#127: Pachinko Wars

 

Title: Pachinko Wars

Release Date: 7/17/1992

Developer: OeRSTED

Publisher: Coconuts Japan

It is finally time for the ever popular gambling, pachinko, game to grace the Super Famicom with a game. This one is certainly an interesting one.

Background

The history of pachinko in Japan is a fascinating one, first becoming popular in post-war Japan in the 1950's. Pachinko is very similar to slot machines in that it is based around continual low-cost and low-strategy engagement. Small little plastic balls are shot to the top of the machine, where they tumble through a maze of pegs to hopefully reach prize bins at the bottom, though most will instead fall to the gutter. Prize bins will either reward you with more play tokens or prize tokens. 

Japan has strict anti-gambling laws, and pachinko parlors were able to circumvent this by not offering money as a prize, but instead actual "gifts." In post-war Japan, this started as foodstuffs: coffee, rice, etc, which, if not eaten could also be sold on the usually neighboring black market. Nowadays, winners will instead take their prize to a local pawn store, usually neighboring or abutting the pachinko parlor, which will buy the prizes in exchange for cash. This legal loophole has since been closed, at least partially, as it is not always enforced. 

Pachinko parlors have often been tied to entrenched black market and criminal organizations within Japan, and since it really is gambling it has often been seen as a seedy activity. Still, it is wildly popular and many video game developers, even still, develop new machines for Japanese arcades. 

This game supposes what if secret agents and spies used pachinko parlors as bases for their espionage (this is weirdly not without precedent, as the CIA was known for using the yakuza and their establishments for their own purposes throughout the 60s and 70s- recommend Robert Whiting's Tokyo Underground for further reading). You play as 008 (clever) a salaryman who moonlights as a spy/pachinko master. You are tasked by your boss to infiltrate the enemy organizations and root them out of their pachinko parlors. What a premise!

This game was developed by OeRSTED, a short lived developer who made other gambling games (including a sequel to this) as well as the Playstation and PSP ports of Mega Man 4, 5, and 6. The publisher, Coconuts, likewise made other gambling and Pachinko games, such as the Pachio-Kun series, which also marries a narrative with pachinko. 

Gameplay

This game marries straight up hot pachinko action with a very by the numbers puzzle-adventure game. Each "operation" of which you will play four, features you gambling between two pachinko parlors. The first parlor is your low-stakes parlor where you will bank up cash in order to buy the membership card for the high-stakes parlor, which is where you will have to find the mcguffin in order to clear the operation. 

I played through the games first two operations, and then read a walkthrough and watched the rest of the game on Youtube, as they are very samey. I'll walk you through a very general experience of the game. 

In the first mission, you need to win up to 2000 yen for a membership card to the second pachinko parlor, so you buy 150 balls for 900 yen and get to playing. You then have to examine each machine to see which one has a chance of paying out. You generally look at the prize boxes and see how the pegs are arranged. If the channel is really narrow or you have pegs literally blocking the payout, then choose a different machine. Your goal, generally, is to clean the machine out of balls, with each machine giving you a counter at the top of the UI. 

Once you have enough money for the membership card, you then travel to the second parlor, where all the customers will complain of a ticking sound. It turns out, uh-oh, the rival spy group is trying to assassinate you, and the only way to save the day is to play the machine the bomb is attached to in order to defuse the bomb. The machine, though, has a guy playing it who refuses to get off the machine, and you have to bribe him with his favorite drink, which costs 1,500 yen, so you must play more to buy the prize from the counter. Bank the money, buy the drink, give to the guy, and then play the machine until it is empty to save the day. 

On another mission, you do the same thing, except the membership card is much more expensive. When you get to the second pachinko parlor, you will be informed that there is an enemy spy who is pretending to be one of the women present, and you have to smoke him out. You have to buy the dirty magazine, which costs 5,000 yen, which, when given to the correct woman, will make the spy all hot and bothered, but then you have to threaten him with the right weapon in order to get him to leave the parlor. There are three choices: the water pistol, which costs 2,000 yen, the slingshot which costs 5,000 yen, and the actual gun which costs a whopping 15,000 yen. The only thing that will intimidate the man is a slingshot (the actual gun didn't come with bullets whomp whomp), so hopefully you didn't grind up that 15,000 yen!

If you couldn't tell, the main issue with this game is how grindy it is. You mainly spend your time playing pachinko, and if that doesn't interest you then you aren't going to get much enjoyment out of this game. My issue with pachinko is that it really is just kind of random, and there isn't that much skill involved in the game. The machines also aren't that novel or flashy, and the graphics are very dated for sprite art. I do commend the game for trying to make something interesting about this, but the constant money roadblocks are just frustrating. 

 It also should be said that unless you are a native Japanese speaker, than this game will require a walkthrough to understand the plot. I followed a very good Gamefaqs walkthrough written by RetroSafari. 

Music

Not bad overall, just not that much of it. 

Final Verdict

Again, I appreciate the efforts that the developer took to make this game interesting and work for an a video game player, and I am sure there are those pachinko loving mad-people out there who would dig this game, but I would say that it is a curiosity more than a must-have for those other than the most ardent collectors. This will certainly not be the last pachinko game that we play for this blog.