Saturday, November 9, 2024

Mike Munves catalogs

I was annoyed by the handful of sub-standard photos of the Mike Munves catalogues floating around the internet so I decided to do something about it.

Here are the Munves distributor catalogues from 1939, 1940, 1941, 1953, 1954 + insert, 1957.

Mike Munves 1939


Mike Munves 1940

Mike Munves 1941

Mike Munves 1953


Mike Munves 1954


Mike Munves 1954 Insert

Mike Munves 1957


Friday, October 25, 2024

Hot-Shot, Discotelle, Marbelous: obscure 1930s games

Of all the companies listed in IPDB about half of them are from the 1930s. (credit to Michael Minchew for pointing that out.)  This was a time of rapid innovation that saw an incredible number of companies threw their hat into the ring.  Many companies would release a game or two, maybe just a prototype, and then fold. 

The rules, tropes, and expectations of pinball were all very new and the result was a period of wild creativity with relatively few success stories, at least compared to the volume of different machines built.  Many of the machines from this time, especially the very quirky ones, probably only have less than 10 copies remaining.  Lots of these probably only have a single copy remaining. But that's not altogether surprising when you consider the business zeitgeist of the thirties coinop world.

Here are three games that I noticed recently.


1932 Hot-Shot by The Ball Games inc, Chicago

1932 Hot-Shot by The Ball Games inc, Chicago


I begged Rob Berk to bring this game to pinball expo. I had caught a glimpse of this game during a YouTube video that toured his facility showed off some of the back storage area.



The only reference to hotshot that I've seen is in this 1932 issue of automatic age where the game and associated company were listed for an exhibition. 

Automatic Age 1932-03

The game has a nearly flat play field almost like a billiards table except hardwood like a pin table. It has a slight tilt so balls will fall into the slots at the front if they do not enter a hole.

A large plane of glass would cover it though the machine in the picture does not have the glass on. It has a nickel slide at the front, which should move the baffle board and release the falling balls into a trough at the left side of the machine. A player would then manually pick up the balls and place them into one of two cannons at the front. Each of the cannons has a spring lever at the back allowing the player to fire the balls into the playfield where they hopefully come to rest in high scoring pockets. 


ball tray

I really hope this gets fixed up one day because it looks like a very fun concept. 

bottom scoring pockets

Rules for playing


This game is certainly precedented.  Here's another random cannon-plunge-style game from the same year:

Q-Ball by Dixie Music Co
Automatic Age 1932-02



1933 Discotelle by Lebren Manufacturing, Coventry

This game came up for auction this year and I was very intrigued, though not intrigued more than, say, $200.  It's a carnival-style game (i.e. no coin slot, the operator must reset it) where you plunge glass discs on the playfield to try and cover the fruit icons.






Automatic Age 1933-08

I wrote to the  auction house and they took a photo of the discs included, but we concluded that these were probably not the original glass discs since they were smaller than the circles.




1932 Marbelous by The Superior Confection Co, Columbus



This game recently came up for auction (archive).  The name was a mystery to the pre-war community, but I found the game in advertisement for "decalomania transfers"

The Meyercord Co advertisement in 1932-02 Automatic Age

ENHANCE!
Marbelous revealed

Monday, October 21, 2024

Pinball Expo 2024: prewar booth and more

I spent the last weekend in Chicago, USA, For the 40th anniversary of pinball expo. 

Pinball Expo 8am Wednesday morning


I was there to help my friends Cliff & Colleen of Tap91 Gameroom run the pre-war pinball booth. This was a lot of hard work, and 14-hour days, but it was all pinball and it made me very happy.  We also teamed up with Jeff of HistoryOfPinball.org and Bryan.








booth layout plan

We ran a prewar-only tournament on Friday and Saturday, as well gave out medals for people that could meet difficult challenges that were placed on some of the machines.



The prewar booth received the award for first place booth at Expo. 

<3 <3


Making friends

high-voltage!




On Thursday I was on the panel "Collecting Pinball Machines from the Birth of Pinball to the 1930s".  My talk is the first 20 minutes of this video:


Note: I have edited this post to include the transcript of my speech.  Scroll down to the very bottom for the full text.

Tuesday, October 8, 2024

Pinball Expo 2000 seminars

Back at COAPF in June I was given a stack of tapes.  I had mentioned the archiving projects to a vendor and he ended up donating them all.  The videos were all digitized, and now the audio tapes are too.


Pinball Expo 2000 lectures cassette tape set
Chicago, Illinois
October 19-22, 2000

Illinois Pinball Company with Gene Cunningham
Germany Conversions From Geiger by Heri Elden
Steve Kordek an Informal Chat
Repro Plastics & Decals Made Easy with Roc Agwral 
My Design Experience with John Trudeau
Displaying Your Backglass / Translite with Mark Bakula
Gary Stern
Pinball Art 101 with Keith Egging & Rob Hayes
Repairing Data East Sega Games with Clay Harrell & Rob Hayes
This Old Pinball with Shaggy & Baffo/Norm
Debunking Old Pinball Myths with Tim Arnold
Fireside Chat 2000 with Greg Kmiec

12 tape set
digitized by Nateo87
Audio has been normalized, and the audio speeding up at the very end of the final lecture was like that on the tape.



 

 

 Pinball Expo 2000 seminars - case cover art

Download and/or listen to the Pinball Expo 2000 seminars at The Internet Archive.

 

Thursday, October 3, 2024

scans: C.O.C.A. Times magazines

The C.O.C.A. (Coin Operated Collector Association) Times is a collector's magazine for fans of old-timey coinop.  It is like a USA-focused version of Mechanical Memories Magazine.


This is not a complete run, and the uploads end around 2014.  Generally, people don't like to upload ephemera to IA if less than a decade old.



Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Exploring the arcade in these Yokohama Station gun corner photographs

These photographs were posted at kanaloco.jp and I wish I had archived the page back when it wasn't locked.

I did save a screenshot of the web page:

kanaloco.jp screenshot

These are wonderful photographs, and I wish we had many more from this era.  Let's see how many of these machines can be identified!  Begin by looking at these two pictures and ask yourself how many games you can recognize.



We will proceed from the right (near us) to the left (further away), and utilizing details from both pictures.


To the right of the counter we can see a portion of one machine:

 
1959 Bingolett by Günter Wulff, Berlin (archive)