1966 クラウンクレーンゲーム605 (crown crane game 605) by 太東 (Taito — Crown)

Name: 1966 クラウンクレーンゲーム605 (crown crane game 605) by 
Year: 1966
Company: 太東 (Taito — Crown)

I do not have any pictures of machines that I know for sure are Crown 605.

This photo exists in the Taito 40th anniversary book, given as 1967:

The only evidence that this is a different model is the control panel:

the control panel above: note the extra red colour

The Crown 603 control panel

1966 Crown 603 - クラウンクレーンゲーム (crown crane game) by 太東 (Taito — Crown)

Name: Crown 603 - クラウンクレーンゲーム (crown crane game)
Year: 1966
Company: 太東 (Taito — Crown)

The Crown 603 seems to be the most common version of the 3 crane games Taito released in 1965 and 1966.  I say this because the flyer for it appears more often, and the very visible "Crown 603" at the top is easily recognizable.  

Does the Crown 602 also have a sign like that?  I am unsure.  It would definitely make things easier if it does.

As we mentioned with the Crown 602 post, the Crown 603 moves the coin slot to the control panel.

The control panel has a wide instruction card on the left side.

I do not know why, but the 603 and 605 cranes were both released in 1966.

Here is how the Crown 603 crane is listed in the 1969 machine directory, where we can see the Crown 603 sign at the top.

1969 machine directory

1965 クレーンゲーム [クラウン602] (Crane Game [Crown 602]) by 太東 (Taito — Crown)

Name: クレーンゲーム [クラウン602] (Crane Game [Crown 602])
Year: 1965
Company: 太東 (Taito — Crown)

The Taito crane games of the 1960s all have a distinctive profile.  From the side, you can see the front panel and back side each slope down.  From the front, the bottom flares out like a skirt.

Over the span of 2 years Taito released 3 iterations of their Crane Game: 602, 603, and 605.  I have not been able to find many details about why, but it is not uncommon for games in the 60s and 70s to be released in iterations where early problems are corrected and designs are improved upon in subtle ways.

All I have for the Crown 602 is the above flyer, and from that we can see distinctive details around the control panel.  The coin slot on the 602 is on the door.  The buttons are also further separated.

Crown 602

Crown 603

Taito's crane seems to copy the design of the Automatico Crane by Jollymatic, whose basketball game was the foundation of Sega's 1966 Basketball game. In that article you'll see we don't know when Jollymatic arrived on the scene, but after exhibiting early in 1966, they seemingly disappeared by that same winter.

Automatico Crane by Jollymatic
via pennymachines.co.uk

Automatico Crane by Jollymatic

1971 Tank - タンク by さとみ (Satomi — Sammy)

Name: Tank - タンク
Year: 1971
Company: さとみ (Satomi — Sammy)

check out those edge-lit displays!

showa 46 is 1971
model is T-1
"manufacturing No." is 102, and I wonder if that means serial #?

An English-language advertisement for Tank, it only shows an illustration of the game:

Tank also appears in this undated arcade photograph provided by accs2014:

photo from accs2014

1972 Pursuiter - パシューター [2 player] by さとみ (Satomi — Sammy)

Name: Pursuiter - パシューター [2 player]
Year: 1972
Company: さとみ (Satomi — Sammy)

Satomi exported a few games (under their more American-sounding Sammy brand) to North America.  Some machines spent much of their life boxed up in a warehouse in North America, and I am grateful to receive photos of a very clean machine.

How does the 2 player option work?

from the backglass, an English sticker placed over the Japanese instructions

2-player button the left-hand side of the control panel.
This button is not on the 1 player version

player 2 can control the car's speed to mess up the main player's (player 1 is always the airplane) timing
The 1 player version of this game does not have an accelerator pedal.

It is odd that there was no Type Approval Number on the information plaque.  Perhaps that is because it was made for export?  It shows a manufacturer date of 1972-10-14, and lists this as model A-2B.  I wonder if A-2A is the 1 player version?

Amusement magazine 1972-11

1972 Pursuiter - パシューター [1 player] by さとみ (Satomi — Sammy)

Name: Pursuiter - パシューター [1 player]
Year: 1972
Company: さとみ (Satomi — Sammy)

Also released as a 2 player version, it seems both versions were sold domestically and exported.

