Ins and outs of the arcade

I have been getting lost in the scanning, and I've been neglecting to update about my own projects. Things are all moving quite slowly right now because I am dealing with some significant chronic pain issues. As a result, most of what I write here is dictated these days. So far so good.

My friend Rob took on my Mills high-top slot machine. I had posted on the local board that I was looking for a technician to clean that out and replace the grease and he happily took it on. The machine played quite well, but the reels did not spin as fast as they should. That in turn can affect the randomization, even if ever so slightly. Plus is more satisfying to see the wheels spin multiple iterations before stopping.

Rob went above and beyond, buffing every surface to a beautiful shine, in addition to removing the 76-year-old grease.

There was a crack in the the nickel escalator glass. I finally got a new piece of glass cut.  The specifications I sent in: 2mm thick x 32mm tall x 155 mm long.  It sits well, but it's a bit tight vertically. If I ordered again I would ask for 31 mm tall.

installing new glass for the coin escalator

Now that the slot machine is home, my friend is borrowing my coin pusher. :)

Bally Heavy Hitter is a new arrival. First released in 1948, an etching on the lockdown bar seems to suggest my copy was made in 1951. It is a teeny tiny pitch-n-bat.  it has a delightful back box animation, where balls represent the players and you can watch them move around. You don't control when the pitch is happen, the ball will get ejected that you the moment it settles in the shooter. The game apparently has a three minute timer, but I've never been able to it play for that long to test that. Maybe I'll try with a glass of one time.

I have shuffled things around on the prewar table side.  I am loving this lineup. Things will be more streamlined when the items I am selling (see below) are gone.  Lucky Ball is a new arrival, and I plan to do a post about the work on that machine.  I have the Redgrave bagatelle on display and soon enough my Rock-Ola World's Series will come home enjoying this lineup.  oh and I suppose I should eventually talk about that red pachinko up there as well, that's a very special one.

Rollygame is also now the lineup. I had a piece of Lexan cut to act as a dust cover. It's not a perfect seal or anything, you can see the gaps at the ball basins at the front for example, but it will help reduce potential damage and minimize the dust. It is a really fun game, and probably the best Corinthian game out there? Plus the fact that it is a prewar Japanese game makes it very special for me.

note the shooting gallery cork gun on the wall.  more on that later

To make room for the new arrivals, I have a bunch of stuff that I'm selling. Please email me at thetastates@gmail.com and/or reply here if you are interested in purchasing any of these.  Located in Ottawa Canada, that is just one hour north of the Ogdensburg New York border. Shipping is a possibility, provided you arrange it.

• SOLD 1932 Cloverleaf by Gottlieb
• SOLD 1934 Signal Jr by Bally
• SOLD 1935 One Two Three by Coin Craft Canada
• SOLD 1968 pachinko (single shot)
• SOLD 1930s 9-hole English bagatelle toy by Hamleys
  
• SOLD 1930s miniature bar billiards toy from the UK
• 2 Pachinko history documentary VHS tapes (unreleased)
• SOLD 1931 Base Ball by Pace
  
• SOLD 1926 New Target Practice by Mills Novelty Co
  
  

SOLD

SOLD

SOLD

SOLD

SOLD

SOLD

SOLD

SOLD

For my readers in the USA:  A moral panic has taken hold of your country, and the incoming administration has promised maximum cruelty to millions of Americans by designating trans people as undesirable and unworthy of human dignity and health care.  I am continuing to blog about my hobby, but need to constantly grapple with the horrors of institutionalized bigotry working to destroy the lives of my friends and family down South.

Please read this post by Julia Serano: LGBTQ+ People Are Not Going Back

Protect Trans Kids flag as seen in Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

arcade update: new shelf for prewar pins

 I had a custom table/shelf built to better house my pre-war pins.  Check it out!

88" long

I can't stress enough how much my gameroom is a collaboration.  There is basically nothing I could have done here by myself, and I am very grateful to the wonderfully supportive arcade/pinball community and their patience and generosity.

