A gap in the records
Between summer 1973 and summer 1974, the activities of the new company remain unclear.
However, we can guess that two sectors were growing in importance: arcade game sales and game center operations.
Fuji Enterprise doesn't appear anywhere in the December 1973 issue of Amusement Sangyô (アミューズメント産業) magazine, nor in the January 1974 issue. This could indicate that there were no new games released during the period.1
Mini Derby
The only certainty regarding games: Fuji Enterprise continued to sell Mini Derby.
.png) |
| https://aucview.aucfan.com/yahoo/f1032842105/ |
Actually, I had missed it before, but there are two versions of Mini Derby, both by Ômori Denki (大森電気).
 |
| https://www.fromjapan.co.jp/japan/fr/special/order/confirm/https%3A%2F%2Fjp.mercari.com%2Fitem%2Fm53684894069/13_1/ |
Lottery/derby type games were based on an American game from the 40s/50s called Winter Book. This has been well explained in articles by Caitlyn and Nazox2016
Mini Derby must have been very successful because many companies started selling very similar copies throughout Japan. Similarly, Fuji Enterprise's business strategy until 1976 would mainly consist of selling various versions of Winter Book/Mini Derby.
But before getting into details, we need to talk about how Fuji Enterprise dealt with bad payers. This happened in 1974.
Japan Leisure, Oga Corporation and Fuji Enteprise
For this, let's start by talking about Japan Leisure by quoting this site which features a biography of Yoshiaki Kanazawa (金沢義秋), president of Japan Leisure (ジャパンレジャー), which would later become Jaleco (ジャレコ):
"Jaleco was founded in 1971 by Yoshiaki Kanazawa as a sole proprietorship called "Japan Leisure." Initially, Mr. Kanazawa's main business was running restaurants. He acquired the management rights of a struggling steak restaurant located in front of Shibuya Parco, transformed it into a Western-style grill restaurant, and expanded it into a chain of three outlets.
So why did Mr. Kanazawa decide to enter the amusement business? It was because one of his university classmates lost his job, and that same classmate approached him with a proposal: 'Why not join forces to start a machine rental business for jukeboxes, pinball machines, and game machines that use a crane to grab tobacco prizes?'
Intrigued, Mr. Kanazawa initially took on the role not of a co-manager but of a sponsor, providing around 10 million yen in funding while leaving the management of the machine rental business in his friend's hands."
This company was Oga Corporation.
 |
| https://onitama.tv/gamemachine/pdf/19740810p.pdf, page 4 |
Oga Corporation is a sole proprietorship founded by Kazuki (or Kazumi?) Ogawa (小川一公).
According to this advertisement, among the rental games were Derby Triple 300 (ダービートリプル３００) and Big Time Roulette (ビッグタイムルーレット) :
- Derby Triple 300 is a game in the lineage of Mini Derby. More information about this game here. It was manufactured by Taiyô Giken (大洋技研)(TAN: 91-9428), a company based in Kobe.
- Big Time Roulette is an import. It's a money-pusher sold by the English company Crompton.
Kazuki Ogawa may not have had a good business sense because things went wrong quickly.
"However, once the rental business got underway, the deficits kept mounting rapidly. When Mr. Kanazawa reviewed the financial accounts, he discovered that his friend's management was all talk. The warehouse was filled with a mountain of game machines that had been purchased, and to make matters worse, a burglary occurred at the warehouse in which all the game machines were stolen—a huge blow."
Maybe it's just my imagination, but we're dealing with a burglary at an entertainment sector company that's heavily in debt, in 1970s Japan. Doesn't this strongly remind you of yakuza clan action? Just a feeling.
And things would get even worse, as shown in this Game Machine article (page 2).
"Oga Corporation, a prominent player in domestic game machine sales, issued a bounced check in early December, making bankruptcy inevitable. The company had been handling a wide range of domestic game machines as well as imported machines such as slot machines, but insiders believe that its overly broad expansion led to difficulties in settling payments. According to reports, the total debt is estimated to be around 130 million yen, and among the creditors affected are Fuji Enterprises, Japan Leisure, Esco Trading (エスコ貿易), Ducks Trading (ダックス貿易), Kaishin Kôgyô (開進工業), and Cosmo Shôkai (コスモ商会)."2
Let's take a quick look at all the creditors mentioned. We have:
- Esco Trading. This is Japan's largest distributor. The company would be bought by Sega in 1979 and its president Hayao Nakayama would later become Sega's president.
