Pachinko, as you mentioned, is exempt from Japanese gambling laws and is bigger than the Japanese auto industry. Each year, 30 million Japanese spend $200 billion, and lose around $40 billion of it. A pachinko is a Japanese gambling machine that makes a lot of light and sounds. The perfect name to talk about the human hand facing mechanical processes, which is at the core of typography. 1 day ago  How Pachinko Avoided the Gambling Ban in Japan. In 1907, gambling was banned in Japan. Since the pachinko game has a highly unpredictable outcome, the game itself can be considered a form of gambling. Based on Japanese law, it is prohibited to play games that have money as a direct reward. With this, pachinko. Similar to vertical pinball machines, these gambling games feature many small balls that fall into locations, some of which may earn prizes for players. Patagonia Entertaiment has taken the name of pachinko.

Pachinko

If you have been to Japan before, you have surely walked past noisy, smokey places with very colorful fronts and commercials. These arcade-like parlors are for playing pachinko, a game system that looks very similar to pinball.
While pachinko machines used to be non-digital making the result of the game partly up to the player’s skills, nowadays all machines are digital and therefore entirely decided by chance.

It is said to have been invented around the time that Japan was in the midst of WW2 in the Japanese city of Nagoya. While most forms of gambling are illegal in Japan, pachinko is an accepted legal form of gambling.

How it Works

Pachinko consists of the player buying a large number of steel balls and then inserting them into the machine.
In the center of the machine, there is a kind of regulator that, after the balls have been thrown in the machine, needs to be turned to make the balls come out thrown downwards. Most of the balls fall to the bottom of the machine without providing any prize but a select few of them fall into a kind of small box that gives the player a bonus by winning more balls, which is the objective of the game.

The game is over after you lose all your balls, but if you win balls with the bonuses you can either choose to continue playing or exchange them for prizes. When the player wants to change his winning balls, he presses a switch at the top of his gaming station to call a member of the staff of the premises, who takes the winning balls to an automatic counter to see how many there are. After recording the number of balls won by the player, the manager gives the player a ticket that notes that number.

Pachinko Prizes

The player then takes the ticket to the exchange center of the venue. Among the prizes available there will always be one known as a “special prize”, which is typically something silver or gold inside a small plastic box, which can be sold for cash at an establishment that is always close to the pachinko location. The special prizes are obtained depending on the number of balls won. For example, a special prize valued at 1500 yen outside the store is offered to the customer for every 400 balls won, assuming that each ball originally cost 4 yen. Sometimes you will just get a ticket with the number of balls left after having chosen smaller prices first, that you can exchange for cash.

The vast majority of players choose the special prize in exchange for their balls, choosing the other prizes only when the amount of balls is not enough for a special prize. Apart from the special prizes, there is also a wide variety of other prizes such as pencils, lighters, household appliances, toys, or cigarettes.

Is Pachinko Gambling Game

Winning aside, most people of course lose money playing pachinko, so it is recommended to enjoy the game in moderation.