Qikiqtarjuaq pinball

At 67 degrees North, are these some of the most Northern arcade games ever?  A tiny line-up inside a snack shop on Qikiqtarjuaq (used to be called Broughton Island, up in Nunavut, Canada) might be a contender for the most Northern of pinball lineups.  (previously we saw the Kuujjuaq Arcade near the 58th parallel)

This photo by George Hunter is from the late 1970s, probably around 1978 but we haven't been able to confirm.  Thanks to my friend Amy Prouty (PhD candidate, Inuit art history) for passing this my way.

photograph by George Hunter
via Canadian Heritage Photography Foundation

Games here are 1973 Hi-Lo Ace, 1974 Delta Queen, and the 1976 Aladdin's Castle, all by Bally.

67°33′17″N 064°01′41″W

another photo

assembling the bite-sized bagatelles

 coming to a pinball history booth near you.... someday...

banana for size

Left to right:

1. Singer parlor bagatelle (spring-loaded plunger shooter, but it's missing)
2. Poolette (small cue to launch balls)
3. French bagatelle / cockamaroo (balls launched from left/right troughs using a cue)
4. 9-hole English bagatelle (balls hit with mace or cue)
5. Japanese Rolling Ball (balls rolled by hand)

9-hole bagatelle

New arrival!  This is the classic 9-hole English Bagatelle that you will see quite often if you search antique auctions for "bagatelle".  The earliest references we've found so far to this game are from around 1830.

While the full tables are normally 7-10 feet long, this is a kids' version that is only 4 feet long.  For a while I had been looking for a proper full-size one, but they are actually hard to come by in North America, and shipping a full one from overseas would have been prohibitive.

Made for the toy shop Hamley's, I believe what I have here is what we see in this clipping from the Hamleys Toy Shop 1937 catalogue

1937 Hamleys Toy Shop catalogue

It is interesting to note the inclusion of a kids-sized bar billiards table, which would have been a quite recent trend in Britain at that time.  I would love to find a small bar billiards table like that too.

FLASH magazine 2021-12-14: Birth of Pachinko Museum article

I first saw on twitter that Kazuo Sugiyama's Birth of Pachinko Museum (previously) was featured in the magazine FLASH (a Japanese weekly magazine) 

My friend nazox2016 has provided us with high resolution scans and gracefully prepared a translation of the contents for us!

FLASH 2021-12-14: 日本パチンコのルーツ台に迫る - pages 1 and 2

FLASH 2021-12-14: 日本パチンコのルーツ台に迫る - page 3

arcade photographs from the collection of James R. Smith

James. R. Smith is a historian who has published 4 books about San Francisco, including 2 about Playland At The Beach.

I have ordered both of his Playland books, and the pair is currently available for $35 on his web site.

I approached James about photographs from his collection which depict Skeeball and Fascination parlors at Playland circa the 1920s and 1930s, and he agreed to let me share the original scans of his photographs with the world.  I use his photos in the "Beyond Japanese Rolling Ball" section of my Tamakorogashi post.

These are incredibly valuable photos for arcade research and I want to thank James again for what he is doing.  All of the photos are available in their full resolution through a downloadable ZIP file.  Below are the photos, just resized.  (The originals are 5-17 MB each)

To help add one extra layer of barrier for the bots that scrape photos (an inevitability that will never deter me from sharing whatever I can when I can,) the password on the ZIP file is 'jamesrsmith'.

Download the photos archive (password: jamesrsmith)  (If your browser doesn't like HTTP links, try copying the ZIP file's url and pasting it into a new window)

You can find James over on his website, HistorySmith.  He also has two other books, The California Snatch Racket, and San Francisco's Lost Landmarks.

HistorySmith: Tales of California and San Francisco by James R. Smith

On with the pictures!  We have shooting gallery ranges, Spill The Milk, Skee Ball, Whirl O Ball, Fascination, Keeno, The Cony Race, and my favourite: The Monkey Pinball Race.  Most of these photos seem to be from the 1930s.  Some might be earlier, but hard to verify.  If you spot any tell-tale clues that help discern dates in any of the photos, please comment below.

