Originally posted by Voltamp:
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I'v always wanted to know what these things are. I saw one once and it looked like a cross between a fruit machine and an old style pinball thing mounted on a wall. they wern't playable so i couldn't work it out. What do you do with them???</strong><hr></blockquote>
That's a pretty accurate description. A pachinko machine is basically an upright board with hundreds of small metal pins hammered into it, enclosed in a glass and plastic case. The pins are there to either guide or deflect hundreds of small steel balls (a little smaller than a pea) into either the hole at the bottom or
a kind of gutter (like bowling). The hole is good, the gutter is bad. The front of the machine has a knob for controlling the speed, an opening for pouring more balls in, another opening for collecting the balls that come out, and a slot for sticking a prepaid cash card in.
The balls themselves shoot up from the side (like in pinball), and the ONLY thing that the player controls is the speed that these balls come out at. There are no bumpers or flippers to help knock the balls into the hole.
The more balls that fall into the hole, the more points you get, and the more points you get, the more balls you win. Yes, the prize for getting enough points is... more balls. They drop out of the opening at the bottom of the machine. Before you play you have to stick a special plastic container under the shoot in the case that you win, your balls (no jokes please) don't spill all over the floor. You end up winning way more balls than you start with, and you can either trade these balls in for prizes, or pour them right back in the machine and start playing again.
pachislot is the same kind of machine with a (usually digital) slot machine in the middle. Get enough balls in the hole and the slot machine starts spinning. Match the symbols and win more points.
Gambling for cash is illegal in Japan, but the pachinko parlours have found a way around that. After you decide to finally stop playing, you take all the balls you won to the front and trade them in for 'prizes' like dish soap, cigarette lighters, calculators, sunglasses etc. One container of balls would be worth one bottle of dish soap, two would be worth a calculator etc. After winning your 'prize' you leave by the main exit and go to a small door usually located in the same building, but around the corner. This is where you trade in your 'prize' for cash. There is a small drawer in the door, you open that, stick in your 'prize', wait a minute, and then when you open the drawer, your 'prize' is gone and you've got the money instead. This time one bottle of dish soap would be worth 5000 yen or whatever. The 'prizes' are obviously marked so that you can't just go to a convenience store and pick up a cigarette lighter and trade it in for 20,000 yen.
I know people who have won up to 100,000 yen ($1000) in one day, others who have lost 50,000 ($500). I have two friends who play it almost everyday, that's how they make money. They tell me that they always end up winning slightly more than they lose at the end of the month...
I played it once five years ago, lost 5000 yen ($50) in about 10 minutes, and decided never to play again.
I first bought a prepaid card from a vending machine inside the parlour. Took the card and stuck it in a machine. My 5000 yen card got me a few hundred small steel balls that were already inside. Certain machines have a certain ideal speed at which to shoot the balls, so my friend showed me which speed to set my machine at, I did so, then sat back and watched helplessly as the majority of my balls landed in the gutter. My friend was using the exact same kind of machine, and set his at the same speed, but he won 10,000 yen. Such is the whim of fortune...
I SPENT ANOTHER 20 TYPING THIS UP SO THERE'D BETTER BE A SLEW OF APPRECIATIVE COMMENTS!!
They don't even have any mention of the 'cube on their site - Which I find distressing.
