Pachinko: A Case Study in Hybrid Physical and Virtual Interface
Pachinko: A Case Study in Hybrid Physical and Virtual Interface
Geoffrey Rockwell and Keiji Amano
Abstract
No discussion of play and leisure in Japan would be complete without acknowledging the place of pachinko, a game so popular that it dominates the leisure economy in a way no other medium does, not even videogames. Even in decline, pachinko generates more revenue in Japan than any other leisure pursuit and yet it is rarely discussed in game studies in the West or even in the Japanese literature around game culture. This is largely because of the gambling associated with pachinko and because it is unique to Japan – a national industry with no export potential. Pachinko is at the disreputable edge of gaming—economically, culturally, and mechanically. Above all, pachinko machines stand out as monstrous hybrids that combine the electro-mechanical apparatus of a pinball machine with the digital screen of a slot machine in a curious mixed interface that seems to be an anachronism of a pre-computing era. And that is what this paper is about – the hybrid interface of pachinko.
Paradaisu Yokohama was crowded at eight o'clock in the evening. The volcanic rush of tinny balls, the clanging of tiny hammers across miniature metal bowls, the beeping and flashing of colorful lights, and the throaty shouts of welcome from the obsequious staff felt like a reprieve from the painful silence in his head. Haruki didn't even mind the thick swirls of tobacco smoke that hung like a layer of gray mist above the heads of the players seated opposite the rows upon rows of vertical, animated machines. (Lee 2017)
No discussion of play and leisure in Japan would be complete without acknowledging the place of pachinko, a game so popular that it dominates the leisure economy in a way no
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other medium does, not even videogames. Even in decline, pachinko generates more revenue in Japan than any other leisure pursuit and yet it is rarely discussed in game studies in the West or even in the Japanese literature around game culture. This is largely because of the gambling associated with pachinko and because it is unique to Japan – a national industry with no export potential. Pachinko is at the disreputable edge of gaming, both economically, culturally, and mechanically. Above all, pachinko machines stand out as monstrous hybrids that combine the electro-mechanical apparatus of a pinball machine with the digital screen of a slot machine in a curious mixed interface that seems to be an anachronism of a pre-computing era. And that is what this paper is about – the hybrid interface of pachinko.
Why Interface in the Digital Humanities?
Although the screen in reality is only a window of limited dimensions positioned inside the physical space of the viewer, the viewer is expected to concentrate completely on what she sees in this window, focusing her attention on the representation and disregarding the physical space outside. (Manovich 2001, 96)
We tend to think of the human-computer interface as having to do strictly with that which takes place on the screen, no doubt because that is what most people talk about when discussing interface. It is the screen that Lev Manovich (2001) focuses on in the chapter on “Interface” of his book The Language of New Media, providing a fascinating genealogy of the screen and reminding us of how it evolved from cinema and radar. It is not surprising that discussions of interface would focus on the screen. The screen can be programmed and manipulated so much easier than physical components giving designers room to play. If, however, the interface is that “face” which mediates between the human and the computer then it must also include all that we see and touch including that which is outside the screen. If the interface includes the means of interaction then we need to include the affordances we use to communicate with the computer from the keyboard, mouse, to audio. For that matter, we should also consider the aesthetics and ergonomics of the machine cabinet as it presents itself. A user clearly interacts differently with a laptop, using the keyboard and trackpad for entry, then with a smartphone which uses multi-point touch or an arcade game in a stand-up cabinet. As Manovich points out, cinematic representation has always forced
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us to sit still and in the right place so that we can see the world focused on the screen. Now with Virtual Reality gear and physical computing we can imagine different relationships between the body as interface. The pachinko parlor and the game centers in Japan where one finds imaginative new interfaces to coin-pushers, photo-booths and UFO-catchers may not be a dead end, but a hint at what could be. The screen dominates not only interface design. Given the privilege accorded the screen we tend to think of interface design as a subset of software development. The hardware doesn’t change that quickly and is outside the control of most designers leaving only the software as a site for creative design. We thus find interface subsumed under software in that most basic of binaries in computing, hardware and software. But it needn’t be so and the availability of affordable physical computing platforms like the Raspberry Pi (raspberrypi.org) and Arduino (arduino.cc) challenge the habits that limit design to the screen. Pachinko, as this essay outlines, is one of the exceptions as each machine is a unique combination of hardware and software designed as an entertainment whole. This is, from the perspective of the digital humanities, one reason to pay attention to pachinko. Through it we can understand the opportunities for design when the hardware, software, and combination of the two are open to design. Pachinko challenges the dominance of the screen in computing studies.
