A game not very familiar in Romania but highly popular in the Asian countries where every fourth citizen practices it is Pachinko. Pachinko is a device which could be described as a crossover between a flipper and a slot-machine, like a sort of a vertical pinball. It seems it was invented after the Second World War, in Nagoya. Today, there are around 15,000 parlors dedicated to it and approximately two million machines. In Japan, this game places third in entertainment industry, after restaurants and tourism.

Officially, the first pachinko machine was made in 1920 and it was meant for children. Only in 1930 did the first versions for adults appear in the conditions in which during that period all gaming parlors had been shut down in Japan. In the ’40s, when the officials allowed gambling once again, pachinko had already become very popular and appreciated.

STEEL BALLS CAN MAKE YOU A RICH PERSON

There are several types of pachinko machines but all are based on the same game style. The participants buy metal balls, either directly with money, or with chips or cards. With these balls the player shoots on target on a special track with the purpose of winning as much balls as possible. The digital machine has a screen on which several symbols are aligned and the objective is to line up three symbols of the same type. The screens are rich in animation, with a preference for classical cartoon or erotic characters.

Initially, the machine was manually driven and the player would aim at each ball at a time. The modern models are electrically driven and there are thousands of aligned balls participating in the game while the player controls only how fast these balls move around. The steel balls are confined in a labyrinth and fall through an opening after crossing all along the screen. While most balls drop at the bottom of the machine, some occasionally drop in the center of the screen, driving the symbols which spin on the same principle as the slot-machines.

When two symbols match, the digital program automatically switches on and enters “reach mode”, time at which short films and animations are presented in order to postpone the moment when the big prize is announced. It’s all a matter of entertainment meant to build up the pressure on the player. If three symbols of the same type are aligned, for which fact the odds are 330 to 1, the player wins balls which can be turned into money or which he can use to play one more series of rounds. On average, one can win 1250 balls on a jackpot. But these are not delivered all at once, but throughout 15 rounds.

More recently, that is in 2007, the producers thought of another method of winning, the mini-jackpot, in which the balls are delivered in two rounds. The opening through which these balls drop remains open for only 0.8 seconds.

But once a jackpot is won, the probability to win the next one increased 10 times and instead of having odds of 330 to 1, the player will now have 33 to 1 chances.

YAKUZA RULES PACHINKO

These systems are valid for standard machines. But they can be adjusted for other jackpots, or to award a certain number of balls, or for different gaming speeds, etc. And, of course, they come decorated with thousands and thousands of drawings.
The latest type of pachinko is Pachinko Go in which there are launched entire series of balls; however, their number can be decreased or increased by means of a special handle.
You should also know that if you decide to play pachinko in Japan, you won’t get prizes in money, this thing being forbidden in this country. You will be rewarded with plush toy-animals or even pens and cigarettes. It’s also good to know that gambling parlors in Asia, especially pachinko ones, are used by the Yakuza, the local mafia clans, for money laundering. So, this law allowing only for prizes in symbolical objects is actually trying to limit illegal winnings. Pachinko can also be played online on lots of websites, including in Romania.

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