Pursuiter appears in the 1973 coin directory.  I assume this version was also released in 1972 like the 2 player version, but I currently do not evidence for that.

1973 machine directory

The 1 player version has graphics that show you as being in the cockpit of a plane.  

1976 Big Hit - ビッグヒット by 昭和遊園機械 (Showa Amusement Park Machinery)

Name: Big Hit - ビッグヒット
Year: 1976 (maybe earlier)
Company: 昭和遊園機械 (Showa Amusement Park Machinery)

This is a slightly redesigned version of 1972 Hit & Run - ヒットアンド・ラン by 昭和遊園機械 (Showa Amusement Park Machinery), which is a rework of the classic Super Match.

There is a flyer that includes this date pegging it as 1976 but I am unsure if that is means the machine is from 1976, or that the flyer is just dated.

The other appearance I have is from a 1977 Coin Journal issue.

While Hit & Run has a Type Approval Number of 91-7822, Big Hit uses 91-8108.  I do not have solid evidence the numbers are always linearly consecutive, but there is a strong implication.  So we know the game was around in 1976, it might have been made closer to 1975.

1972 Hit & Run - ヒットアンド・ラン by 昭和遊園機械 (Showa Amusement Park Machinery)

 

Name: Hit & Run - ヒットアンド・ラン
Year: 1972
Company: 昭和遊園機械 (Showa Amusement Park Machinery)

The first Hit & Run appearance I've found is in the Amusement magazine, November 1972.

Amusement 1972-11

The game's playfield and mechanics come from Super Match.  It has entirely new art, and uses a familiar pachinko shooter instead of the German style handle.

I have seen a flyer for Hit & Run that was distributed by ホープ自動車株式会社 (Hope Motor Co., Ltd.) so they probably also sold this game.

There are (at least) 3 games with the same name.  In 1974 there is Hit and Run - ヒットアンド・ラン by こまや (Komaya) and then in 1976 we see Hit and Run - ヒットアンド・ラン by an unknown company, perhaps by カワクス (Kawax).

Super Match [Super.Match] by NSM-Löwen & オリエンタル興業 (Oriental Kogyo)

Name: Super.Match [Super Match]
Year: made 1967, imported 1970
Company: NSM-Löwen & オリエンタル興業 (Oriental Kogyo)

Super.Match (herein referred to as "Super Match",) sometimes called "Sieg.Freispiel Super.Match" if people take the marquee literally, was first made in Germany in 1967 by NSM-Löwen. (archive).  There are many variants of Super Match, and I have some you can see on my writeup on my Mini-Match machine.

At the 1970 Amusement Expo in Japan, Oriental Kogyo exhibited Super Match

All Japan Amusement Park 1970-11

Nazox2016 shared this flyer on a blog post: (archive)

オリエンタル興業 (Oriental Kogyo) flyer

This model has been modified from the original, and has a payout slot at the bottom:

In a 1971 flyer from Taito, we see that they are importing the original German version of Super Match.  

at the bottom it says "ローエン" aka Löwen

The imported playfield still has all of the original German text, but does not have the net meshing, and it uses white plastic for the center goal area.

Japan version

German version

This one from the Japanese arcade 西肥シルバーボウル (archive) also has a yellow text / sticker on the playfield, but I do not know if that was put there by the manufacturer.

There are other modifications done to this model.  First, it has a frame around the playfield, which is affixed to the cabinet, so it stays secured to the chassis when opened.  The original Super Match has a back that is mostly there to hold the transformer and coin box, but this design would let an operator open it more easily to address a stuck ball.  The original design is more reminiscent of a 1970s pachinko machine, where the playfield swings out on the main hinge, then there is a separate hinge to access the playfield.

This new design also include a locked coin box, for when the operator and attendant are different people.

The Japanese version also has a prize token dispenser:

The Japanese version has these modifications which seem repeated in the game Rich-Ball, which we know was around in 1973.

From a different copy of the Japanese machine, another look at the cabinet modificaitons:

Here is a video of an original German Super Match