- Ducks Trading. A distributor but also the sales agency for manufacturer Amco (アムコ)(same group). The company would go bankrupt in 1976 and its president would become a fugitive.
- Kaishin Kôgyô and Cosmo Shôkai. No information on these companies but they are both apparently sole proprietorship companies.
- Japan Leisure
- Ducks Trading. A distributor but also the sales agency for manufacturer Amco (アムコ)(same group). The company would go bankrupt in 1976 and its president would become a fugitive.
- Kaishin Kôgyô and Cosmo Shôkai. No information on these companies but they are both apparently sole proprietorship companies.
- Japan Leisure
- Fuji Enterprise (not Enterprises). The company appears to be Oga Corporation's primary creditor.
The situation is critical. Yoshiaki Kanazawa's biography sheds light on what happened next:
"Determined to recoup at least the amount he had invested, Mr. Kanazawa decided to step into the amusement industry while still managing his restaurant business. In October 1974, the sole proprietorship "Japan Leisure" was incorporated as Japan Leisure Co., Ltd. (株式会社) with a capital of 3 million yen and 20 employees, with the dual purpose of engaging in the amusement and restaurant businesses. Then, in December of that same year, the company suddenly issued a bounced check for 30 million yen.
The chain of setbacks that began with his friend's poor management was enormous.However, Mr. Kanazawa did not run away at that point. Instead, he first sent his wife and children to take refuge in his hometown of Nakatsu; then, facing his creditors, he pleaded, 'Please allow me to repay you little by little from the restaurant's revenue.' This appeal prevented a second bounced check—which would have resulted in the company's bankruptcy.
While the amusement business was in shambles, the game machines operation shifted from rentals to sales. Meanwhile, the management of the three restaurants was running smoothly, generating monthly sales of 7 to 8 million yen, and Mr. Kanazawa managed to pay off all his debts over a period of three years.
Having finally cleared his debts and taken a breath, Mr. Kanazawa became convinced:'In this industry, rental and sales businesses yield very little profit. We have to be a manufacturer (maker).'
By the fourth year of the company's existence, even the game machine sales business had started to turn a profit."3
One might wonder why Yoshiaki Kanazawa needed to hide his wife and children from creditors. What would have happened to them otherwise?
In any case, this is how Japan Leisure/Jaleco was born. It's also how Japan Leisure and Fuji Enterprise started working together. A strong relationship about which we don't know much, but we'll talk about it at the very end.
Shall we talk about the games now?
Games released in 1974
Fuji Enterprise participated in Game Festival '74 ('74ゲームフェスティバル) in Osaka on October 20 and 21, 1974. This was the most important event of the year. It's where the main companies in the sector presented their new products and tried to establish contracts. Fuji Enterprise and Tsumura did something unique: they shared a booth. And they would do so again in 1975 and 1976. These two companies therefore had privileged ties. Tsumura was founded in January 1973 (perhaps with Fuji Enterprise's help?). It was primarily a distributor, meaning it bought games from other companies in large quantities before reselling them to smaller distributors or game center operators. However, Tsumura occasionally produced its own games, making it sometimes difficult to know whether certain games were produced by Fuji Enterprise or by Tsumura.
.png) |
| https://onitama.tv/gamemachine/pdf/19741020p |
In the bottom photo, in the foreground, we can see Tokuzô Uragami (浦上徳三) discussing with Mimoji Tsumura (津村三百次), the president of Tsumura.
Here are the games presented at the booth:
Grand National (グランドナショナル)
We can't see it clearly in the photo above but it seems to be a 6-player derby game.
By the way, Grand National Mark III - Jumbo Derby (ジャンボ・ダービー), featured in a Tsumura advertisement in the same issue, might be the same game. If not, it's an update.
V6 (ブィ・シックス)
 |
| https://aucview.aucfan.com/yahoo/f1032842105/ |
This is more of a casino accessory than an arcade game. It's a large wheel for playing Big Wheels/Big 6, a simplified version of roulette and a casino classic.
It's more likely a Tsumura product because, in a later advertisement (page 4), Tsumura mentions that it manufactures and sells casino items.
