~1931 岡式電気自動球遊機 (Oka-style electric ball play machine) by 岡 (Oka)

Name: 岡式電気自動球遊機 (Oka-style electric ball play machine)
Year: ~1931 (around 1930-1932)
Company: 岡 (Oka)

Oka are famous for making early pachinko machines, their oldest around 1929.  They are not the first to make pachinko machines, that would be ON Shokai.  There are no known existing copies of those machines, so currently the oldest known existing pachinko machine is by Oka.

Oka company plaque.  Despite it saying "electric", only some of their machines used electricity.

The first pachinko machines operated on sen coins.  The earliest machines would have their wins paid by hand by the operator who would place coins in a bottom tray.  This is one of the early machines designed to automatically pay you coins for a win.  Pachinko machines would be changed to dispense balls around 1937, due to money gambling machines being prohibited by regulations.

Kazuo Sugiyama of the Birth Of Pachinko Museum says this machine was probably made between 1930 and 1932.

back of machine

This machine had been modified at some point.  Originally, this piece of metal was bent so that a ball would come up and be directed downward toward the left-most hole.

4 nails were removed from the playfield.  These nails would deflect the ball away from the curved metal, and prevented the ball from getting stuck.

I have drawn the original ball path.  The ball would only go here if the player shot too hard.

the original ball path if you shot too hard.  This modification was probably done by an operator at a later date to make the game play a bit more like pachinko machines did in the late 1930s.

Each of the 3 hearts has a winning hole behind it, but they are very difficult to enter.  In the below photo you can see it is not a cup to enter, like in a pachinko machine from the 1940s onward.  It is a thin metal channel the ball would have to roll down.

looking down behind a heart

This is the channel:

But luckily the center block is much easier to hit.  It slants inward like a funnel, leading to a hole.  Even if you do not enter the center heart, the ball would still enter the center block.  This seems to make the hole in the center heart unnecessary, so I wonder if sometimes people would remove the center block funnel...

the main winning areas

Here is a map of how the playfield holes align with the rear of the machine:

All 4 winning holes feed the ball to the same junction point at the top, at the back.  The ball then triggers the upper lever, and then falls down the chute to the left where it enters the playfield, ready to be shot again.

how a winning ball travels.  The top orange dot is where the ball hits the payout lever.  The bottom dot is where the ball returns to the playfield.

This is all very standard for a pachinko of this era.

Things get very peculiar when we look at the other ball paths.  The game is designed to have 2 different "lose" holes.  When the balls comes out of the left orange circle, it falls down and stops at the red circle area.  The ball stays there until another coin is inserted, then the green rod rises, and the ball returns to the playfield via the green hole.

That is also very standard for a pachinko machine of this era.

But look at the 2nd path.  When a ball comes from the right orange circle it hits the 2nd payout lever.  (marked by the purple circle)

The ball then rests at the red circle area until another coin is inserted.

Let's take a look at a diagram of the ball entrances and exits:

The left-most hole on the playfield takes the ball to the "lose" hole.  But all along the bottom, the ball gets funneled into a "lose" hole that also can pay out.

This machine was designed to have a "lose" hole that also pays out!  That is very odd for a pachinko machine.  Pachinko machines are gambling devices, so why design a machine that pays out when you lose?    It seems this machine has the option for "novelty play".

Why would they do this?  Perhaps there was a region where it was illegal to make and/or sell gambling machines.  By having the 2nd payout lever, this is a novelty machine.

If an operator were to remove one nut on the 2nd payout lever, this machine would operate just like a normal pachinko machine, and would be a gambling machine.  I think this is a fascinating design.

The machine also had one more clue.  The metal payout tray at the bottom had an edge folded upwards to block one of the two coin chutes.  A "win" would normally pay out 2 sen on a pachinko machine for gambling.  By blocking one of the 2 coin chutes, it ensures only 1 sen is paid out on a win.

payout tray with bent corner, blocking one of the two coin payout chutes

It is very easy to bend the metal to let the machine pay 2 sen again.

The earliest Oka machines, from around 1929, had a payout cup in the center bottom of the wooden frame.  When you "won", the operator would manually place a coin in the cup.  This machine must have been one of their first automated payout machines, as they still used the original wooden frames.

On the front of the machine there is a metal plate covering a hole in the wood frame where the old payout cup would have been.

metal plate on the front.  Note the nail marks in the wood around the 

the backside of the plate is an empty cavity where the manual payout cup would have been.

Here is what the payout cup looked like on the earliest Oka pachinko machines:

The earliest Oka payout tray.  You can see that the nail holes from a payout cup like this are visible above metal plate of the 1931 machine.

This is what the payout tray looks like from the back.  The attendant would simply place coins in here by hand.