Task-oriented and efficiency driven, they focused on feedback loops that minimized frustration and maximized satisfaction with mouse clicks and joy sticks and rewarding bells and whistles. (Drucker 2011, 1)
A related reason to study the interface of pachinko is that pachinko design is not utilitarian but for entertainment. In the humanities, unlike informatics, we are not only interested only in interface for reasons of productivity but also in the aesthetics and design of games, hypermedia fictions, and other works that have no productive function. Pachinko is one of the few industries where there has been sustained creative development of hybrid physical/software interfaces which makes it a great case study. In understanding how to study the evolution of pachinko interfaces we can see how to be open to a different conception of interface and computing. As 3-D printers, smart fabric, cheap wearable computing platforms like the LilyPad Arduino (www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ ArduinoBoardLilyPad), and affordable sensors become widely taught we need to think differently about productivity and computing and pachinko can help us do that.
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Finally, for the Western reader, and we hope the Japanese one, this essay will use pachinko to make digital interface design strange again, much as fiction can defamiliarize the mundane (Shklovsky 1990). It isn’t hard for the Western reader to be surprised by pachinko given that we rarely see it unless at an antique fair or if we travel to Japan.1 Which is why, many Westerners like Roland Barthes (1982) write about pachinko as something other in Japan. This raises the danger of orientalizing pachinko – belittling it as a technological dead end compared to the usual brilliant futures imagined in/with Western media (Lozano-Méndez 2010). We hope that readers will see that this essay does quite the opposite; it is an attempt to take seriously and learn from a Japanese form of hybrid creativity. As for Japanese readers who may have dismissed pachinko due to its gambling associations, we hope this essay will interest them in the creative disruption pachinko represents. Our approach to the interface is first to pay attention to the monstrous in the interface, by which we mean hybrid combinations of disparate orders like the mechanical and digital. We approach the overwhelming bling of pachinko, in the spirit of the humanities, historically. Manovich and Drucker both point out how screen interfaces draw on and remediate earlier forms like the page or cinema. To understand an interface you need to understand where it came from. For that reason we look at the evolution of features that over time have been added to pachinko making the contemporary experience. We also pay attention to the location and audience of pachinko. Who is playing it and where.
Brief History of Pachinko and Who Plays It? There is some controversy about the origins of the pachinko, but it is said to have evolved from a game called “Corinthian bagatelle.” The word is supposed to have come from the sound of the balls dropping though pins – a “pachi-pachi” sound. Modern Japanese pachinko history begins in Takarazuka (Hyogo Pref.) in 1926-1927 where the leisure facility “Paradise” introduced pinball to Japan. Manufacturers then started to make special wall machines and placed them in rooftop amusement parks of department stores and in fair stalls. (Yamada 2003) Some of the customers of early pachinko-like machines were children who would play for candy. But soon the prize exchange system was introduced,
1 We (Geoffrey Rockwell and Keiji Amano) found a pachinko machine in an antique mall in Canada. In North America they are collected as a form of Japanese pinball. See “Antique Fair”
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and then pachinko became a “game of chance” for adults where you could win substantial prizes that could be redeemed for money in some cases. You can see such a site for pachinko in Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952). The main character is taken by his “Mephistopheles” to an entertainment district where he plays pachinko standing in a crowd and they meditate on how life is like the silver balls, bouncing down through pins.
