so I bought a pinball machine

Monday, April 15, 2024

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.

Cash Box Amusement Machines 1955-1983

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:

1955

1956

1964

1969

1976

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.

Cash Box 1984-07-07: Part 2 cover detail

Once we are able to find Part 1 and get that scanned (PLEASE EMAIL ME IF YOU HAVE IT) I will update the PDF file to include 1984 and 1985, the final two years they did these annual summaries.

Thursday, April 11, 2024

scans: 月刊コインジャーナル [Monthly Coin Journal] 1992-09 & 1993-07

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.

月刊コインジャーナル [Monthly Coin Journal] 1992-09

月刊コインジャーナル [Monthly Coin Journal] 1993-07

Many more to come. If you would like to assist us in acquiring and scanning magazines and ephemera like this, please get in touch: thetastates@gmail.com

We are looking for donations of rare magazines that have not been scanned, and funds to go towards purchasing more magazines.

Wednesday, April 3, 2024

Exploring the arcade in 大当りパチンコ娘 (1952) aka Oatari Pachinko Musume aka Jackpot Pachinko Girl

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.

illustrations of the characters have been added to this pachinko machine. You can see the original below.

The opening credit shows a series of 6 different pachinko parlors.

exploring the arcade in 私刑（リンチ） (1949) aka Rinchi

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.

first shot shows the arcade in the background

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.