TOO-san has given us another wonderful arcade thread! (archive) This is from the TV show ワンパク番外地 第1話「ワンパク勢揃いの巻」(1971年4月8日放送) (Wanpaku Bangaichi Episode 1 "Wanpaku Lineup Volume" (broadcast on April 8, 1971))
First let's look at the two pinball machines.
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| 1968 Royal Guard by Gottlieb |
La belle équipe is a movie from France circa 1936.
Not much to see here except for this one gorgeous crane game. With the bartender distracted, 3 men tilt the machine to help them retrieve 2 choice prizes. I am unsure if tilting the machine like that actually provides any advantage.
I was finally able to get this video edited and up online. On September 24th, 2022 Ed Nickels gave a lecture about his bagatelle pinball collection that was on display at the Field House Museum.
You can see the prior lecture by James Masters from 2022-08-16 over here.
For the sake of discussing them, I will number them. Tables number 1, 2, 5, 6, and 10 are all miniature / toy versions of tables that are regularly full-sized, usually 7-10 feet in length. Tables 3, 4, 7, 8 and 9 are all made for the home parlor / toy market.
I am incredibly excited to share photographs of this seemingly unknown Bally prototype game, Winners Circle!
The owner has graciously allowed me to post these photographs and video.
This is an arrangeball game with derby rules. The remarkable thing is that it seems to have been made for potential USA markets. I would like to get into the rules of the game, then review what is going on inside, and then I'd like to share context of why this is significant and what else was going on in the industry at the time.
exploring the arcade in 愛欲の罠 / Aiyoku no wana aka Trapped in Lust (1973): identified the missing pinball machine!! (search for "Update 2022-10-27" in the post) Also previously add Sun Trial!
bagatelle notes: Trou Madam, Mississippi, Pigeon Hole - significant update as I declare Trou Madam to be the true spiritual birthplace of pinball.
Japanese Rolling Ball: 2 photos added to the very bottom, from Salons Vénitiens. Plus a new postcard added to 1908.
Niche Mechanisms 004: rotation - added Xenon, Automatic Obstacle Race, Steer Crazy II
Niche Mechanisms 001: the drop shelf - added Funky Circus, Dream Rail, Dream Rail Lovely, はっぴーぴえろ Dream Rail 2
Like the previous posts, I found this movie through a tweet by TOO_yoshikawa. I have also included this in my "exploring pachinko in Japanese cinema..." post, but since this has smartball in it, I wanted to post it separately as well. I'm going to include a few extra photos in this post.
The movie starts with a great pan of a bustling downtown streetscape, and then we pan down to a pachinko parlor exterior shot.
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| "Shinjuku Tokyo" |
Another movie I discovered via a tweet by TOO_yoshikawa, this movie shows us a handful of older pachinko machines. The famous "masamura gauge" came out in 1951, but these machines are older.
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| 本日休診 (1952) |
I am adding to my "exploring pachinko in Japanese cinema..." post as well, but I also wanted to share as a standalone post to highlight a few extra scenes.
This video is assumed to be from 1955:
I found it via this tweet from TOO_yoshikawa. It is a great little video, but there are some pachinko-related rarities to be found.
First we see kids at this pachinko machine. We can't tell much from the glimpse, but the coin slot at the right means it's a medal pachinko machine Most machines with the slot there would pay out coins for a win. But this isn't a video about pachinko, this is a video about CANDY, so I imagine this is a pachinko machine that dispenses sweets on a win.
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| a win causes a candy to dispense here |
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| ~1940 子供パチンコ 自動菓子販賣機 (Children's pachinko confectionery vending machine) by セイコー社 (Seiko) |
via this tweet by TOO_yoshikawa I learned of the movie ハイティーンやくざ which has 2 scenes at a smart ball parlor in it.
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| ハイティーンやくざ (1962) |
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| 1950s Lucky Ball - ラッキーボール by YMラッキー株式会社 (YM Lucky Co., Ltd.) |
Lucky Ball has come to denote the 4x4 grid configuration we see above, where you can win by completing a row, column, or one of the 2 diagonals.
Here is a better shot of what I think is the same model:
There are a few variations in this style of smart ball. This one, as in the movie, there is no opening to the front players' trough. The attendant uses a scoop to serve the balls to players:
I'm sure you all read about it already over on nazox2016's blog, so it's probably a good time to announce it here as well.
All throughout 2022 I have been working to build a list of all of the Japanese eremeka games. What started with an obsession for electromechanical oddities and candystore skill games has spiraled out of control to document a good chunk of Japanese arcade history.