Games are dramatic models of our psychological lives providing release of particular tensions. They are collective and popular art forms with strict conventions. (McLuhan 1964, Loc. 3368)
Pachinko was banned during World War II, but restarted in 1948 with the first parlors in Nagoya. It grew in popularity through the 1950s. Yasujiro Ozu’s The Flavor of Green Tea over Rice (1952) shows middle class Japanese talking about how pachinko is fun and playing it either for fun or to forget their unhappy home life. You see pachinko played standing up in open areas just off the street. Kirio Urayama’s Foundry Town from 1962, by contrast, shows pachinko parlors in a depressed industrial town outside of Tokyo. The parlors are frequented by the working class and it is a time of labor strife. Pachinko is shown as a popular site of mechanical play that mirrors the hard mechanical work of the foundry town. (It should be noted that in Japan pachinko has always been considered a recession-proof business.) We can speculate along the lines of Manovich (2001, 65) that the mechanical interface of pachinko, with steel balls falling through cunning contraptions, in some ways mimicked an idealized interface of mechanical work at this time when Japan was rebuilding its industry. Manovich sees our game interfaces converging on our productivity interfaces. Likewise McLuhan sees games as a “release” of the tensions of work and it has been noted that pachinko probably provided a needed and affordable form of leisure catharsis at a time of hard work and long hours. We can speculate that the physical component of pins, spinners and balls, still found in pachinko machines, echoes an important moment in the industrial past of Japan, a country that still sees itself as an industrial leader while other countries are becoming information economies. As for who plays, according to the Japan Productivity Center White Paper on Leisure 2016, there were around 11 million people playing pachinko (in 2015) spending USD $ 200 billion. This has dropped since the 1990s when spending was closer to USD $ 300 billion – more than the auto industry at the time (Hatano 1996). Most pachinko players are adults since the Law on Control and Improvement of Amusement Businesses
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(1948, amended in 1959) prohibited children under 18 from playing pachinko in pachinko parlors. In the game centers (arcades) and some other places you can find pachinko machines, but most of the pachinko machines are installed in dedicated pachinko parlors that often occupy prime real-estate at the intersections of major streets. Pachinko is essentially local (neighborhood) play for adults, which is one of its problems as youth don’t seem to be interested and so the player population is declining. These parlors increasingly cater to addicts who play alone for hours rather than the shorter-term leisure playing we see in the movies of the 1950s and 1960s like Ikiru (1952). There are now amenities in the parlors for those who spend their time there like lounges and snack machines if you miss dinner. The parlors appeal to the serious players with games with more complex odds that are more challenging to understand but which can return larger jackpots when the odds are aligned. The parlors have also kept up with the design of the times and are now clean, bright, and modern. If during the 1950s and 1960s they provided a mirror to an industrializing society, now they provide a mirror to an electronic society. If during the 1950s and 1960s parlors were more social and lively places, now they keep the players separated in long rows watching their private screens. As Wim Wenders shows us in his tribute to Ozu titled Tokyo-Ga (1985) everyone is alone in the narrow corridors despite sitting so close to the next player. The corridors aren’t designed for spectators, at most you can look over at the machine of the player on either side, but that is discouraged. The pachinko parlor has become a place to be alone with your game.
How is Pachinko Played? Pachinko is related to pinball in that the player fires steel balls that arch over a playfield to then drop through pins and other obstacles. In pachinko the playfield is vertical, not flat and the goal is not to keep a ball in play as it is in pinball, but to get balls to drop into special “win pockets” that win you more balls or start a video-slot game which can win even more balls. When playing you try to fire balls so that they fall through the pattern of pins, gates, spinners and chutes with the greatest likelihood of dropping into the win pockets. You do this by controlling the force with which the balls are launched so there can be said to be a small amount of skill involved. Skilled “pachi-pros” can read the pins to better guess what is the optimal path for the balls.
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The currency of pachinko is the steel balls which you borrow. If you are really good (or lucky) then you win more balls than you fired, redeeming the balls for prizes that can further be sold for cash outside the parlor. Winning prizes, however, is only part of what makes pachinko so popular in Japan. The game’s success has as much to do with its place in everyday culture and its mesmerizing visual play that lets tired salarymen or busy mothers kill time after work, much as slot machines or videoslots provide relief in other jurisdictions. Pachinko is not a destination form of gambling like the casinos in Las Vegas; it is a neighborhood form of leisure available for daily relief from the stresses of work and family, which is why the revenue is so high.
