game variants:  "Japanese Roll-Down" was a game made by American carnival workers to play off the popularity of Japanese Rolling Ball.  6 balls were simultaneously rolled down the playfield towards a 6x6 grid.  While Japanese Rolling Ball was seen as a fair game of skill, the Japanese Roll-Down was a scam carnival game.  It appeared as early as 1910.  (more details below in the Japanese Roll-Down section, and see also the section Beyond Japanese Rolling Ball)

investigating Coin Craft Canada, Canada's pre-war pinball hopeful?

My mind raced when I first saw this post up on my local board.  Coin Craft Canada?  A CANADIAN MADE pinball machine from the pre-war days?  There were other Canadian companies that had dabbled, but this seemed like a serious contender.    

After a quick analysis, my hope was quickly dashed.  This wasn't exactly a Canadian made pinball, but what was it exactly?  In this post I want to dive into my research into Coin Craft Canada and the machine One Two Three.

Here's what we do know:  One-Two-Three aka "One Two Three" aka "1-2-3" was advertised for sale in late 1935 by Peo, a company out of New York that had been involved in trade stimulators, and had a few interesting forays into the pinball market.

new book: Cultural History of Things and Humans: PACHINKO (ものと人間の文化史 186: パチンコ by 杉山 一夫)

I am very excited to announce that Mr. Kazuo Sugiyama's latest book is now available!  Mr. Sugiyama (杉山 一夫) turned his residence in to the Birth Of Pachinko Museum, which we featured here last year.

Published by Hosei University, this book is the latest in their scholarly "Cultural History" series.

ISBN 978-4-588-21861-3 [Published June 2021]

This book is in Japanese, but I browse it with the Google Translate app (apple, android) on my phone.  Translation apps are getting better by the week, and for most English speakers you'll be able to easily find the manufacturers, regions, and years of the machines.  I collect a lot of coin-op books from around the world and those are always the keys bits of data I want.

It packs in 372 pages of pachinko research going back to early 20th century.  It covers the earliest developments, from bagatelle and allwins, to the earliest pre-WW2 machines, and into the 1950+ juggernaut that we recognize today.

It features lots of photos, illustrations, diagrams, patents, and even a few colour pages.

Japanese stores selling the book:

Rakuten

Honto

Amazon Japan

International customers can get it via shipping services:

purchase it through Buyee

purchase it through FromJapan

My friend nazox2016 also has a review on his site.  Here is the table of contents, which I copied from his site and translated using machine translation.

Table of Contents (Excerpt from the official website of the Hosei University Publishing Bureau)

Chapter 1 Pachinko God "Masamura Gauge"

Chapter 2 Forgery of Masamura Gauge Legend

Chapter 3 Introducing Bagatelle (to Japan)    

Chapter 4 Birth of "Wall Machine"

Chapter 5 Birth of "Issen Pachinko"

Chapter 6 Birth of "Pachinko Type Confectionery Vending Machine"

Chapter 7 1933 years, the craze "Corinthians game"

Chapter 8 Founding and Nationwide Expansion of Suzutomi Shokai

Chapter 9 Pachinko machine production begins in Kanazawa after Osaka in 1931

Chapter 10 The oldest existing "pinball machine" made in Japan around 1935

Chapter 11 "Metal pachinko" advance to the continent around 1935

Chapter 12 The oldest surviving "smart ball"

Chapter 13 Pachinko, the second birth

Chapter 14 The 7/7 Ban and the Corporate Development, pachinko was hidden

Chapter 15 Resumption of pachinko, the beginning of the forgery of Masamura gauge

Chapter 16 The feud between Kunishige Takeuchi and Kazuo Nagasaki

Chapter 17  "Masamura Gauge" was not devised by Masamura Takeichi

Chapter 18 Junnosuke Yoshiyuki wins the 1st Pachinko Culture Award

Chapter 19 Automation of Pachinko Hall

Chapter 20 Manual type pachinko demise

Supplementary chapter Min Jin Lee's "PACHINKO" era