Smart Ball (スマートボール)

Smart Ball, produced by Mitsuba Sangyo Co., Ltd. of Tokyo, Japan, is an unusual entry in pinball history: an electro-mechanical payout machine rather than a conventional flipper pinball. 'Smart Ball' was a category of game with various playfield designs, popular in Japan from the late 1950s through the early 1970s as a pachinko-adjacent amusement.

Rather than scoring points with flippers, Smart Ball pays out in balls dispensed from the backbox, which roll down the playfield glass toward the player. If too many balls accumulate and start blocking the view of the playfield, the player can move them into a nearby counting tray. The metal cup on the cabinet front served as an ashtray.

According to Japanese pinball hobbyist Yasushi Watanabe, Smart Ball games are now viewed as an old-fashioned attraction rather than a gambling device, and few surviving examples remain. Its design and theme are otherwise undocumented, but as a surviving example of a Japanese payout amusement machine it offers an interesting window into a lesser-known corner of coin-op history.