The history of videogames is meticulously documented by an overwhelming army of historians, but I was unable to find a list online of Japanese electromechanical arcade games, let alone a pictures of most of them. I wanted a list that showed...
a foreigners' guide to eremeka arcades - 外国人のためのエレメカアーケードゲームガイド
The bulk of information I used came from Onitama, kt2, nazox2016, and the good people of Gaming Alexandria. There is a much longer list of sources on the page itself.
This is a work in progress and there is still so much to do, but I decided that once I hit 2000 machines documented I would do a "soft launch". Scroll down to the heading Current Machine List and you will find a text-only version of every machine documented. This is very useful for just hitting CTRL+F on to find something. The photo pages are (currently) split into 6 8 different sections:
I still have a lot of material to sift through. It is an arduous process and I don't want to disclose just how many hours I've poured into this already, but trust me: it's a lot. When I finish processing the bulk of the materials remaining, I will probably begin tagging all of the machines so that I can generate pages of specific styles of game.
I hope one day someone from Japan decides to make a site like IPDB.org or similar, but for the Japanese games. I would be able to offer them my data and research for integration. Until then, this project is the current best hope for documenting these kinds of machines.
There are currently over 2200 machines listed (2023-05-02 update: almost 3500 machines!). My passion is for the 1970s and earlier, but the materials for machines before 1974 can be extremely sparse and difficult to come across. Most of the work going forward will be for machines from the 1980s onward, as that is the bulk of the remaining research materials.
On a project like this I have had to set myself some limits, or else I would end up documenting every single Japanese arcade machines ever made. Maybe someone else will do that, but the thrust of this project is to document all of the machines that I have some interest in, based on flexible criteria that I apply unevenly.
I am including all of the electromechanical medal games, but not all of the modern medal games. Why? Most modern medal games are a video slot machine. I only care about games that have a physical component, and I don't want to consider "dispensing medals" as a physical component here. There are many large games like horse racing simulators that I am not including, but I am including some modern horse race games that actually have physical horses moving around the track, even though the action itself is all electronically controlled.
I am not including carnival games where you pick up balls and throw them in buckets or baskets. These came out of the redemption arcades of the 80s and don't interest me. But I have included some air hockey tables, as they appeared in the electromechanical arcades of the early 70s.
I am not including horoscope and modern novelty machines like photo gimmicks, but I am including old electromechanical ones. I'm not including most novelty prize games, like string cutters and UFO catchers, but I am including crane games from the 60s and 70s, and their evolutions into the modern age. I am also including crane games that have novel physical adaptations that interest me, but that's mostly arbitrary. Rotary merchandisers go back to the 1920s, and more modern versions certainly have a place on my list. What I'm saying is: it's not a perfect system, but if I can't defend the inclusion or exclusion of something specific, just assume it's because I was exhausted. :)
One way to think about it: once we hit the IC age (Integrated circuits) my interest diminishes. If something is from before 1974? My interest piques.
What are you still doing reading this? Go look at some cool eremeka machines instead.
This weekend there will be another lecture on bagatelle!
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| Ed Nickels will be giving a lecture about his bagatelle collection, 2022-09-24, 1pm CST (2pm EST) |
It is Ed Nickels who is showing his collection at the Field House Museum, and I'm very excited to hear the lecture about his collection. To join via Zoom, you must register in advance here.
The first lecture, by James Masters, is available to watch online!
About this event
Join the Field House Museum on Saturday, September 24, 2022, at 1:00 pm as we welcome avid collector Ed Nickels for a special Speaker Series on Bagatelle. Before the ring of pinball machines echoed through arcades, Bagatelle was filling parlors and pockets across the world. Learn all about this unique collection of intricately decorated and brightly colored tabletop games from the 1800s to early 1900s as Nickels takes an in-depth look at the games on display.
This program is free with limited availability in person and on Zoom. Reservations must be made in advance through Eventbrite, by calling the Museum at 314-421-4689, or by emailing info@fieldhousemuseum.org.
I am delighted to share with you this lecture by James Masters, as given for the Field House Museum (St. Louis, MO, USA) on the history of bagatelle.
The lecture can be viewed and downloaded on archive.org!
also on youtube:
The lecture was given over Zoom, which ended up being quite ideal since it was attended by people from Canada, USA, UK, Spain, and other countries, as well as a handful of people in person at the museum exhibition itself.
James and I have been writing back and forth for a while know, and he raises a number of key details about the history of bagatelle that have vexed us both:
1) we have no proof about there being any sort of pinball precursor at the legendary Chateau de Bagatelle. There are many references to the Chateau, but none describe a billiards table of any sort, and only a single source makes claim of a "gaming table". Comte d'Artois was a known gambling addict, but a gaming table can be any table a game is played, and most often cards. Until we can verify any specific references, it might be best to let this legend fade into history.
