2 more glorious Coin Journal scans! (previously: 1992-09 and 1993-07)
If you would like to contribute money towards helping us acquire and archive more issues, please get in touch.
If you want the highest quality scans, download the CBZ files. They are 4.2 GB and 3.7 GB respectively. If you rename a .CBZ file to .ZIP then you can unzip it and have access to each scanned page in full resolution.
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| 月刊コインジャーナル [Monthly Coin Journal] 1994-10 |
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| 月刊コインジャーナル [Monthly Coin Journal] 1997-10 |
An iconic arcade game mechanism that still has drawing power today, basketball games where you pop the ball into the net have been popular for generations. Over on my eremeka site I have been writing about the confusing history of basketball games in Japan, and I wanted to present a streamlined international timeline as part of the Niche Mechanisms series.
We will look at games that are 2-player head-to-head and use a series of buttons to activate solenoids to fire balls from holes that are resting in grooves. Not every game is basketball-themed, but most are.
I have compiled the annual "Amusement Machines" summaries from Cash Box magazine. Thank you David E. F. Gleason for your wonderful site World Radio History and your commitment to archiving and preservation.
Read + download at archive.org
This gives a glimpse of most amusement machines found in Cash Box across nearly 3 decades. Please note that it sometimes shows the machines written about in the past year, not just machines that were released that year, so some machines will appear in more than one year, and some machines might have been released a year before appearing in Cash Box, but those are rare exceptions.
example pages:
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| 1955 |
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| 1956 |
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| 1964 |
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| 1969 |
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| 1976 |
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| 1983 |
The anniversary was always celebrated in the first issue of July. This feature continued until 1985, but the 1984 issue with it is not currently online. If we look at the cover of the 1984-07-07 issue that is online, it says that it is Part 2.
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| Cash Box 1984-07-07: Part 2 cover detail |
Last month, me and a few other people pooled money to purchase a stack of Coin Journal magazines. Detchibe has scanned the first two of them. These are enormous issues and rather difficult to scan well, so I hope you can appreciate the work that goes into bringing these to the public.
If you want the highest quality scans, download the CBZ files. They are 3.8 GB and 4.5 GB respectively. If you rename a .CBZ file to .ZIP then you can unzip it and have access to each scanned page in full resolution.
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| 月刊コインジャーナル [Monthly Coin Journal] 1992-09 |
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| 月刊コインジャーナル [Monthly Coin Journal] 1993-07 |
We are looking for donations of rare magazines that have not been scanned, and funds to go towards purchasing more magazines.
This is a movie I have been trying to find for a long time. It is a comedy filled with small sketches and songs centering around a pachinko parlor. I have uploaded this film to the internet archive.
This film was released in January 1952, so it was shot in 1951.
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| illustrations of the characters have been added to this pachinko machine. You can see the original below. |
After years of searching I finally acquired a copy of Rinchi from 1949! It is remarkable to have any footage of a Japanese arcade in the 1940s.
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| first shot shows the arcade in the background |
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| pachinko machines on the left, and on the right appears to be 3 flipperless pinball machines. There are not any details I can use to discern which games they are, but here is a list of flipperless pinball machines from Japan. |
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| cork shooting gallery! |
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| The targets machine rotates, like a loom or a thresher. |
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| loading the gun part 1: she uses the floor to push something into the gun |
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| 2: then she uses the tabletop to push a cork into it |
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| 3: she fires |
Another scan we are grateful to Tilt.it for, and we're delighted to share with you. This time, we're looking at Sega's Rifleman.
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| learn more about Rifleman on the eremeka site |
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| rifleman schematic |
We are very excited that Tilt.It has shared with us some extremely rare scans from Japanese electromechanical machines that were exported to Italy.
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| learn more about Periscope on the eremeka site |
Look at our beautiful monster:
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| schematics |
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| the beginning of the assembly instructions |
Look at this adorable target conveyor!
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| target conveyor excerpt |
I was able to purchase a box of new toys. This is really pinball related, but it is tangential and relevant enough to my current thrust of collecting that I thought it a worthy addition. This is: The Fort.
The box I received had over 3+ sets worth of pieces. What you see above is a set that I am keeping. The rest is up for sale if anyone else wants them.
From the Guelph Museum:
The basics of gameplay:
Pieces and placement:
See the photo above for an example of this setup.
There seems to be a few points of deviation amongst copies of this game. Above you see the thicker arch, but there are also wood+metal arches. Let's look to some of the original documentation. I believe the following is from a piece of the game's box as it is glued to the thick cardboard-like paper material.
The set came with a typed copy of the above rulesheet:
THE FORT
Directions
Place the Fort on one end of a covered table, with the back against the side of the room, with the men in position, as shown in the above cut. The King in the front circle, the Queen in the back circle. King's Bishops immediately back of the King, Queen's Bishops back of the Queen. King's Guards (two in number), one in either entrance to the inner fort, directly under the arch; Queen's Guards (four in number), one on either side of both entrances to the outer fort, about one inch back from the arches.
Rules of the Game
1. Choose Captains, and the Captains choose sides.
2. Strike the balls lightly with the cue so as not to shake the fort. If a man falls without being struck by the ball, or if the ball jumps over any part of the fort and knocks down a man, or if one man in falling knocks down another, it must be replaced before the next ball is played.
3. The balls must be removed from the fort as soon as they cease rolling, also the men as soon as they are knocked down.
4. Each player plays 12 balls before stopping, and the number knocked down credited to the respective Captain.
5. Each player plays three rounds before the final count is made, and the side having the greatest number has won the game.
How to Count
King counts 20. Queen, 15. King's Bishops, (10 each?) Queen's Bishops, 10 each. Guards, 5 each.
Manufactured by P. C. Allan, 35 King Street West, Toronto
*Illegible due to poor condition of original
All of these scans are available in higher resolution on Archive.Org
We have another document. It is torn and missing portions, but has less soiling.
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| 3 clay balls from The Fort on the bottom/left. The black, white, and red bagatelle balls are from Masters Of Game |
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| wood bagatelle balls vs The Fort's clay balls |
So why would I want this game? Besides the interesting Canadian connection, in regards to pinball ancestry this is a great way to bring up the advent of table games. While this game is 145 years young, table games similar to it go back to the ~16th century, and were early instances of aristocratic lawn games moving indoors.
I am looking for an antique (100+ years old) trou madam arch, but in lieu of that, The Fort will be a useful example
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| trou madam woodcut from a 1630 book by Matthaus Merian |
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| Canadian patent # 10650 the first of 5 handwritten pages |
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| Canadian patent # 10650 page 6 |
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| Canadian patent # 10650 illustration detail |
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| US patent # 224882 page 1 |
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| US patent # 224882 page 2 |
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| US patent # 224882 page 3 |
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| US patent # 224882 detail |
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| 1891 Men Of Canada; Or, Success by Example, in Religion, Patriotism, Business, Law, Medicine, Education and Agriculture |
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| excerpt from 1891 Men Of Canada; Or, Success by Example, in Religion, Patriotism, Business, Law, Medicine, Education and Agriculture |
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| Canadian Magazine of Politics, Science, Art & Literature Volume 2 1894 |
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| Industries of Canada Historical and Commercial Sketches of Toronto and Environs; Its Prominent Places and People, Representative Merchants and Manufactures ... 1886 |
35 King Street West is now Toronto's financial district.
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| 35 King Street West would have existed about here |
