My mini pachinko collection...

[Card Shark]

I wasn't sure where to post this, so please feel free to move the post where it is most appropriate.

After first finding and joining Pachitalk, I remembered some games I had as a kid. After several months of searching and bidding, I have put together an interesting little collection.

The games were called Pocket Games, made by a company called Tomy. Most of the games involved manipulting marbles in one fashion or another. What brought them to mind was I had a couple of Pocket Pachinko games. After some searching, I was able to get two of the ones I was looking for.

First two front.jpgFirst two back.jpg

The one on the left was released in 1978 and the one on the right which included a timer and motorized tulips was released in 1981.

I then found a similar game that was a knock-off released by Domino's Pizza as a promotional toy in 1989. This one is still in it's original packaging, so I have not played it yet.

Noid.jpg

This was a good start, but I had not found the one I was really looking for. Last week I found it. This game was released in 1975. In fact 1975 was the first year Tomy released the pocket games in the United States. They only released 4 varieties. Later, they added two more in 1976 and were up to 24 games by 1978. This game I had been searching for was simply titled "Tomy Pocket Pachinko Game". The main reason I wanted it though is that it is an Arrangeball!!! (sort of).

You start the game with 9 balls and shoot them into the play field with numbered pockets. The balls then appear in a numbered grid below the play field. The object is to form as many lines of 3 balls as possible.

Arrangeball front.jpgArrangeball back.jpg

This game was later re-titled "Tic Tac Score" two years later. My goal was to find one of the originals.

While searching for this, I stumbled across a knock-off released by another company with a Baseball theme.

Baseball.jpg

I will wrap this up with a shot of the entire collection. As far as I know, these were the only Pachinko games released by Tomy. I have found that there are quite a few knock-offs out there though.

Collection.jpg