"The remarkable coincidence of the appearance of the new betting game of bagatelle at precisely the time that a leading member of the inner court circle and prince of France known as a sportsman and gambler who also"... kept a gaming table in his own house" in a game room of a building called Bagatelle beggars a connection between the man, the party and the game.""
The quote included by Bueschel there is from a 1903 article in The Nation. I'll include that here!
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| 1903 The Nation: Chateaux Bagatelle |
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| 1903 The Nation: Chateaux Bagatelle |
Let's get some definitions and rules! We're going to sift through 19th century game books here to trace the language around bagatelle and related games.
It's important to note that some of the dates for these books need to be eyed with skepticism as they might not be accurate to the edition.
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| this was first published in 1801, but this edition is from 1903 and has had SUBSTANTIAL editing. If you know where to locate a proper FIRST edition, please do let me know. |
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| excerpt from the 1903 edition, but this also is included in the 1810 edition |
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| this passage does not exist in the 1810 version, so we can't use that to date 'bagatelle' |
The Ladies, Gentle Women, Wives and Maids may in one of the Galleries walk: and if the weather be not agreeable to their expectation, they may have in the end of the Bench eleven holes made, into which to "trowle pummetes" or Bowls of lead, big, little or mean [average], or also of Copper, Tin, Wood, either violent or soft, after their own discretion, the pastime Troule in Madame is termed.Likewise, men feeble, the same may also practice in another Gallery of the new buildings, and this does not only strengthen the stomach and the upper parts above the midriff or waist: but also the middle parts beneath the sharp "Gristle" and the extreme parts, the the hands and legs, according to the weight of the thing "trouled", fast, soft or mean.
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| 1804-04-05 The Morning Chronicle (London) |
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| 1811-05-06 The Leeds Intelligencer and Yorkshire General Advertiser |
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| p 246 of Castles In The Air vol III |
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| 1854 Hand-Book of Games, edited by Henry G. Bohn |
If you've ever been interested in iterations of EM technology this book is for you. It's an EM pinball maintenance guide, but it outlines all of the various systems that Bally, Williams, and Gottlieb used over the years, and explains what each improvement in design is doing. There are very few places to get an understanding of how the technology changed and evolved over the years.
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| Pinball Machine Maintenance - Manual For The Repair And Maintenance Of Electro Mechanical Pinball Machine (1960-1977) at archive.org |
I am moving all of my bar billiards notes into a single post. (It previously had bounced around as a sub-category in other posts.)
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| Jenny Lind table in the 1872 J. M. Brunswick catalog |
A number of really great EM videos have been posted recently. Here are some treats:
Restoration (pics) and gameplay of a 1968 Moto-Polo by Sega:
A very special find: footage from the 1976 full motion video game Sky Hawk by Nintendo. Note the game's data encoded on the bottom half of the screen.
A visual tour through a flasher slot machine:
Randy Senna showing off the first linked driving game, which was built for Disney.
An in-depth tour inside Kasco's 1978 game The Driver
This has come up a few times recently so I've decided to publicly share my "want list". I am going to specify the geographic region for each, since most people tend to know machines from one geographic area above all others.
Japan - 1977 Vanishing Point - バニシングポイント by 豊栄産業 (Hoei Sangyo) or 1978 世界一周ゲーム (Round The World game) by 柿崎計器 有限会社 (Kakizaki Keiki) or Space Trip by unknown or 1978 Super Cars - スーパーカー by 柿崎計器 (Kakizaki Keiki)
These are essentially the same game except with different graphics. Round The World has at least 2 variant graphics. There is also a game from 1984 called Mr. ジャンプくん (Mr. Jump-kun) by ケーアンドユー商会 (K&U Company) but it is a full upright, and I'd only want to ship the top half.
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| 1977 Vanishing Point - バニシングポイント by 豊栄産業 (Hoei Sangyo) |
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| 1978 世界一周ゲーム (Round The World game) by 柿崎計器 (Kakizaki Keiki) |
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| ~1978 Space Trip by 豊栄産業 (Hoei Sangyo) [presumed] |
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| 1978 Super Cars - スーパーカー by 柿崎計器 (Kakizaki Keiki) |
North America - 1932 The Maple Leaf by Automatic Industries (I want to document more on one of the few Canadian manufacturers!)
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| I am interested in any old pachinko machines that look like just a grid of nails: |
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| any pachinko machine that outputs a coin or token instead of balls |
Miscellaneous:
