Obscure 1991 hand held game machine - The J.Cock Z400S

okay now I'm bringing you in a bit earlier on this video than I normally would do because I think there's some interest to be had in getting the thing out of the box I haven't opened it yet and I'm not exactly sure what I bought it's been imported from Japan from the Yahoo auctions and the description there was very very vague the photos were poor quality and overall I didn't have much to go on but it just looked intriguing now it's some kind of electronic gambling poker type machine now I've been looking for something along these lines for a while a kind of tabletop device here bar top I suppose it would be but you know perhaps from the past videos I've got an interesting gambling machines I've got a a proper one arm bandit a pashinko I did have a couple of passion slots I've got an all-win a variety of these kind of gambling type machines and it was just an area that I was intrigued to to pick something up in so looking at the pictures I thought this one looks particularly small I wasn't too sure if it had a CRT in it a color CRT or if it was some kind of flat screen thing it said it was from 91 so kind of borderline anyway the box turned up today and this is where I got surprised because this is the Box Ari I really was not expecting something there'll be plenty of packing in there as well so I was I was kind of expecting something like bulky not not ridiculous but kind of just a bit smaller than a bar top thing well it doesn't weigh much and it's quite small and it kind of looks like a on the pictures some kind of like as interchangeable components so you could be a poker machine or it could be a blackjack machine or something but it only had the one kind of part to it so I think it'd just be interesting to have a look at this so um let's get it out of the box and see exactly what it is that I bought now when it comes to Japanese consoles the vast majority of them have been covered quite comprehensively on the internet even the rare ones I mean if it was something like a a Casio loopy or something you'll find plenty of videos about it from people in the west who've discovered this thing and wanted to show it off this thing I found absolutely nothing whatsoever about some perhaps I'll find more about it once I get in here so yeah um that's it pick it up with one hand and um that's all there is there so I'm kind of hoping I haven't just bought like an accessory for something else right that well that's what I was expecting that's kind of what the picture look like but due to the depth of this it looked almost like it was a CRT I can see now that's just a flat screen of course in there I think there's some keys in here look at this three different sets of keys right so let's just have a look we've got our key slot there are these buttons no I seem to just be things to hold it on that side DC in headphones volume control some kind of uh box at the back there with a couple of connectors on oh three key holes on it what a weird thing right so here's your branding jaycock yeah I don't know if I want to search for that online a new wave yeah sorry for New Wave jaycock okay so it's this it's the jaycock z400s let's just check the powers on there so let me plug this in and ah the screen's on and nothing's happening oh oh this is this is the instruction book that he's just prints out the individual pages right so there's a screw oh hold on seem to be sort of buttons there is there anything can you let's just turn it off again ah right so what's all this what's going on in here that goes up this is a very bizarre object and there's a a poker wave cartridge J p777 1991 by Jay cut co-limited yeah and it just goes into that at the back there's nothing else to see in here so that goes in there is is on off switch there let's uh let's plug it in and see what happens right so let's move this to the left ah that's the on off switch because you can see the screen comes on let's press the first well second third fourth right now turn it the other way yeah I can't open that now oh I think what goes in the back is a battery pack yeah that's a battery pack and that's what goes in the back of that so we could run it off a battery right reading through that it seems like it might need the battery pack for it to work and that makes me think that maybe the people Center this over have taken out the battery pack in there four that's why nothing's happening I'd just about given up on it and I'll shoved this thing all the way in switched it on and it's come on there so let's hope it's not going to go off again at least without works and it works without the battery it's like a bet Ted start yes oh Jack queen king we'll have that now I'm sure most people watching this are familiar with arcade poker style machines but I'll just show you the controls down here so across the middle row cancel self-explanatory start is also the deal button and then bet you keep pressing that to incrementally increase the amount you're going to bet on that particular hand so once you've got your bet set you deal your hand you can then choose to hold any of the five cards and then your deal again and then if you've won off that one you can just take the winnings here and they'll go into your credits or you can choose to bet them again if you press that you then get into a higher or lower game and you choose the higher or lower or big or small cards here and you can just keep playing that higher and lower game until eventually you either lose your money or you lose your nerve and you take your score and it goes into your credits [Music] oh God straight brilliant let's take that now this is effectively just a normal arcade poker machine albeit one that's been shrunken down into this small case you'll notice on the screen here it's even saying to insert coin so I'm sure it's using the same ROMs that would have been present in a proper arcade machine but of course on this one there's no way to physically add currency into this small box so the way that you add in credits here where you access this panel on the front and behind there you'll see that there are some buttons and there's one four notes and one for coins now normally this would be secured and locked on the bottom so you wouldn't be able to access that easily now the previous owner of this particular machine must have got fed up with trying to reach in here to increase his credits so he's wired something into the key slot here so every time you turn that it adds 100 credits into the bank so just have a look at the top there there we go 100 and you can just keep doing that okay so I can bet up to 100 on each hand at the moment it's set to zero every time I press the button that increases by one it does remember the previous bet that you've set so you can just repeat that for each round you don't have to increase this each time so we'll set it up to 25 of course you can restart Back At One again if you want but we'll start with 25 bet on this first hand right now that's pretty good we've got a pair of queens so we're already winning this one here which is flashing Jack's all better now that just pays you about what you put in you can see 25 hopefully there but if we just uh hold the Queens and I think we'll just stick with those and let's press start again oh three queens so that's 75 now at this point it said double up bet all take score so I'm gonna go for the double up and this gets us into this higher or lower game so if the card is eight or more I'll win if I push big or six or less I'll win if I push small I think seven I think it just gives you your money back so let's uh let's go for the oh let's go higher how do we lost okay so that was the end of that one let's start again okay Jack Queen right let's try this again though let's let's go for the double up uh let's say it's going to be small this time right so there you can see we've got up to 50 there so we've doubled up our 25 return let's go again let's go for high ah we got a four again so I've lost the money uh hold the queen of the ice let's go for the gumball let's do it again [Music] right so we've got a hundred out of that one though should we do it again right hey let's go for high oh bomb [Laughter] [Music] now you'll notice I'm winning quite a lot on this Jack's all better and I'm getting the return back 25 for the amount I've put on here with that Pair of Aces there now you'll also notice that that line it seems quite low on the display though it's kind of it's almost like it shouldn't be there if you know what I mean normally you'd separate your wind chart out from your cards a bit better than that it's very kind on the player because you get your money back very easily but I don't think the game's really supposed to be played that way and in fact that is one of the things that you can alter on the dip switches on the bottom the dip switches that I want to access are behind this panel and this is locked it's secured again with this key if I just turn that you'll see it drops down and now I can remove it and that's where the lock went through to hold that in place but now we've got access to this you can see we've got three Banks of eight dip switches and the previous owner included the sheet which is the key to what each of these does down there things such as um increasing the maximum amount of bets well it's already at 100 but you can select lower amounts and various different things like that but uh number six on the second bank here that's the payout for a single pair of jacks or above so if we look at that bank there that's the only one that's on the right so we'll just move it to the left and that means that that feature is now being disabled right so I'll start again put 100 credits in and start and notice the single pair option has now disappeared from the bottom we'll just take a quick look at the specs courtesy of this photocopied manual notice again there at the bottom right we've got the date of 1991 and the specs page if we stick that into Google translate where we can see that the screen is an LCD four inches across TFT display resolution of 479 by 234 and then towards the bottom you can see other things such as the power requirements the operated temperature the dimensions and the weights now at imagine there are some people wanted to take a look inside so this section's for them rather obviously the bottom cover can't just be removed by taking out the screws you have to also undo the various locks we'll flip this circuit board over in a minute see if we can spot any chips on the other side one thing I should say the cartridge that's been plastic welded together there are no screws in there so that's not something I can open up today but let's take these screws out and have a look oh one other thing stereo speakers here or at least two speakers pointing this way into the case but it does seem a little bit Overkill given the quality of the audio that we were listening to before but maybe this thing's got quite a bit more capabilities than we heard it could be that it would be able to play some reasonable sounds with the appropriate cartridge inserted okay let's see if this slides out now to get this board out completely I'd have to remove all these wires and I don't think it's necessary because we can see everything that there is on here or at least everything we're allowed to see because you'll notice they put stickers over the tops of these chips and if you were to remove those stickers you wouldn't see any more because if you look to the sides of them you can see they've scraped off the details from the top of the chips as well so the ones that remain the ones I can see here they're all dated from 1989 and you can see there we've got a battery backup which will store the details of our credits but um yeah that's pretty much all I've got to show