Niche Mechanisms 007: basketball ball-popping

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.

Niche Mechanisms 006: spirals

The ball spirals further inward!  We're not talking about machines that use circles or curves or even spirals to launch balls, no these are machines where the spiral is everything.  

There is so much that can be done with spirals!  the ball spins around the spiral and the spiral comes up spiral.  But spiral all spiral spiral?  Spiral indeed spiral!  Spiral spiral, spiral spiral spiral spiral.

1929~ 自動販売球遊機 (An automatic vending ball game) [No. 17] by 日本娯楽機製作所 (Japan Amusement Machine Manufacturing)

1930 Little Whirl Wind by Peo

1930 Play Ball by Pace

Niche Mechanisms 005: booze barometers

Simple, effective, iconic.

2 bars.
1 circuit.
MAY THEIR PATHS NEVER CROSS!!!

Niche Mechanisms 004: rotation

You turn a knob and the whole world rotates.  OK not the whole world, but the whole world under glass.  The platform shifts.  The playfield tilts with your delicate wrist movements.

Rotation is one of the fundamental mechanisms used in game design, going back to the skill games of the 1900s.  As with our other Niche Mechanism examinations, rotation is mechanism embedded throughout arcade history across the globe.  While it might not give the same kind of thrills in the 21st century, the inherent simplicity has helped it be resurrected endlessly for over a century.

Within the topic of "rotation" we are going to be breaking things down in to a few sub-categories:

1. Coin guidance
2. Ball guidance
1. Tilting labyrinths
2. Fire Escape style
3. Hill climbers
4. other ball guidance games

For all of these we are letting gravity do the work, and just adding a bit of rotation into the mix.

Let's get nerdy about arcade games.  We begin in Germany, thanks to the amazing work over at Alte-Spielautomaten.

section 1: Rotation - Coin Guidance

1909 Schlaumatz (smartass) by Athenia GmbH

Guide the coin down to the slot at the bottom of the wheel.  If the coin enters the slot it falls out at the bottom right, advances the ratchet wheel, which dispenses your winnings.  If you fall off the track, your coin is added to the payout coin stack.

Niche Mechanisms 003: skill flicks

Perhaps you've seen a Bally Skill Roll before?   There is a long history in arcade games where you insert a coin and that coin becomes part of the game.  These are generally called "drop case" games, but I want to focus on one specific type of these games, that I'm calling "skill flick" machines.

Skill Flick: machines where you flick along the coin you put into the machine, and it's dependent on skill alone.  So that means no machines with bagatelle-style or pachinko-style playfields that make the skill negligible.  Some shots might be next to impossible, but the only thing standing in between you and a win is a Skilled Flick.

1958 Bally Skill-Roll

Let's get flicking!

Niche Mechanisms 002: catchers

One of the earliest coin-op game mechs, I've seen Catcher-style game examples ranging from 1900 to 2010!

You can't mess with perfection like that.

1927 Bajazzo SG & LM by Jentzsch and Meerz, Leipzig (Germany)

Let's get catching!

Niche Mechanisms 001: the drop shelf

A horizontal bar, but you push a button and it recedes.  The ball or coin on it then falls.  That's it!  A delightful little gameplay mechanism that has been around for decades but is still barely known.  Machines here span almost 100 years.

Let's start with a basic machine, and the earliest.  There's a whole lot more under the cut.

1900 The Halfpenny by Price and Castell

when you push the button the shelf retracts, allowing the coin to enter the winning slot

Niche Mechanisms 000: an introduction

I'm starting a new series of blog entries where I just post up a bunch of media illustrating cool arcade gimmicks and mechanics that span decades and continents.

These are not going to be a definitive works, nor meticulously researched things.  But if you have more stuff to add to them please reply to the bottom and perhaps I'll update them with new entries as I go.

These are all cool little things I've noticed in my research of coin-op machines and that I've fallen in love with.  There are a bunch of topics in classic coin-op that I could include here, but won't because they are just too massive:  pitch-n-bats, physical horse-racing games, shooting gallery machines, bowling games, EM arcade games, etc.

But stay tuned for a handful of small Niche Mechanism posts in the future!