1966 Ascot - アスコット by セガ (Sega)

Name: Ascot - アスコット
Year: 1966, 1974
Company: セガ (Sega)

This is not an easy machine for me to catalogue since it was initially an export machine, and then was a domestic machine 8 years later.  For the time being, this article will discuss both iterations.

The earliest record I've found of Ascot is the debut at the A.T.E. show in London, 1966:

Cash Box 1966-12-17 page 67

Excerpt from Cash Box 1966-12-17
"R & W (as they are known throughout the British industry) are also main distributors for Sega fruit machines and they showed two versions of the new Ascot - one is on penny play and the other takes a threepenny coin or a special size check."

A 'check' is a non-money coin token.  These were created to get around gambling legislation that made paying out monetary coins illegal, and would also serve the function limiting winnings to the location. In Japan, the equivalent term 'medal' was used when sen payout on machines was made illegal.

I am unsure if the token shown below is the special Sega check that Ascot used at the 1996 A.T.E. Show, but I think that is a safe assumption. 

Via Sega Retro, here is a photo of the Ascot token:

During the medal boom of the 1970s, Sega sold the machine domestically in Japan.  The UK machine would be 240V, and the Japanese one 100V, probably with a step-up transformer inside.  They used Type Approval Number 91-9425. This means that despite making it in 1966, they did not bother to register it with the electrical authority until they sold it domestically in the 1970s.

Sega 1974 catalogue

1974/1975 machine directory entry

I was told that work on the domestic Ascot was done in 1973.  I have yet to find any reference of Ascot being sold in Japan in 1973, so I currently place it as being sold in 1974 in Japan.  Sometimes slot machines were used for underground gambling, but I have not found any reference of Ascot specifically being used within Japan before 1974.

There appear to only be a few aesthetic differences between the machines: The English signage with instructions has been replaced with more horse art, and the roulette glass has been altered.  The 5 positions with blue+white hatching have been replaced with more numbers.

7-coin horse race gambling devices go back decades, but post-ww2 console slots were quite popular in the USA, with "flashers" coming into prominence as a way of avoiding legislation around spinning reels.  One of the most iconic of these are the "Winter Book" games.

1946 Winter Book by H.C. Evans

1946 Winter Book by H.C. Evans

As of writing this, I have evidence of 4 different Japanese machines that used the Winter Book name, though there many other machines that followed the same basic principle, Ascot one of them.