you there so I'll just pop it back together again now I'm sure to the vast majority of people the game that this thing plays would not be the most enthralling thing and I'll put myself in that category as well I'm more interested in the machine itself because it's such an intriguing object you might not have noticed why that would be but the keys kind of give this away this is clearly not a device for the home this is a proper gambling device yes it doesn't take money physically then pay it out but there are ways around that and the fact that everything is locked away that would enable you to calm this device or fiddle it or do anything like that shows that this is something that was intended for proper gambling the normal person wouldn't be able to get into here to access the the credit button I did they won't be able to access the button that pays out the credits at the end there's no way to adjust these amounts other than by gambling normally but at the end you can get your credits paid back if you open this up and press this button here look at the top left there those are the credits going down to zero so the only people that will be able to get into here would be the people with the keys and the same goes for the dip switch on the bottom so let me explain how I think this was designed to be used okay so imagine I've got a karaoke bar for example that we've got all these different rooms that people can go off into and to gain some additional income on the front counter here I've got a series of these things sat charging up whenever anyone wants to borrow one I'll say oh give me a thousand yen I open this part here put their thousand yen into the device lock it all up they've got the credit on there give it to them and whilst their friends are singing away in the room or whatever they can have a bit of a gamble as well at the end of the night they come back give me the machine I look how much they've won or lost on this pay them out the cash reset the machine stick it back on charge again seems like a brilliant line of business now of course this is just conjecture I'm making the whole thing up but it looks like that's what this was used for I mean maybe not the karaoke but I'm not too sure of the exact location but you know with all the keys and things and everything being locked away on this there really is no way to fiddle this without breaking it open so you can use it as a proper gambling device it's just the cash part of the transaction has to take place elsewhere but there's another thing I want to say about this let me just unplug it this is a handheld games console from 1991. with a color screen and when you think of how many of those were around it wasn't that many there was the Atari Links there was the Sega Game Gear the uh was it turbo Express I think that was right about all of them well it was all of them until this and when you might be thinking well hold on I mean yeah it's not a rechargeable portable color screen games console with interchangeable games and then you go hold on a minute yes it is of course this one doesn't have the batteries with it apparently they came with two batteries there are some new ones I've seen on the auctions and photos and they would have other batteries in there as well once you get into this and open it up obviously once you've got the key you can get into this section here and you can remove the game cartridge and this is the poker wave one of course there should be others in this range I have never seen one but you can imagine there'd be perhaps a blackjack one of these maybe Kino I don't know other kind of casino type games that would uh go in this machine but yeah I mean it might also be the first rechargeable color screen handheld games console let's say hunter well you can hold it your hands cut it I mean the other ones all run on Double A's at that time this one did have a proper rechargeable battery pack in here it'd be like a big night cut or something kind of thing that you might have a on a camcorder or something but yeah it's a it's a color games console from 1991 that nobody really knew about because it only played one game probably but uh I'm very happy that it was working in the end so I was a bit worried to start with it we weren't going to get there but um yeah there you go so that is if I could have get that cartridge in there it right that is poker wave or I should call it the jaycock z400s so yeah there's another games console for you from the early 90s if anyone says oh uh what's the most obscure color handheld portable rechargeable games console that kuruma from 1991. the answer is the jaycock z400s and you can blow your friend's Minds who thought they knew everything about games console so there you go just thought you might want to see that uh you might not but it's a bit late now because the video has been made uh you should have bailed a bit earlier than this bit oh and I forgot one thing I want to mention yeah new merchandise um some people have asked for this so there you go whole new range of it click through the link in the video description but that is it for the moment as always thanks for watching foreign [Music] [Music] foreign foreign

Channel: Techmoan

Views: 317,947

Keywords: Techmoan, 4K, J.cock, Z400S, j-cock, poker, gambling machine, pokie, slot poker, video poker, video slot poker, japanese, games console, retro, retrotech

Id: aj1SMUbAr50

Length: 20min 29sec (1229 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 05 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/QuipOfTheTongue]

This was a really interesting one and that little(ish) device was way more complicated than I had initially expected it to be. Techmoan is such a blessing. The things we get to see and learn about that otherwise would never have crossed our paths is amazing.

[u/richneptune]

I hope there are more games he finds, I'd defo like to see Mat whip out his J.Cock again