Pachinko Picking Up a Head of Steam?

The Japanese game of pachinko has been around for many years. This pinball-like gambling game was always a huge hit in Japan and it has been gaining some serious momentum since online casinos started becoming popular.

For those not familiar with pachinko machines, their evolution runs parallel to that of slot machines. These days, casino slot games are available in a wide range of colors and themes, offering huge prizes, playing video clips, and even taking on a new life as interactive devices.

Pachinko Playing Guide

Play Online Pachinko

Like pachinko, though, slot machines were once very simple and to the point. They didn’t need any added thrills to entice gamblers. The machines were enough. Once online casinos came around, however, games like slots and pachinko needed to be updated.

With the easy access to a vast array of gambling games, pachinko needed to stand out. Its modern transformation resembles more of a pinball/slot machine hybrid, and there are many Japanese and pachinko-specific sites around hosting them.

Pachinko – Rising in Popularity

Can we expect to see pachinko show up in more modern online casinos anytime soon? The short answer: probably. There’s no way a definitive yes can be offered. You just never know if the game will drop off in popularity. And you certainly cannot definitively say no, as there is currently a very large pachinko market.

The truth of the matter for all you pachinko fans out there looking for wider representation is that hoping for even more pachinko placement at online casinos is just wishful thinking to this point. With so many card games, slot games, dice games, and many other specialty games, a niche Japanese game doesn’t bring in the required audience to offer more than one or two pachinko games per venue.

Pachinko, the new Best Casino Game?

Even still, this popular game is continuing to pick up a head of steam. The more pachinko-specific sites pop up, the bigger the fan base gets. And the more casinos offering the game, the more parity we’ll see.

Eventually, pachinko may share an equal listing with slot machines. In many opinions, it’s only a matter of time.

Pachinko Machines

A Pachinko Machine is a device rather like a pinball machine, used for amusement and prizes.

Although originally strictly mechanical, modern pachinko machines are a cross between a pinball machine and a video slot machine. The machines are widespread in casinos in Japan in establishments called “Pachinko Parlors”, which also often feature slot machines.

Pachinko Machines

How to Play Pachinko

The player purchases a large number of small steel balls which are inserted, in bulk, into the machine.

Originally, machines had a spring-loaded lever for shooting the balls individually, but modern machines use a round “throttle” that merely controls how quickly an electrically fired plunger shoots the balls onto the playfield. The balls then drop through an array of pins, and usually simply fall through to the bottom, but occasionally fall into certain gates which make the machine pay out more balls.

Pachinko Slot Machines

Most current machines at onsite casinos include a slot machine (these are called “pachi-slo”), and the big winnings are ultimately paid not from the balls falling into gates, but from the slot machine matches that follow. In many modern machines the balls have nothing to do with determining winnings, which are based strictly on electronic random number generators.

The winnings are in the form of more balls, which the player may either use to keep playing, or exchange for tokens or prizes such as pens or cigarette lighters.

Pachinko Sexy Reaction

Pachinko Sexy Reaction is an arcade game based on the Japanese game of Pachinko.

Pachinko Sexy Reaction is an ecchi arcade game (more adult than Pachinko Sexy Reaction 2) developed by the company ‘Sammy’ in 1998. The game is based on the Japanese amusement of pachinko, which Sammy is noted for.

Pachinko Sexy Reaction

Point of the Game

Pachinko Sexy Reaction is a game based upon Pachinko, which is Japanese Pinball. The player has to get a number of coins in order to advance in the game.

Playing the game

The player starts with 100 pachinko balls which are used to gain more coins. The player controls the power in which the balls are fired and must get the balls into (for most part of the game) into a hole which starts the slot machine. Upon getting a winning set of reels, the game goes into Fever Mode, which allows the player to reveal a provocative picture by putting balls into the fever doors at the bottom of the screen. When the player reaches the specified number of coins the Girl at the side of the screen either changes into a costume or does something else to change the clothing she is wearing. The player can watch her change or skip the scene.