Fig. 1: Hyper Sea Story in Carib
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For an example of a contemporary pachinko machine, in Figure 1 you can see Hyper Sea Story in Carib by Sanyo. 2 In the lower right-hand corner is the throttle (above the ash tray) that the player turns to fire balls up and over the screen in the middle. They fall through the pins on the left and if they enter the win pockets beneath the screen they trigger events on the screen which can win you more balls. We can theorize the pachinko interface as a private theatre of layers that are designed to frame and hold the players attention for long periods of time. Much like slots, when you play (and even when you don’t) there is a constant motion on the screen and of lights around the sculptured frame. Outside the game you have the things like the ashtray on the counter and the trays where you can keep your winning balls. To the left of the machine is the vertical bar where you pay to borrow balls to start playing and above is the panel that shows statistics about the machine. From an interface perspective what is interesting is the way the physical, electro- mechanical and digital layers of the interface are combined. Starting from the center we can see the following layers:
• The screen which is at eye-level and constantly in motion, even when no one is playing. This screen is where you are fed content if you are playing a game that draws on a popular franchise like Evangelion (see Figure 3.) The more you play, the more franchise content you get. • An electro-mechanical layer with lights and in some cases moving gadgets that can actually cross the screen during “fever” phases when the chances of winning are increased. The drama of these visual interruptions breaks the separation of the digital and physical. • A layer with the mechanical pins, spinners and win pockets through which the balls pass trickling around the screen continuously. • The sculptured frame which is rich in lights and figures, some of which occasionally move. These frame the visual space making clear what is the world of play within and what is the world outside. They orient the gaze and body of the viewer to the play world in which they can lose themselves. In some of the more elaborate machines the sculptured figures on the outer frame will remind players of the rich
2 For a brief history of the Sea Story franchise of pachinko machines see
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tradition of sculpted character figurines for sale and ball-and-joint dolls that can be dressed up as a favorite anime figure. The pachinko machine thus enfolds within it other popular arts for the fan of a transmedia franchise. An Evangelion fan will find combined in the pachinko game other forms of the franchise from figurines to anime.
Fig. 2: Side View of Pachinko Playing Field
In Figure 2 you can see from an angle this palimpsest of layers that are designed to capture and hold the gaze of the player who sits right before the machine. The machine is designed so that players can get lost in the motion, lights and screen activity to the point where they are alone with the theatre of their game despite sitting in narrow rows quite close to others. Here are some more machines that show the variety of pachinko design.
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Figure 3: Sea Story and Evangelion themed machines
While readily evident in things like screens and surfaces, the interface is ultimately something beyond the screen. It has only a superficial relationship to the surfaces of digital devices, those skins that beg to be touched. Rather, the interface is a general technique of mediation evident at all levels; indeed it facilitates the way of thinking that tends to pitch things in terms of “levels” or “layers” in the first place. (Galloway 2012, Loc. 1143)
We believe the layered structure of pachinko machines also makes them easier to develop as design teams can take responsibility for each layer independently. The modular layers can then be assembled quickly in what is a competitive industry with a rapid turnover of machines. While at first each pachinko machine appears to be a unique combination of arts, they appear to have a grammar of construction that allows designers to manage the articulation of different types of interface. As Galloway points out, the interface pitches things as layers.
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Evolution of the Electro-Mechanical Interface Where did this monstrous combination of media come from? The physical combination of components from spinners to tulips to screens evolved from the first pachinko pin arrangements after the war.
Figure 4: Masamura Gauge All 15 (1950)
In 1948, Takeichi Masamura invented the “Masamura Gauge” which revolutionized pachinko by introducing a complicated layout of pins that cause the balls to bounce around
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in various directions. This layout is remembered as the precursor to modern day Pachinko machines. The angle of the pins on each machine was maintained by specialists called nail doctors so each machine has different play characteristics. (See Tokyo-Ga if you want to see the nail doctor at work.) As a player, you chose a good machine by examining the arrangement of the nails among rows of similar looking machines. Naturally, in order to choose a good one, you need to know how to read the pins.
Tulips in Yakumonos
Figure 5: Various Older Yakumono Designs
In the history of pachinko, one of the most important innovations was the introduction of the “yakumono”. A yakumono is a device (accessory) that influences the movement of a pachinko ball like a spinner. Today, it means any accessory on the pachinko board from lights, LCDs to moving gadgets. In 1957, Nishijin produced the first yakumono
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pachinko “Jin-Mitt”. After Jin-Mitt, the design of pachinko games changed dramatically as yakumonos discharged balls more than ordinary win pockets. A third important evolution was the invention of “tulip” in 1960. When a ball falls into a tulip, the wings or petals open so that it is easier for the winning pocket to catch more balls and therefore to discharge even the balls more than usual. This can create a temporary mode when you stand a higher chance of winning. Tulips played an important role in popularizing pachinko as a national pastime due to the excitement they introduced. Pachinko was no longer a steady rhythm of launching balls and sometimes winning some back. There was the possibility of jackpots!
