Italked aboutPachio-Kunsome time ago for my Famicom Friday column because I thought the idea of an anthropomorphic pachinko mascot was amusing. Back then, I noted the staggering number of games in the series: at least 12.
I own more of the Famicom titles, but I wasn’t planning on making a thing ofPachio-Kun. It was fun to spit facts about the Japanese gambling industry, but I couldn’t possibly do that for multiple articles. But then I got the Analogue Duo.
When reviewing it, I wanted to get disc-based games to test, so I ordered a bunch from Japan. They didn’t arrive in time. In fact, they arrived mere hours after my review went live. Typical. I was looking for cheap games and came across twoPachio-Kuntitles that confused me. Why does a pachinko game have cutscenes, I wondered. Why is there a weird hammer dude on the cover? I can never find much information on the series online, so I had to find out for myself.
You’re patchinkan daioh!
Pachio-Kun: Maboroshi no Densetsuwas released in 1991 on the PC-Engine CD-ROM². It starts out much like the Famicom games, where you take your spherical self out to a pachinko parlor to try and win big.
I’m not going to go into the background of Japan’s gambling pastime in this article. I did that (poorly) the last time I talked aboutPachio-Kun,which you can read here. Or mayberead this articlefrom Business Insider, which is possibly more insightful. All you need to know is that its popularity exploded as a way to get around Japan’s strict anti-gambling laws. It’s kind of a cross between a slot machine and pinball. You pick the force the balls get launched and try to direct them into various scoring holes to win more balls. The goal is to drain all the balls out of a machine.
Balls
So, yeah, the rest ofPachio-Kun: Maboroshi no Densetsuis traveling from parlor to parlor, playing pachinko. Each one has a set number of copyright-infringing machines you need to suck the balls out of before you’ll be given another piece of the plans. The number for each location feels arbitrary to me. Each parlor stocks a variety of different machines that get repeated throughout the game, and there’s no rule saying each of your wins need to be on different setups.
Not every machine is the same, even when they’re the same theme. I found I had an easy time clearing a table called Telephone, but not every Telephone machine is friendly. The pins are bent in different directions, and that affects where the balls go. You can inspect the pins up close on each table, and initially, I had intended to learn the ins and outs of reading them. Not far into the game, however, I found it easier to just pump in about 50 balls to test if they’d go where I needed them. If not, I’d move onto the next one.
Some machines I found to be generally more willing to payout. As I mentioned, Telephone was one of them, but essentially, any machine where you can trigger little jackpot timeframes has a tendency to give the goods. Like the one where you need to get your balls between a monkey’s legs. Inversely, I hated the ones where getting balls in a certain hole would trigger a slot machine. I’m not sure if the odds are different in each of these machines, but I don’t think I landed a jackpot once.
Thunderhards are go!
Even once you’ve got a feel for how to win at pachinko, actually completing a machine requires a lot of time. And during this time, you’re going to spend a lot of it making fine adjustments to the lever and then… watching the balls fly. I’m not a gambler myself, but I didn’t find this very stimulating.
However, it’s surprising how much context can lend to a game. I mentioned that I completed maybe three machines in the originalPachio-Kun, but I finished a great deal more inPachio-kun: Maboroshi no Densetsu. I kept wanting to see more of the absolutely bonkers story and see what new location would unlock next. And really, there is a lot of variety when it comes to parlors, even though they just have a different mix of the same machines.
