Name: クレーンゲーム [クラウン602] (Crane Game [Crown 602])
Year: 1965
Company: 太東 (Taito — Crown)
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.
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.
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| Crown 602 |
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| 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.
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| Automatico Crane by Jollymatic via pennymachines.co.uk |
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| Automatico Crane by Jollymatic |
I am Japanese.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your wonderful database.
I also like researching the history of games and have researched crane games.
https://jaia.jp/history/pdf/history_1960_01.pdf
This PDF states: First crane boom begins. In the mid-1960s, the Italian-made crane game “Jaguar Crane” was imported.
I sent a question to tilt.it about this before, and they kindly responded.
For that
・The Jaguar is a product of Cidam in Torino
・In the early 60's, Italgiochi in Bologna created a game inspired by American cranes with cigarettes as prizes.
・A few months later, the Italian government banned crane games.
・Thousands of crane games made during that time were exported all over the world
・The respondent has never seen a crane game in Italy, and no photos have been found.
Hello! I just figured out that I was not receiving notifications of comments. All of the comments had been sitting in limbo. My apologies.
DeleteThank you for writing. Is the implication that the Italian cranes went to Japan and inspired crane games there?
I have added a number of cranes recently, please see http://thetastates.com/eremeka/eremekaDisplay.php?search=yes&tag=vending+machine+%7E+crane
I know the 1960s cranes are similar to the Holly Cranes of USA in the 1940s, but I had not looked at crane machines in other countries.