I have many friends who have worked on my machines, helped me move machines in and out, helped me transport machines, have given me knowledge and wisdom, and let me rant in their general direction.  Without all of their assistance, this space would just be all storage.

I don't think I've mentioned it here before, but when I turned 40 I developed aggressive and severe cataracts and went fully blind in one eye before I got surgery.  I healed ok, but in order to maintain my ability to drive I needed two lenses with very different focal lengths, thus making near-sighted correction impossible.   I am no longer able to see things with precision close up with binocular vision.  I might try a jeweler's loupe for the one ok near-vision eye, but I've lost all binocular vision for precision.

The reality of this sunk in went I had to adjust a basic rollover switch on Dolly Parton.  Try as I might with different angles, illumination, and visual tools, I was unable to tend to the switch with any precision.  My days of being an amateur pinball tech are sadly behind me, and that kind of feels like shit to say.  Even the clunkiest of lug soldering is now impossible.

In response, I've obviously leaned very hard into the research aspects of the hobby, but oh I miss the satisfaction of aligning an AX relay.  When the pandemic came, I made sure to come up with a plan to have my arcade stuff taken care of in case I died.  I felt better to have a plan to ensure my family wouldn't be encumbered by a room full of arcade stuff.

I am so very grateful to still be here, to have regained some vision in my eyes, and to have had the chance to build a gameroom like this.  I am grateful for all of my friends and acquaintances in the hobby who have assisted me, and the number of people and what they have done is large.

My collection pays tribute to an aesthetic I had been chasing since a young child.  I am mostly into pinball, but the aesthetic root is actually kinetic ball devices.  Very specifically, this was all the result of being taken to Expo '86 and witnessing the premier of Swiss Jolly Ball by mechanical sculptor Charles Morgan.

It was that spark of joy and inspiration that my collection is in service to.

On to the machines.

my want list

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.

Most Wanted:  These are machines that are my top priority.  I am willing to pay for international shipping to make any of these happen.

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.

1977 Vanishing Point - バニシングポイント by 豊栄産業 (Hoei Sangyo)

1978 世界一周ゲーム (Round The World game) by 柿崎計器 (Kakizaki Keiki)

~1978 Space Trip by 豊栄産業 (Hoei Sangyo) [presumed]

1978 Super Cars - スーパーカー by 柿崎計器 (Kakizaki Keiki)

Japan - any Japanese machines from before World War 2.  as an example... 

omikuji machines (fortune dispensers)

plus, pachinko machines from the 20s to 40s:

pachinko machines with odd nail distribution

I am interested in any old pachinko machines that look like just a grid of nails

any pachinko machine that outputs a coin or token instead of balls

 

North America - 1932 Double-Shuffle by Ad-Lee

Miscellaneous:

• Research materials on Japanese games - this is all on a separate page.  Catalogs, flyers, and other ephemera from Japan circa 1975 and before are desperately needed.
• Mills Novelty circular 125 G circa 1906, or any Mills documentation of their "Japanese Booth" or "Japanese Rolling Ball" setup.
• arcade marquees wanted:
• Strider (Capcom)
• Dark Planet (Stern)
• Ninja (Sega, 1985)
• Roller Aces (Williams)
• Super Spacefortress Macross (Fabtek)
• Time Gal (Taito, 1985)
• Electronic Fantasy (Taito)
• Quiz Dragon (Capcom)
• plus a few more, message me for a full list
• pinball backglasses wanted:
• Women's-Lib (Sega)
• Fairy (Playmatic)
• Star-Jet (1963, Bally)
• Flip A Card / Card Trix (1970, Gottlieb)
• Star Trek (1971, Gottlieb)

roadtrip pickups

Alouette is an institution for arcade operators in the Montreal area and they announced they were doing a big parts blowout sale.  We managed to turn it into a mini family vacation, but that also included a trip to the warehouse, a stop at a friends' place on the way for a few more pickups, and some stuff that other people were holding on for me migrated to the warehouse as well.