After a certain number rounds, the character changes to a different one and most of the way into the game the game changes, with you, instead of trying to earn your quota to get the character to change how they are dressed, you try to get them to remove their current outfit, for them to be encouraged to change into one of the previous outfits that your three ‘models’ from the first three rounds were wearing, the difficulty curve of getting your way indicated by the incredibly high quotas and difficult tables in later rounds.

Other Information

This game is classed as an ecchi game because of the cut-scenes, where the characters try on a costume for you. Unlike Pachinko Sexy Reaction 2, The girl does not change on the table, changing back, inexplicably in the later rounds, into their base outfit.

What is Pachinko?

Pachinko is a huge pastime in Japan, where there are thousands of Pachinko Parlors filled with an array of noisy colourful Pachinko machines.

Pachinko is a similar kind of game to pinball, but using a vertical playing surface, and without the flippers you get on the sides of a pinball machine. The play area looks rather like that on a pinball machine, with a pattern of upright pins and a number of pockets or gates into which the balls can fall.

Pachinko Beginners Guide

How to Play Pachinko

The player buys their pachinko balls and drops them into the loading area. They then start launching the balls, propelling them into the play area.

Vintage pachinko machines use a spring loaded metal flipper or lever to launch the balls. But modern machines fire the balls electronically. The player can turn a dial that controls the frequency with which they are launched.

Once launched the balls bounce around the playing area, hitting against the pins.  Unlike in pinball, where the player can bat the ball around the play area using the flippers, in pachinko the player has no control at all over what happens to the ball once it has been launched.

Usually the ball will fall through the pins to the bottom. But sometimes it falls into one of the winning pockets. This gives the player a number of extra balls.

Most modern machines include a slot game in the centre of the board, which is triggered if a ball falls into a particular pocket. It is this game that gives the big jackpot wins, ie large numbers of extra balls.

Pachinko Parlors

Players can choose to use the balls they win to keep playing or exchange them for tokens or prizes such as pens or cigarette lighters. In Japan, cash gambling is illegal, so cash prizes cannot be awarded. To circumvent this, the tokens can usually be taken to a convenient exchange centre to cash them in – generally located very close by, maybe even in a separate room right next to the pachinko parlor.

As you can tell, there is very little skill involved in pachinko, especially in the modern machines where the only thing the player controls is the frequency with which the balls are shot onto the playing area. Apart from that it is purely a game of chance.

Pachinko Parlours

The game of Pachinko is extremely popular in Japan, where it is played in establishments called “Pachinko Parlors”.

Pachinko parlours generally have a wide assortment of different Pachinko machines and often also feature a small number of other slot machines.

Pacxhinko Parlours

Under Japanese law, cash winnings cannot be paid out. So you will virtually always find a small exchange centre located nearby (or sometimes in a separate room from the game parlor itself) where players can conveniently exchange tokens for prizes for cash.

Pachinko Cash Gambling

Such pseudo-cash gambling is theoretically illegal, but from the sheer number of pachinko parlors in Japan it is clear that the activity is at least tacitly tolerated by the authorities.

Pachinko parlors share the reputation of slot machine dens and online casinos the world over —garish decoration, over-the-top architecture, the smell of tobacco, a low hanging haze of cigarette smoke, the constant din of the machines, and blinding levels of illumination to keep players entranced for hours in their games. Pachinko parlors are by far some of the most flamboyant and colorful buildings one can see in Japan.

Since Japan ratified the World Health Organization (WHO) Framework Convention on Tobacco Control in 2004, many public anti-smoking laws have been passed. In 2006 a number of the laws began to be enforced. The pachinko parlor is one of the few places smokers can go where the regulations have not caught up with them. There are preliminary discussions in the Japanese Diet to extend public smoking controls to pachinko parlors; however, no legislation has yet been proposed.