Photos of Karateco Games
An arcade flipper in Minnesota shared a photo of a nearly empty Puckman this week that led to some discussion on the cabinets that were used by Namco were strikingly similar to cabinets used by another Japanese company – Karateco.
A fun post tonight – here is a photo gallery of Karateco cabinets, some confirmed and other speculated.
Games produced by Karateco
Not that much is known about Karateco, but surprisingly there is a Wiki page with a list of games that someone believes they produced/distributed. A cabinet that might have had a Karateco game is relatively easy to spot – they have similar shape to the classic Bally/Midway Pacman cabinets but the cabinet is typically white with a blue or green coin door and a series of horizontal vents to the right side of the door. In my opinion, these cabinets seem to appear most frequently on the west coast and across the many provinces of Canada.
For someone passionate about the subject, there may be a call to curate games known to be by Honly and compare photos of those cabinets to this style of cabinet that seemed to house Namco and Karateco games.
Here is a gallery of cabinets that could have contained Karateco games, some confirmed, some reasonable guesses and some pure speculation.
Karateco Rally Z
Kamikaze Cabinet with a Moon Cresta marquee
Kamikaze, licensed? by Honly
Karateco Taskete, with our favorite arcade blogger Tony Temple
Uniwars Cabinet, expected to be Karateco – marquee with the branding.
Puckman by Karateco? The top one by Karateco? Bezel artwork and cabinet is similar, but not the coin door
Puckman by Honly, the bezel artwork is similar to Namco’s Puckman
Crazy Climber, by Karateco? Unconfirmed. Similar cabinet.Final note – the Puckman that might be by Karateco is listing as unconfirmed on Puckman.net, which is a longstanding excellent resource on the many Puckman bootlegs. Also – a thank you to the fun browsable resource for arcade games flyers that is Flyerfever.com.
Closing Thoughts – Karateco, Namco, Honly
If you have additional facts to definitively clarify the notations on these cabinets shown above, leave a comment. This was a fun post to show off some of these unique pieces but wasn’t deeply researched.
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Comments
hemvlett ยป Thanks for leaving a note.
Do you have any backstory on how the previous owner came into possession of that cabinet?
Anyone have photos of the inside motherboard ect of a Kamikaze cocktail? I have one in my house and wondering if it’s all there
Alan – If you aren’t a member already of UKVAC (or maybe Klov) forums, I would setup an account there an ask. UKVAC because they’re an EU audience, generally speaking Karateco games are seen more frequently over there.
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January 26, 2019
Hi,
I can confirm rally-x exists because the cabinet in the first picture is mine. This picture was taken (some years ago) a few days before i bought it when it was at the previous owners’s house. the overall manufacturing is cheap compared to a namco cabinet.
Best regards.
hemvlett