I talked about Pachio-Kun some 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 of Pachio-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 two Pachio-Kun titles 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 Densetsu was 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 about Pachio-Kun, which you can read here. Or maybe read this article from 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.
After you win at a few machines in the first parlor, Pachio-Kun returns home to find his wife, Ginko (“gin” meaning silver, not like the plant) has been abducted and is being held for ransom. Before Pachio-Kun can give up hope, a magical pachinko wizard king appears and tells him to go back to the pachinko parlor… to play pachinko. I’m absolutely not making this up.
The ransom demand is plans or designs for the titular “Maboroshi,” which is commonly translated as “phantom.” The game has it written in katakana, but the kanji in the title relates to that meaning. Anyway, after draining the balls of a few more machines, the cashier at the pachinko parlor gives Pachi-kun one piece of the plans. He’s told that each pachinko parlor has one piece of the document.
Now, I want to point out that Pachio-kun had no idea that the pachinko parlor had this. His wife gets abducted and a magical ghost king breaks into his house to tell him to play more pachinko. He just says, “Oh, okay, that makes sense,” and returns to his gambling addiction. Serendipitously, he gets a hot streak that lands him a piece of the ransom payment. The magic Pachinko King tells him that there are ten pieces and Pachi-kun has to win them all. I know an enabler when I see one.
Balls
So, yeah, the rest of Pachio-Kun: Maboroshi no Densetsu is 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 original Pachio-Kun, but I finished a great deal more in Pachio-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.
Every so often, you might come across a bonus machine where you play a short mini-game to gain or lose a few extra balls. Then there are quizzes scattered throughout that cause a weird quiz guy to scream enthusiastically at you. My knowledge of the Japanese language has improved to where I could at least read the names of the machines and understand roughly what the people were telling me, but I had no hope in these quizzes. I think if I even could comprehend them, my knowledge of pachinko would leave me lost.
Speaking of Japanese, you may think that Pachio-Kun is aimed at children as a devious way to spark a gambling addiction early in life. The mascot is cute, and the story is simple to understand at a surface level. However, the text uses a lot of kanji, the most complicated Japanese writing system that has to be built up over time. Normally, games for a younger audience only use the very most common kanji or don’t use it at all. So, at best, it’s trying to suck teens into a life of gambling. However, you don’t really need to know the language to get far in Pachio-kun: Maboroshi no Densetsu. I’m proof of that.
Not gambling
Pachio-kun: Maboroshi no Densetsu came packed with a special pachinko controller for the PC-Engine. The first thing you see upon starting the game is the question of whether you want to use the pachinko controller or a normal one. I didn’t get one. They’re not expensive in the slightest. I’m just not sure I need the extra bit of immersion.
It’s weird, but I wound up actually enjoying my time with Pachio-kun: Maboroshi no Densetsu. Actually playing pachinko is still sort of boring to me, but the rewards of short vignettes and new locations kept me going. There’s a nice degree of detail and charm beyond the gambling that makes it worth the grind. Lots of games boil down to just grind, and it’s often the context that makes them worthwhile. That’s not really a recommendation.
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