Looking for information on Smart Ball/Shenmue
I have been poking around the threads since I first discovered it a few hours ago, and I'm not a 100% sure if this is where I should post this topic or not, but I have been trying to find out more information about the game Smart Ball.
and the reason why is a game called Shenmue III.
Shenmue III takes place in rural China in the mountains along the Lijiang river in the year 1987 and across your martial arts journey you find a few places where you can play Smart Ball, they are completely optional and have no bearing to the games plot but you can play Smart Ball and win prizes.
I already found another thread where someone posted a picture of a model called Corinth ball, and I did some more digging and found another picture from an Auction site of this particular game, its very similar to the one showed in the video above with an almost Identical pattern, however in Shenmue III there are dozens of other Smart Ball tables not shown in the video above with dozens of patterns and different rule sets where you try to get every ball into a hole, or just land the balls into certain holes. I have not played every Smart Ball Table In Shenmue, but to my knowledge they do not play like modern Smart ball and do not reward additional balls, which led me down a rabbit hole where I ended up here looking to see if they were based on older machines and I think they were.
but I'm posting because I still have a ton of questions about this game, and maybe someone here can help me find the answers I'm looking for or help point me in the right direction to figure this stuff out. I found out a few things before finding this site like that they still have a few places to play Smart Ball in Japan, but they work completely different from what is shown in the game Shenmue.
Questions
1# would it have been realistic to find these kinds of game in rural China in 1987?
2# what is the history behind Smart Ball, does it go by other names like Corinthball or others?
3# what are the major differences between modern Smart ball and older units like the Corinthball table when did they start giving you more balls, why did they start using blue glass instead of metal ball bearings?
4# what is considered to be the rarest of these kinds of games?
5# has anyone achieved a list of these games?
I know I'm asking a lot but Mechanical arcade games are really interesting a few years back I picked up an old Pachinko machine, and finding this site just might give me the motivation to fix it up, and I also got lucky about a year ago and found another old Mechanical shooting gallery game called Midway Trophy Gun 1964, so I already have a eye for these things and playing Shenmue Recently I thought hey that might be based on something which led me here thanks in advance for any information
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