Big6 (ビッグ・シックス)
A 5-player medal game that follows Big 6 rules.
Derby Triple (ダービートリプル)
Oh... wait! Isn't this the game sold by Oga Corporation? We even find Big Time Roulette.
There's one last game that I can't identify.
It looks like Victory's games, doesn't it?
In the end, we realize that all machines marketed by Fuji Enterprise are games of chance, which could potentially be transformed into gambling games if they fall into the wrong hands. In Japan, these machines are called "G-machines" (Gマシン). In the United States, they would be called "Grey-Area machines" a few years later. These machines would become less and less tolerated in the arcade industry over the years. For now, they were very popular and Fuji Enterprise intended to develop this activity.
For this year 1974, we have one last game to mention. It was released after the Game Festival.
Sander Boy (サンダーボーイ)
 |
| https://onitama.tv/gamemachine/pdf/19741120p.pdf (page 2) |
It's a bit tricky but...I'll try to explain why I think this name isn't correct and this photo isn't either :
- First, why talk about Sander Boy when it's Ace Kôki (エース工機) that's promoting it? We'll see later but Ace Kôki's only known activity was selling Fuji Enterprise products. Sander Boy is therefore, in my opinion, a Fuji Enterprise product.
- Then, even if this photo is blurry, we can make out a sticker with the image of a mother kangaroo with a baby in her pouch. This is the logo of Osaka Pacific Vending (大阪パシフィックベンディング), also called Pavco (パブコ), a major manufacturer of small medal games. And indeed, Pavco released a game called Wander Boy (ワンダーボーイ) earlier in 1974
 |
| https://aucview.aucfan.com/yahoo/m1075361030/ |
Sander Boy and Wander Boy are identical.
- I think this advertisement wasn't drawn by Ace Kôki, but by the Game Machine staff. More broadly, I think that in 1974, most advertisements in this magazine were "home-made."
As proof, here's the advertisement right next to the previous one.
It indicates that Chance Maker (チャンスメーカー) is a Ducks Trading game.
However, in the following issue, Game Machine publishes an erratum to apologize because Chance Maker is actually a Tôwa Bussan (東和物産) game. Could such an error have occurred if Tôwa Bussan had made its own advertisement? What I mean is that the same kind of approximation could have occurred in the "Sander Boy" advertisement because Ace Kôki didn't make the advertisement.
- And finally, to make things even clearer, there exists a game published by Fuji Enterprise called Sounder Boy
 |
| https://aucview.aucfan.com/yahoo/e1102373607/ |
In Japanese, Sander Boy and Sounder Boy are both written as "サンダーボーイ".
Apart from the logo, there's no apparent difference between Sander Boy, Sounder Boy, and Wander Boy. In fact, if there was no agreement between Fuji Enterprise and Pavco, we're dealing with an unscrupulous plagiarism.
To summarize, I think someone from Ace Kôki called Game Machine and said "Hello, I would like an advertisement for "サンダーボーイ", please. Here's the information to write. I don't have the machine yet so I can't send you a photo. But you can use a photo of Wander Boy and modify the title. That will work fine."
And Pavco isn't the manufacturer. On the Aucfan advertisment for Sounder Boy, the plate on the back of the machine is too small to read the manufacturer's name. But the advertisment itself mentions that the manufacturer is Fuji Sepuro (フジセプロ). We'll talk more about Fuji Sepuro in the next part.
Conclusion
That's all for the year 1974. Since it was a bit long, let's say this was part one and stop here.
The pace of new game releases would accelerate in 1975. We'll also talk a bit about Fuji Enterprise's structure in the next part.
1. Thanks to Caitlyn, Detchibe, and Gaming Alexandria for sharing these scans ↑
2. There's something a bit strange about the dates in this article. The article is from November 1974 but indicates that Oga Corporation issued a bounced check in December. It might be a date error, but it seems there's a lag between the official date and the actual publication date of Game Machine journal in the 1974 issues. For example, the October 20, 1974 issue shows photos of the Game Festival taking place on October 20 and 21, 1974 ↑
3. Small detail: in the book "Jaleco's Archives" (City Connection publishing, 2016), Yoshiaki Kanazawa specifically mentions that Japan Leisure entered the amusement industry through leasing (リース), not rental (レンタル). ↑
.png)