Pachinko
Pachinko is considered to be a major feature of Japanese culture. They have massive halls dedicated to this cousin of modern-day pinball, where walls upon walls of these machines sit. Playing this weird game is about as close to gambling you can get without outright gambling. The point of it not being classified as gambling is because gambling is illegal in Japan. The reasons that it cannot be classified as gambling consist of the need to purchase balls to play, getting balls back as reward, and then only being able to exchange balls for prizes. The one caveat and what makes this so like gambling, is that while you can only get prizes at the hall, usually down the street places will purchase the prizes you win for cash. Meaning that you can in a roundabout way put cash in, play pachinko, and then win more cash when you leave.
These big halls of pachinko are called pachinko parlors. These places are loud, crazy, and smoky and are almost always packed. Inside they are bright and colorful and have a wide variety of machines, including many different games. Some even have a few slot machines, which play a form of pachinko called slot pachinko. But the classic game is still the biggest portion of these stores. These machines have many different designs but as arcade machines became more complicated so did these machines. Now a lot of machines have animated screens displaying some information or a separate game, and some are even fully animated.
Picture from: https://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-pachinko-gambling-japan-2018-7
Pachinko much like pinball has themed machines. These themes vary wildly from different shows, to cute characters, and in the past even representing different games (Such as a popular video game). The biggest difference from a normal casino game and a similarity to pinball is that each game can take a while, it’s not just put a ball in get a random amount back, each game is different and can take a while. For example, 10,000 yen or around 93 USD, takes around 40 minutes to go through.
This was particularly interesting to me because games in other cultures always stood out to me. A game I had never heard of is one of the biggest games in a culture across the world and to me that is fascinating. Another reason why I picked this was because of how interesting and convoluted the gambling system is. While gambling is illegal in the US normally many places get around this with a much simpler solution.
Bagatelle
Something else that stood out for me was the game Bagatelle. Bagatelle was the precursor to Pinball in that it had pins and a ball, but other than that it was very different from the game we know today. Bagatelle is classified as a gambling game as it was only really designed to have the player launch the ball then land in a pocket at some point. The pockets could be drilled into the board or could be created by pins raised up to catch the ball.
Bagatelle was originally created for the rich with the origins being attributed to starting in the French aristocracy, which was then brought to the French military, and then brought to America. This game was based on a yard game where pins would get knocked down by balls being rolled. The yard game was put onto a table with pins that could be knocked down but setting them up was too time consuming, so as a solution they were fixed to the board. This meant the target of knocking them over had to be changed to something else. This something else became landing them in specific goals like holes or specific areas on the board.
These old versions were played with a larger handheld cue, which would over time change into a spring assisted launcher. The first patented spring assisted launcher game was made by Montague Redgrave in 1871. This launcher and this basic idea are what would end up evolving into the very basic pinball system that we have today.
Picture from: https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/2012/10/the-bagatelle-wizard-instead-of-the-pinball-wizard.html
The reason I chose this is because while the game is so simple, just the way it led into the machines today is cool. Bagatelle was one of the first bar games which would end up leading to all types of games. While the yard games were the first step towards pinball, we would not have anything close to what we have today without the steppingstone bagatelle was.
Mechanical to Electric: Evolution of Pinball
The final thing that stood out for me was the evolution of pinball machines. This was talked about at the Strong museum when looking at the various machines. While most machines use similar parts in a time period, the way of building machines has changed wildly. Originally machines were formed almost fully mechanically with only very basic circuitry. Now they are games that are electromechanical with lots of circuitry and only some mechanical parts. There are even games that are fully digital.
From Bingo, to Baffle Ball, and beyond the pinball machine has always been evolving and changing. The pinball machine that exists today is made of many different additions from old machines. Some of these changes consist of the tilt mechanism, bumpers, flippers, and layout.
Something that was very interesting to me about the addition of flippers is how they found their location. The first game to really feature the flippers is Humpty Dumpty. There were 6 flippers facing towards the inside of the machine and were positioned along the outside edges. Overtime designers tested out different locations, orientations, and spacing until it became what we have today.
The tilt mechanism was interesting for me to learn about as I always thought the only control the player had was using the flippers, but I found out recently that tilting the machine is an intended part of gameplay. While tilting can cause you to lose your ball if you tilt the machine too much, it can also save your ball if it looks like it is going to go down the wrong way.
Another big evolution was the progression into a more digital version. Games like Revenge from Mars took one take of combining video games and pinball into one experience, and while that worked partially on a whole, other games tended to fail harshly. Other games took on a different route, with the games becoming fully digital allowing for much more complicated behaviors and processes that would just not be possible in real life.
The evolution of pinball is just interesting to me because it went from being so simple to so complicated. From a yard game to bagatelle to games like swing time to digital pinball.
Sources:
https://www.japanvisitor.com/japanese-culture/culture-pachinko
https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2065.html
https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/2012/10/the-bagatelle-wizard-instead-of-the-pinball-wizard.html