Non-video retro games - pinball pachinko etc

[Hobie-wan]

I'm just curious if anyone else here has non video game retro stuff. I'd expect someone here to have a pinball machine at the least. I myself have a late 70s pachinko machine with a parlor expiration tag of December 1979.



I've cleaned out the 30 years of dust and grit out of the mechanicals and it works great. I still need to clean the outside a bit, get a new piece of glass for the front, and want to fix the wiring so it will light up when you get a jackpot. Its all mechanical though and doesn't require power to play, but I'd still like to fix it up.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

That looks pretty cool, we've got a dart board at my place, but games like pachinko (AKA Lucky Hit) have always piqued my curiosity. I mean how the heck does the game work and what are the rules of play?

[Hobie-wan]

The balls are fired up the playfield, similiar to pinball, then gravity takes over. If you get a ball into a prize pocket, you get more balls. If it goes all the way to the bottom, you lost that ball. With the old non-video ones they're all mechanical. Everything runs by a complex combination of weights and balances in the guts of the machine, powered by the balls you fire onto the board and the prize balls loaded into a hopper at the top back of the machine.

This page has some good info about the older machines.

http://faculty.ccp.edu/faculty/dreed/Ca ... /pachinko/

Generally at parlors, you just buy balls, play, and hope you end up with more than you started with. Obviosly you can make up things where you have people play with a set number of balls, a time limit, or something of that sort.

[Jrecee]

So it's basically like pinball with more luck and less skill? I always thought even pinball was a bit too random for anyone but the absolute experts.

[Hobie-wan]

So it's basically like pinball with more luck and less skill? I always thought even pinball was a bit too random for anyone but the absolute experts.

Haha yeah, sort of. There are no flippers to knock balls back, but there is still some skill involved with where you send the ball. There are also tricks you can do with the speed at which you play. If you shoots balls quickly, sometimes you can get 2 to go into an open (and easier to hit) tulip style pocket. This not only gets you 2 jackpots, but closes and reopens the tulip, so its still an easier to hit next time.

[fastbilly1]

Some modern pachinko machines have flippers. I have decided if I can ever buy pachinko machines in the US for a decent price I would want 3:
1. Just like yours - 70s or older mechanical
2. Lupin the Third
3. Cowboy Bebop/Totoro - Ive seen the Bebop one for sale once, I have never seen the Totoro one on sale.

Pachinko gives me enough of the feel of pinball in far less space that I am a fan of it. But ever since the bigger pachinko hall closed near me, well its been difficult to get my fill in.

Pinballwise, I really want a Doctor Who or Twilight Zone, but both go for over a grand. Sadly I am not smart enough to figure out the quarter mile of wiring inside of the cabinet so I cannot buy a broken one and attempt to fix it.

[Mod_Man_Extreme]

Bebop and Lupin had pachinko machines!?

I'm sold on it, PERIOD.

[Ivo]

The game that preceded "modern Pinball" were probably more similar to current Pachinko machines than to current Pinball machines.

In the start Pinball also didn't have flippers and had a bunch of fixed metal pins (hence the name). I recently saw something that I think was one such thing from the 1800s or so in the game room of a Palace (acting as exhibition piece). It was cool to see, but probably not up to modern entertainment standards.

To be honest, I prefer video-game renditions of pinball than the real thing - although I have to say there are some REALLY COOL real life tables.

Ivo.

[Niode]

My local pub had a Twilight Zone pinball machine. That thing got some real hammer from not just me and my friends but the local pinball nuts too. The Grand score was rediculously high.

They got rid of the machine because it was getting a little bit too much use and swapped it for a Star Trek: TNG table, which is good, but a little too easy in comparison to Twilight Zone (TZ is solid as a rock, it's one of the reasons it's so popular). One of my other haunts in town has an Attack from Mars 2 in really good condition (since nobody plays it for some reason). That's a really good table and worth playing on if you ever see one in the wild. The Lazer Zone 5 minutes from my house now has a Twilight Zone pinball machine but I haven't had time to try it out yet. My town seems to be a real Pinball town, there's machines everywhere. It's really popular in most places too. I really want to get my own machine one day though, when I have enough money to get one I'll definitely get one, since they are a good investment if you can maintain them, good tables very rarely lose much value.

[s1mplehumar]

Ye ancient bump.

Hit up the 17th annual White Rose Gameroom Show (York Show) in York, PA. My youngest brother expressed a lot of interest in attending the show with me, so I ended up inviting the rest of my brothers too. To my delight, everyone made it! We counted between 167-171 pins this year - depending on who you asked. There were a few doubles here and there, but for the most part a great variety of both EM and SS tables.

I spent more time playing than snapping pics, but I got a few decent ones. Sorry for the blur! That's what I get for leaving stock jellybean camera. Enjoy!















The latest Stern table, Star Trek! There was a Steve Ritchie autographed translite for the lucky tourney winner.




Flea market outside. Quite a few nice parts for pickers.