There is a bit of an indie pinball/arcade railroad of people are Toronto / Ottawa / Montreal.  Enthusiasts that are willing to pay it forward and help other operators / collectors / restorers in the arcade world.  It is always heartening to experience that kind of mutual enthusiasm, both in how we help each other, and the shared joys of sifting through endless parts shelves.

I am not going in to the full play-by-play, but here is just a bunch of stuff I picked up on the road

small machines moving in and out...

When the pandemic came to North America I already had a pile of things waiting for me at the mail pickup place in Ogdensburg NY.  Lots of us in Ottawa would send packages to places like MyUSAddress and pop over the border to grab things.

There was a brief window when the Canada / US border was open and didn't require an expensive PCR test, and I took the opportunity to run down and grab 2.5 years worth of packages.

it was a lot

I say "brief window" because with the Omicron variant on the rise I presume that any day now the borders will once again have limitations.  Thankfully I was able to get my entire haul.  

There were 4 big items in the batch:

currency

Moving some stuff around.  Here are the 11 types of currency my arcade uses

smart ball update

 I got my smart ball back from a friend's place and I was excited to get it into the lineup.  But smart balls like this have one problem:  Like with pachinko machines, the balls come out the back.  They are all designed to be in halls with service-access at the back.

So time for some crafting!

this is a piece of cut laminate flooring that is hanging via zip-ties (minimal wood damage) and then metal picture wire.  It's the same idea as in a bowling alley where you have heavy loose material at the back to dampen the impact of the balls.

this is the framework for a pedestal for the machine to sit upon.  A cardboard box is underneath to catch the balls, and can be pulled forward with a wire harness.

and this is where it will sit for now

and then with the Skill Roll back in place!

When the pandemic is done I'll construct a proper pedestal/table for it, but this will do the job for now.  It allows it to be in the lineup and playable, with the balls easily fetchable from underneath.

gameroom update

My gameroom is a galley kitchen setup: over 20 feet long, but just under 7 feet across.  It's been a long journey of tiny optimizations, find a few more centimeters here and there.  I took some time during the pandemic and redid the modular shelves a bit, expanding the vertical games that are up at chest level, and the pantry absorbing more of the lower space.  (this is actually more efficient as it gives us more shelf space for storage, as the upright games are shorted than just the shelf height divided by 2)

so the lineup went from this:

to this:

and then with the 3 on facing wall, I now have 9 upright machines at a reasonable height + position

new arrival

 

game room updates

My friend lent me his extremely rare Power Roulette pachinko so I am temporarily retiring my other 70s pachinko for this one.
My regular 70s pachinko is fun but has no remarkable gimmicks.  This Power Roulette allows you to spin the roulette wheel if you can get a ball in the top center pocket.

Lion Arrangeball, Glory Ball Deluxe, Power Roulette

having owned a number of pachinkos over the years, it's safe to say that I vastly prefer the games with the mechanical shooter.


Please note that all of this is being done with safe social distancing, proper handwashing, gloves, and full masks!
I also got to borrow this cool little MiniBoy poker machine:

During this quarantine I picked up not one but TWO Pike's Peak machines.  The nicer one is above, but it was missing a bunch of the reset mechanisms.
The 2nd one I got was very rough, but had the mechanisms needed, and now I have a full working one and my friend has a project that he will be relatively easy for him to tackle.

This is what this one shelf is looking like now:

I even took time to add more artwork to the walls.  I mean, this is what is BEHIND the machines.  Yeah, running out of room.    New up?  Zarzon and Astro Invader marquees are stunning.   That giant Combat marquee is from Sega in 1969.  And that's a newly added Free Fall playfield on the wall, too.

A bunch more movement coming this summer.
Contact Master is sold and leaving soon.  My Smart Balls are out getting worked on.  and we are all eagerly awaiting arrival of Merry-Go-round and World's Series, which have been out for restoration.