So I came across this: https://blog.goo.ne.jp/nazox2016/e/83b6097c7dd4d40c7a54522900035693 This is a "Nedan-hy?" (???) or "price list"of things our favourite company was selling in 1966. The resolution's a bit too low for a lot of it to be useful, but we know comparitively little about the 1950s/60s/70s so everything's a plus. When this was produced, Sega's core business was importing things from the US for distribution in Japan. So actually most of this catalogue is Rock-Ola, Bally and Williams stuff with a Sega badge presumably slapped on somewhere. There are undocumented Sega arcade games though, that I can't prove exist(ed) - "Jungle Gun" (???????) - "Western Gun" (???????) (all that's known about Space Ace is that a dusty cabinet existed once) But what I'm most confused about is that last page, where there seems to be talk of model cars and railways. There's a Ford GT there. Were Sega selling model Ford GTs? That's an interesting thing.
Are you sure Jungle Gun isn't just one of these? https://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=17458 My uncle used to collect & repair old arcade games, and had one of those at one point. The part in the back is actually mirror, everything that you shoot at is down inside the machine. Edit: I see the sheet has it labeled as Sega, so I guess not? Western gun is pretty cheap, maybe it was a table-top machine?
These are (presumably) electro-mechanical machines, so it would have been beefy. In Japan, you don't visit an "arcade", you visit a "game centre", but apparently in the early days, when your choices were limited, these venues were called "gun corners" (later "game corners"). That is to say, until pinball and bowling became more of a thing, most games were about shooting things with guns. So I'm thinking perhaps that "Western Gun" is less of a game, and more of a... old Western-style gun that you could fit to some pre-existing cabinet.
I'm willing to bet the same, given the price. As far as the last page goes, that doesn't surprise me too much--I've dug up stuff on bumper cars and other oddities from around that time, so I'm guessing they may be actual rides. I'd need to actually translate it to make a call on that, though.
The last page is referring to slot car racing. It's hard to make out some of the text, but Sega was importing and selling "model car racing kits" and "home racing sets" as well as setting up circuits (tracks) at various locations. According to Wikipedia, slot car racing became popular in Japan in the 1960s, and tracks could be found at game centers and bowling alleys and such. According to that page, the market soon crashed due to it being too difficult for beginners to get into the hobby because of "maniac" hobbyists, and children couldn't easily join due to high costs and it being judged as a hobby of low morals because many adults were gambling on races.
Bump me do, because it just so happens this same guy posted a 1977 price list earlier in the year: https://blog.goo.ne.jp/nazox2016/e/8d746e0b1ce5a93258fd661ad9103d46?fm=entry_awc (it would be nice if we had proper scans, but whatever) Sega were selling a lot by 1977, including these "games" which weren't documented: MSL 007 エム・エス・エル 007 Horoscope ホロスコープ Round Up ラウンド・アップ Deluxe Skill Diga デラックススキルディーガ Slug Dispenser Coin スラッグディスペンサーコイン Slug Dispenser Stand スラッグディスペンサースタンド 3-Way Bingo 3ウェイビンゴ 72 Super Skill Diga 72スーパースキルディーガ Fortune Computer フォーチュンコンピューター Five Star 96 ファイブスター96 ...and a bunch more we know next to nothing about. Actually let's go out on a limb and say know very little about anything in this catalogue, because barely any of it has survived over the last 45 years. Other than the wonderfully named "Slug Dispenser", one thing stands out to me: The "Sega MSL 007". It's a train! http://web-tampa.officialblog.jp/archives/22248681.html and a colour version, watermarked to hell and back because documentation and preservation is for losers rofl (incidentally why is it that Japan has such crappy digital cameras and scanners - I read once that it was terrible internet connections in the country that faciliated the need for super duper compression, but it's 2021!) Anyway given that it looks like a small gust of wind would be enough to cause irreparable damage to this thing, finding one is extremely unlikely... and probably explains why nobody knows it existed. Not that any other electro mechanical machine from the 1960s and 70s has fared much better - Sega themselves seem unaware of their back catalogue from this time.
It reminds me of this ... (I know that the "Slug Dispenser" was just an official Sega token coin dispenser and not something bad or illegal ... but it looks that, in the past, "slugs" became a real problem for coin machine operators in the United States for some time and they had to take measures against such "phenomenon" ...)
Slug Dispenser, a thrilling box that exchanges normal currency for medals. It's exactly the sort of product that would avoid detection, since most units have "メダル貸出機" printed on them front and centre - "Medal Kashidashi-ki". Maybe from 1974(?). Some seem to think so. Most equipment from that era was replaced long ago, but nobody cares enough to upgrade change machines so... some are still in use! Sega would release more lifeless boxes in the years which followed, but this is probably Sega's first, if not one of the first ever made, so there's a story you can tell your grandkids.
Pinball was a thing back in the 1970s, and Sega Retro had (what I thought was) a pretty big list of imported tables. I discovered this morning we were missing a few, and then found some more... and then had a look at this 1977 price list and oh. I mean when I first started using the internet, the belief was that Sega didn't really do anything until 1983, but from what I can see, this is effectively the entire Williams, Bally, Gottleib (and later Stern) libraries, in addition to their own. That means by the late 1970s, Sega was responsible for pretty much all of pinball in Japan. All of it. There was no competition. What does this mean? I think they got to choose what to name things. For one, these aren't "pinball tables", they're "flippers" (フリッパー). Sega avoided using the term (maybe due to pachinko?), and while they'd cave in eventually, Sega Flipper in 1983 has no mention of "pinball". The same year, Nintendo released "Pinball" games as both a Game & Watch and for the Famicom, which leads to a potential situation where a company who has never built a real pinball table... popularised the term "pinball" in its home country, while the company that built all the tables lost out (though ASCII also had a "Super Pinball" out for the PC-8001 later in the year - maybe it was them!) We make a distinction between electro-mechanical pinball machines (i.e. lots of... electromagnets and mechanical bits), and solid state (printed circuit boards with microprocessors, although obviously there's still electro-mechanical bits too). The switchover began in 1974, and for a while, you could get both "EM" and "SS" versions of games, until it all went solid state. From an end user perspective, it just meant your score was represented with red LEDs, and there were more beeps and boops (as opposed to physical bells). Sega decided that these terms sucked, and used "standard" and "micro" instead. So it's not a "solid-state pinball table", it's a "micro flipper". Fun fact: some pinball terms are manufacturer-specific. You don't have "bumpers" on Williams tables for example; they're "jets". Would be interesting to see how Sega handled all this, given they were in charge of everything. We have it on record that Sega pulled out of the market in 1978. What happened after then... is a complete mystery (taking over Data East's US branch in the 90s is a different thing entirely). Video games displaced pinball across the world during the 1980s, but it took a few years for the industry to collapse, and Williams in particular would go on to make some of the best pinball tables ever in the late 80s and 90s (or at least, best soundtracks). It's looking as if there genuinely wasn't any pinball in Japan for decades - maybe there still isn't?
