1940s antique Pachinko in action

Here's a quick video of my 1947(?) Pachinko machine. This machine was one of the first manufactured after WWII when metal was again available for toys and games. The machine is played by inserting a ball into the hole above the lever, pulling down on the lever and releasing it to shoot the balls up the curved ramp. The balls fall though the nails and either miss all of the 10 pockets or enter one to trigger the release of 5 balls—which could be played again or cashed in for prizes. Prizes in the years after the war were often essential commodities like soap, shoes, vegetables or luxury items like cigarettes.

To this day Pachinko is still a gambling game where balls won are exchanged for prizes. There is a loophole in the Japanese gaming laws that allow "special" prizes (mostly worthless) to be exchanged for cash at a location near each pachinko parlor. Pachkino is hugely popular in Japan and modern machines have slot machine type number matching to decrease the odds of winning, but allow much larger payouts.

The lever spring on this machine is much stronger than in later models, so the ball can roll around the outside ring as many as 4 times before falling into the playfield. It's also strong enough to shoot a couple of balls up the ramp. In this video the first ball misses all the nails, the second ball doesn't have enough momentum to carry it back up into the playfield, so the third shot has two balls and one of them lands in a pocket.

In playing these early Pachinkos, the best strategy is often to have more than one ball falling through the nails. It adds a randomness and sideways motion when they hit each other that seems to make it easier for them to avoid the more likely routes through the nails. In later Pachinkos this becomes even more important as nails are placed in funneling patterns called the Masamura Gauge which decrease the odds of getting balls in any pockets.

You can see the backside of this machine and how the payout mechanism works in my other video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rTiNx7epkw.

Category:

Gaming

Tags:

• Pachinko
• antique
• Japanese pinball

[digitalharmonics]

Got it off eBay. Pretty lucky find, actually. Haven't seen anything like it on there since.

[digitalharmonics]

Not for sale, sorry.

[simonscharger]

Wow that's pretty sweet that you got Pachinko Machine from the 40"s! Thanks for posting

[shazbotVGS]

more fps please! cannot see trajectory

[lakecharles2003]

hi I am alan from Taiwan. Will you sell this machine? I am interested in it!

[JustBeachyGuy]

Very nice, interesting seeing the circular "over shot" or ball return design. Really really cool to see:D Yes, Thx!