[CC#09] Electromechanical Games and Home Video Games (Patreon)

This is a story from when I was about nine years old.

Whenever my family went shopping at a department store or out for a meal there, I would often stop by the game corner on the rooftop and spend some time playing. Digital games were still rare then, and there were many cabinet-style games known as ele-mecha (electronics and mechatronics), such as analog driving games and roulette games played with coins.

I wasn't particularly fond of games where you inserted money (coins) and launched them directly with a spring mechanism. I tended to prefer games like driving games or whack-a-mole. Among them, my favorite was a game called WIND MILL (Kansai Seiki Seisakusho Co., Ltd. 1970), a vertical cabinet game with four windmill-like blades rotating automatically. It looked fun even before you started playing it.

The objective was to guide a silver ball, about the size of a pachinko ball, along rails that wound their way through the windmill, carrying it all the way to the goal without letting it fall into the gaps between the rotating blades. For some reason I was unusually good at it, and I almost always reached the goal and won a prize.

The rotating windmill blades had gaps between them. If the ball landed on the tip of a blade, the blade's rotation would carry it to the next path. But if it fell into one of the gaps, it would drop into a hole and the game would be over.

The ball was held in place by a stopper positioned before the windmill. Turning a rotary handle raised the stopper and allowed the ball to roll forward. That was the basic gimmick.

Games like pachinko, where you launch balls or coins with a lever and the outcome depends on how strongly you strike them, tend to involve a great deal of chance. The result changes depending on the spring tension and the way the lever is used, making it difficult for the player's intentions to be reflected directly in the outcome. To me, they always felt somewhat close to gambling.

WIND MILL, on the other hand, was a game of timing. You raised the stopper in sync with the speed of the rotating blades and placed the ball onto them at precisely the right moment.

I loved WIND MILL because it rewarded precise control. As I played repeatedly, paying attention to the rotation cycle of the windmill, the speed of the rolling ball, and the positions of the blades, I gradually learned exactly when to raise the stopper. It felt very much like an action game—overcoming challenges through pattern recognition.

One day, while walking home from school, I noticed a crowd of children gathered near the entrance of a shopping center.

As I approached, I saw a household CRT television. In the center of its black screen was a white vertical line, and at both edges of the screen were short white vertical bars moving up and down.

I watched for a while and realized that a child standing in front of the television was controlling one of those moving bars with a lever attached to a control board. A white ball—a simple dot—moved back and forth across the screen, and the player was using the short vertical bar to return it.

The ball would bounce off the white bars and the edges of the screen, changing direction each time in a simple collision-and-reflection motion.

Above the television was a large colorful sign that read:

"TV Tennis Tournament."

It was a simple game with nothing more than moving lines on a black-and-white screen, but I was amazed that a game could be played on an ordinary television, much like the table games found in arcades. It appeared to be a promotional event for the launch of a home video game system.

What surprised me even more was the grand prize.

It said that anyone who won the tennis tournament would receive a microscope.

At the time, insect collecting was all the rage. Alongside that hobby were expensive tools for children that were far beyond what could be bought with a monthly allowance.

A microscope!

The thing everyone wanted right then!

The very microscope I had begged my father for over and over again.

The microscope I had stubbornly stood in front of toy stores asking for, only to be told, "That's not a toy."

...

The children watching, all around my age, were taking turns playing as they were encouraged by a young man holding a microphone beside the television.

Many of them were unfamiliar with the controls and lost without returning the ball even once. It hardly seemed like a real competition at all, yet they kept calling for more challengers.

Then the young man spotted me.

"Want to give it a try?"

I was extremely curious, but I was never comfortable doing things in front of people. Saying something like, "Umm...", I slowly stepped forward.

That said, I had been carefully watching the hands of the children who played before me, so I had already figured out most of the game. Even so, I acted as though I wasn't quite sure and asked the young man to explain the controls.

"Start!"

At the signal, he pressed a button on the machine and the ball appeared.

It seemed simple enough. Move the white bar up and down with the rotary controller, keep the ball from getting past it, and send it back toward your opponent.

The ball struck the top of the screen and bounced toward me.

I slowly turned the small rotary handle on the control board and returned the ball.

The children watching immediately let out a collective "Oooh!"

The ball I returned slipped past the side of my opponent's bar and disappeared.

That gave me the win.

After that, the losing child stepped aside and another challenger took their place. It became a king-of-the-hill style tournament.

Most children could only manage to return the ball two or three times before losing.

"It's this easy..."

I found it strange that the other children were unable to control the game properly and kept being replaced. I didn't particularly think I was good at it.

Then, suddenly, a familiar sensation came back to me.

This feeling.

Carefully measuring the timing.

Predicting the angle at which the ball would arrive.

Moving the bar into position.

It felt like something I'd done before...

That's it!

That windmill game!

The gameplay and mechanisms were completely different from WIND MILL, but the feeling of controlling something through timing was remarkably similar.

Even the motion of moving the bar up and down with a rotary handle felt somewhat like raising and lowering the stopper in WIND MILL.

This was my first experience with a video game, yet all the electromechanical games I had loved up to that point had unknowingly improved my skill at timing-based play.

Perhaps it was simply chance that I had been drawn not to games with uncertainty, like pachinko, but to games such as WIND MILL, where my actions were directly reflected in the outcome.

But I feel that those experiences became a major factor in leading me toward game development later in life.

Blocks that suddenly pop out.

Enemy attacks that come at fixed intervals.

Jump actions across broken platforms.

The action games I created contain many mechanics built around timing.

People often say they are difficult, but I have never believed that I was wrong.

Because, just like WIND MILL, I know from experience that once you understand the timing, you can always overcome the challenge.

And so, without making a single mistake, I continued defeating opponent after opponent.

Without excitement.

Without suspense.

Methodically.

Suddenly, the young man providing commentary stopped the match and shouted:

"Champion!"

Before I realized it, I had defeated almost every child watching.

That evening after dinner, I showed my mother the microscope I had won and told her what had happened that day.

Her expression suddenly became tense.

"Did you really win this?" she asked.

Apparently she suspected that I might have done something wrong.

Which was understandable. After all, I had suddenly come home carrying the expensive microscope I had been asking for endlessly. And she had never even heard of a TV game tournament.

The shopping center sold groceries and other daily necessities, and we used it almost every day. Since she had no knowledge of such an event taking place, she naturally became concerned.

In the end, she decided that we should go back the next day to thank the organizers, and she told me to come with her.

"That's right. This is the boy. The one with the white cap... I was amazed at how good he was at the game."

The young man who had run the event the day before laughed as he spoke.

Standing beside him, my mother finally looked relieved and bowed her head in thanks.

A few days later, my father returned from a business trip and brought home a microscope as a birthday present for me.

(Automatic translation by AI)