Pachinko (パチンコ) is a type of mechanical game originating in Japan and is used as both a form of recreational arcade game and much more frequently as a gambling device, filling a Japanese gambling niche comparable to that of the slot machine in Western gambling.

Going through my Flickr stream I came across an image titled Name That Anime Slot Machine so of course I knew I had an interesting challenge ahead of me! The slot machine was spotted in an Ohio antique mall —the only real clue I had was that it was based on a baseball manga or anime series. Now while there are tons of baseball manga (and all sorts of sports manga in Japan) I realized that it had to be from a show popular enough to merit an anime series.

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So I ran to wikipedia and went through all 21 shows that were listed in the genre — and then the third to last one was Star of the Giants (巨人の星 Kyojin no Hoshi). What’s interesting to be is that this is old school stuff — the manga was from 1966, and the three anime series ran from 1968 until 1979.

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By the way here’s a modern arcade version of the above slot machine:

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Star Of The Giants Slot Machine Game

Photo by Aaron at the Weekly Anime Review Podcast.