"The Arcades proved to be the big money makers at the Chutes and later at Playland. A patron standing in line to pay a dime for a ride might pay fifty cents an hour if they were serious riders.  A person standing at an arcade could pay that dime every few minutes, placing up to a buck or more an hour on the mark with multiple people playing concurrently. It was all done in fun but it was serious business as well." - James R. Smith

 

Whitney's Shooting Gallery - The skunk and Bob Cat above were taxidermy specimens
I am told this gallery is made by W.F. Mangels

The Whitney Brothers took over Chutes At The Beach circa 1929, so all the Whitney signage points to 1929 or later.  The Whitney Bros. renamed it Playland, and it was called Playland At The Beach.

dapper

Skee-Ball Scoring tables and Prizes
I love being able to read the wall signs and examine the redemption prizes

Nikkei Voice article on Tamakorogashi

I am happy to announce I have an article published in the Nikkei Voice newspaper.  It is available in their print edition, as well as online:

ARCADE ORIGINS IN THE JAPANESE ROLLING BALL: HOW TAMAKOROGASHI SHAPED THE WORLD OF MODERN GAMING

Nikkei Voice print edition

Nikkei Voice print edition

archived copy

Nikkei Voice framed at the Birth Of Pachinko Museum

updates

in the tamakorogashi post: the Japanese Ball Game box art was redone and can now been seen in it's full (approximate) original splendor.  Search for the text "Japanese Ball Game - box art redrawn".  
A bunch of new clippings were also added.

New translation in pachinko museum supplemental material: picture 39

9 new additions to Niche Mechanisms 002: Catchers

added 2 new variants to the Mini Match post, which has almost become a Niche Mechanism post unto itself...

1 new photo in Niche Mechanisms 001: the Drop Shelf

some good follows

Here are people and places I follow, all come recommended!

My friend pindude152 is one of the best EM techs in all of Canada, and puts immense care in to bringing machines back to life.  His work is awe-inspiring and his collection spans an incredible assortment of EM marvels you'll probably never find elsewhere.

Fogh Andersen - the site is in Dutch but fire up your translator because you're about to witness step-by-step restorations of some incredibly cool mechanical machines!

Nazox2016 gets mentioned a lot on this blog, almost as much as pindude152!  Nazox2016 has provided an incredible service to the world, documenting and sharing information about Japanese medal machines and other EM games.

Cat Despira's Retrobitch blog should be quite familiar to anyone that has dipped into arcade game history any time over the last decade.

On しいたけと猫が好き (I like shiitake mushrooms and cats) accs2014 has been putting up scans of hotel brochures that show arcade game rooms from hotels and has been an immense resource for those of us trying to look to at the esoteric world of pre-1978 Japanese arcades.

The History of How We Play by Ethan Johnson dives deep in to the facts-based history videogames, and is everyone's first stop when compiling "lists of things popular videogame books got very wrong."

This Week In Pinball is a once-a-week antidote to spending endless hours on sites like Pinside.  Nuff said.

The Arcade Blogger posts great restoration series of arcade machines, plus they also published a recent book on Missile Command!

I spend a bunch of time on Discord doing research stuff, and there are 3 I want to highlight:

1. Gaming Alexandria - video + arcade game history nerds united
2. For Amusement Only - the server for that EM Bingo + Pinball podcast we all know and love!
3. PWN - Pinball Women & Nonbinary - a fresh-faced discord that is currently low traffic, for cis, trans, non-binary, two-spirited, and self-identified women and non-binary pinball fans

Target Practice restoration by Fogh Andersen

Earlier this year I picked up two Target Practices.  I sold one to my was sold to my friend in Denmark, an incredible restoration artist.

You can witness the full glow-up via his blog:

part 1

part 2

part 3