Yet another Mills catalogue, this one a reproduction of a 1906 catalogue
Download the PDF at archive.org
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| 1906 Mills Novelty catalogue |
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| page 10: Mills Perfume Spray, Mills Doctor Vibrator |
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| page 14: Mills Bag Punching Machine |
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| page 31: Mills Fair Play, on the Square, Dewey Triplet |
I scanned a reproduction of a Mills Novelty 1912-1913 machine catalogue.
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| Mills Novelty Company 1912-3 Catalogue at archive.org |
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| page 2 |
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| page 6 |
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| page 8 |
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| page 13 |
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".
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| picture from Jost & Cie catalog (see France section) |
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:
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)
the machine was paying-and-playing just fine, but then it started only giving 2 coins when 2 cherries showed. What was up with that?
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| turns out the screw was missing, allowing these plates to slide around and misaligning the payout arms |
Who doesn't love finite mathematics? so practical, so alluring! And awesome for gambling analysis!
I found this site that sells slot machine reels and eventually found the reels that are on my Mills Hightop. It was on a picture that had 8 reels, but I was able to find the specific ones for me.
Here is an edited pic, and as you can see they are out of order but I drew numbers along the bottom
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| excuse the ordering difference |
There are 20 symbols on each reel, and here is the number of occurrences:
here are the outcome scenarios:
The triplets (oranges / plums / bells) can also be finished by a BAR on the third reel, which adds an additional 5% chance for the winning symbol to appear on the third reel.
Interesting to note how bells are plentiful (7 of them) on the 2nd reel and 3rd reel, but on the first reel there is just a single one.
Oranges and plums only have 2 symbols each on the 2nd reel.
the third reel introduces the Lemon symbol, which is just there to mess up your triples. (you can still win with a lemon in the third reel, if there are cherries too)
3 bars nets you a 20 coin payout plus the jackpot. I'm told the jackpot is traditionally loaded with 80 coins, making the full payout 100.
So what is that final # in the bottom right? That is the Expected Value of your spin.
Play 1 coin, expected to lose 0.1635 coins.
The machine is expected to pay out 0.8365, or 83.65% of the input value.
This is an important number because the lower it gets, the less "exciting" the machine is for the player. It just becomes a place to dump your money. If it's too high, it cuts into the operator's profit.
These days casinos control this expected result digitally. You can see it easily if you get a pachislo machine, do the reset, and you can change the odds there to be even more generous. But that's boring. I find it really interesting on mechanical machines though because they had to have this math in mind during the design.The reels themselves can be changed! It's not a matter of just putting on a new sticker though, as the reel has to have the physical holes that align with the symbols. Here is an example of someone physically altering a reel to reduce the odds and increase the profit.
New arrival! a Mills high-top slot machine from around 1940
If you appreciate purely mechanical devices, you absolutely need to get a mechanical slot machine. What a wonderous piece of engineering.
