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Stumbled on a VST (digital software plugin) called Uzumaki with very little info on it. It produces very extreme scratchy blown-out sounds, maybe related to or inspired by the distinct sounds people report hearing when playing the pinball machine? More info here: https://www.kvraudio.com/product/uzumaki-by-slowslicing

Incredible work! So nice to see a cohesive timeline

It must be, right? The username matches and their first comment was about the machine. Maybe they deleted the original post?

More info in this earlier thread: https://itch.io/post/15408106

Weirdly, it seems like there's a connection between the Ito machine and the Playboy machine. The Playboy machine was mentioned in the original post, we know Joe Blackwell was involved in both, and now SPR-R-U in the manual?

No American Pickers is two guys who go and find antiques in basements and barns and things. The owners are almost always on camera, I can try to rewatch the episode and find the owner. I didn't think to check before

I wonder if the machines were prototypes that were pulled and probably meant to be destroyed. But for some reason, someone got at least a few machines to the states? Maybe a Stern employee who didn't want to see their work go to waste? Or a rabid fan who played the prototypes?

Good idea, let us know if you manage to get in contact with them!

I think I found the pinball episode you mentioned, but it's not quite the same. I was at my parents house and dug through their old DVD collection for season 1/ episode 8 and sure enough in the last minute or so the camera pans over a basement and there's a machine way in the back. I zoomed in as much as I cold and took a screenshot but it's really hard to make out. Seems like a contender though:

Do you remember the name of the band? Maybe we can find the tour stops

lol. Does anyone else find themselves just doodling spirals? Maybe we're all starting to go a little crazy trying to find this thing

Hmm, found this. Hard to tell if it's the same thing as the video or the incubase studio thing:
https://www.scmp.com/magazines/post-magazine/short-reads/article/2057897/manga-h...

wild, do you think it's the same place as this? https://www.incubasestudio.com/junji-ito-horror-house-2/

Hard to tell if it's even an official Ito project

I found a video from MAGfest, you can see the x-men machine at 2:00, not sure if that's helpful or not

Do you have any idea who brought the X-Men machine? Would be great to get in touch with them

I wonder if any japanese speakers could translate this magazine page featuring him (top row, middle):

I assume this is the person you're talking about? https://segaretro.org/Hideki_Watanabe

Looks like he stopped making anything for Sega around 2001 (publicly at least) so that lines up. But there are a huge amount of patents credited to a Hideki Watanabe (could be multiple people with the same name) including some odd arcade-game related ones: https://patents.google.com/?inventor=Hideki+Watanabe&oq=Hideki+Watanabe

I'd be surprised if that's what the stairs looked like. Did you choose the wrong image?

Is this the place? https://www.instagram.com/p/CQbeTv1F2PG/?hl=en

That staircase does look ominous 

I've been wondering about this. Seems plausible that Stern/Sega was working on some sort of unusual machine (potential vr? network connections? a spiral or horror theme?) and it had a profound effect on people who played it. Do we have any evidence of Ito frequenting arcades in the late 90s?

Also interesting that Joe Blackwell worked on a tournament system that seems to have been included in the Stern Playboy game (which is mentioned by gozooze99 in the original post)

This press release mentions the Sega connection as well: https://www.pinballnews.com/news/tops.html

In the main thread we were talking about Joe Blackwell who seems to be the main designer on the manual cover (he's in the center at least) and he has a 2002 patent for some sort of interconnected pinball tournament system:

At a minimum, this implies a few machines even for a prototype. And the "network/tournament server" is super vague. I wonder if there were a few machines made around 2001 when the original poster claims to have seen it and the VR component was wrapped up in the network? More info here: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7070506B1/en?inventor=Joe+Blackwell 

Good to know, maybe the machine (or at least the manual) ended up at Shark Club at some point? The guy who was selling the manual said it came from there, so the arcade you went to was probably close by

Do you think it might have been in the Shark Club? Some more info in this thread: https://itch.io/t/5885341/stern-manual

Good idea on the trademarks. I bet there are some serious collectors who'd love to get their hands on a machine that got pulled from the market. Maybe it was too intense and Stern felt like it was hurting their brand or something?

That youtube video of Shark Club went missing this morning too, something weird is definitely going on

So weird, it was up earlier when I posted. It pretty much just showed like a walking tour of the space, similar to the pictures in this blog post: https://motorcityblog.blogspot.com/2013/09/shark-club-howell-pinball-party-jerse...

I didn't sweep through the video looking for the Ito machine—I was going to do that later today when I got off work

Any pinball enthusiast could tell that's a doctored image of the Tales From The Crypt playfield. It's fine to tell each other ghost stories, but real collectors like me are trying to hunt this thing down and the misinformation is starting to get silly.

We'll never hunt down this rare machine if we don't stick to the facts

Looks like he might be talking about this place in MI: https://www.reddit.com/r/pinball/comments/1o5n6h/went_to_check_out_the_shark_clu...

Not a lot of info about it online, seems like it shut down around 2014

Four curved paddles is a very unusual design. Could explain why it never caught on / why so many people report feeling disoriented while playing

I got a hold of the ebay seller that had listed a Stern manual for an Junji Ito machine. I messaged looking for a better photo, here's what they sent back:

Can't find original photo. Sold a few years ago. Bought a whole lot of older manuals from the shark club in Howell when they closed. This one was in the pile, never played the game though

I'm gonna try to message the ebay seller and get some more information or at least a better photo. Joe Blackwell's credited with games back to 1993 though, including one with Sega. So maybe there was a connection to the Sega contest?

I was convinced this was some sort of custom machine, but some ebay hunting dug up an old manual. The post expired so all I can get is the thumbnail image. Not sure if I buy all the crazy stories, but it does sound like a unique machine. Could be really valuable to a collector.

that's sad to hear. I'm mostly on the Tilt forums anyways. this whole reddit thing is still new to me.

I'll hunt around there. I feel like someone would post if this machine is really as unusual as people say it is

I checked the pinball subreddit incase it got reposed there (it wasn't), but the general consensus is that there aren't any production anime machine at all: https://www.reddit.com/r/pinball/comments/1i9enia/any_anime_pinball_machines/

Maybe it was made custom for some reason?

Did some googling and found this: https://www.greatamericanpinball.com/black-and-white-twilight-zone

Don't know who Junji Ito is, but I saw a one-off twilight zone machine a few years ago with black and white graphics + spirals

Thanks, you can shoot me an email at hounskull.games@gmail.com if you want to chat about commissions

Nice, looks great!

Nice, looks great!