Electrical Yakumono period (1973-1978)
Pachinko further prefigures another deep pleasure of videogames in its method of control. The player holds a single, very sensitive knob; as it is turned clockwise the tiny silver balls are shot out from the funnel at increasing speed. The challenge for the player is to manipulate the control in order to find the optimal ball speed—the rate at which the greatest number of balls falls into the target slots. Unlike a slot machine, then, where you merely pull an arm or hit a button and then wait, Pachinko marries its teasing randomness with a continuous control over one important variable of the system. So do videogames." (Poole 2007, 275- 6)
In the 1970s, electric innovations were introduced including electric throttles (1973) that allowed players to fire streams of balls and electric yakumono (1977). Before the electric throttles, players launched balls individually with a sprung handle which took more skill, but also limited the number of balls (money) you could fire per minute. The introduction of electrical technology allowed designers to introduce novelty features to distinguish their games. For example, Sankyo FEVER (1980) introduced spinning reels like those of a slot machine as a central yakumono. Thus the pachinko machine absorbed slot machine features. “Fever” became the word to categorize this new type of pachinko where the goal was to launch the slot machine and get three numbers of symbols in a row for a jackpot payout. Older pachinko players say that pachinko used to be more of a game of skill. Before the electric throttle the “technical intervention of the player,” such as the timing and force
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used when launching balls with the mechanical handle, was the game. In other words, the interaction with the environment through physical affordances mattered more. The development of the electromechanical ball launcher which automatically launches balls reduced this aspect of play. The importance of the layout of the pins may not have changed, but with the electric throttle pachinko became less of a game of skill.
Electronic Yakumono period (1978-present)
Pachinko assaults the player’s senses with the balls’ clacking, constant electronic music and a dazing miscellany of colored, blinking lights and computerized animations. You play Pachinko for twenty minutes and you come away empty-handed—yet you know you’ve had some weird kind of fun. (Poole 2007, 276)
Pachinko machines are now mostly electronic with embedded digital screens on which slot- type mini-games are triggered. The history of electronic pachinko started in the 1980’s as personal computers became popular. Throughout the 1980’s to the 2000’s, pachinko manufacturers introduced up-to-date media technologies like LCD screens, LED lights and full audio to attract players, all controlled by computers. In 1991, Heiwa released the first full color digital LCD installed in a pachinko machine with “Mahjong Story”. The evolution of the machine operating system and introduction of LCD panels allowed designers to design software effects in addition to the physical effects to capture the player’s attention. In this period, the design of pachinko interfaces changed dramatically as players changed how they played and vice-versa. As skill mattered less and less, players no longer payed much attention to the layout of the pins, instead they tried to analyze the mini-games on the LCD screen and statistics provided. Designers responded by making more and more dramatic audiovisual effects associated with the mini-games. Now, in order to attract players, pachinko designers combine physical and digital technology effects. For example, in a recent machine called Garo: Go for the Gold! (Sansei R&D), players face vivid digital effects together with a wolf mask that can lower over the screen and sword handle that you can grasp for jackpots.3 We rarely see this combination of dramatic software and physical
3 See
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effects in videogames though the newer consoles have vibrating controllers and RFID readers so you can bring toys to life.4 Further, the game, like many these days remediates a popular Tokusatu (special effects) drama series, Garo (Fanged Wolf - https://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Garo_(TV_series).) But generally, if you want to win the game, the most reasonable strategy is to analyze the data. Pachi-pros (serious players) will probably pay attention to the statistics above the pachinko machine on the “data screen”. The data screen provides information about the particular machine. With statistics you can guess the expected discharge of balls from that machine. Thus the focus of the game has changed from the angle of pins and launching of balls to mini-games and statistics with the effect that, as the importance of data increases, casual players are leaving. Pachinko seems to be recapitulate in its body the path of Japanese industrialization from mechanics, to electronics, and now to data interfaces. Today many of the audiovisual effects of pachinko machines come from licensed content from other media like anime, videogames and soap operas. Pachinko manufacturers are developing content assets for use across media (from videogames to pachinko machines) in the hopes of drawing in fans of the franchises. Hiroki Azuma (2009) has theorized that Japanese otaku (committed fans) are postmodern “database animals”. They aren’t interested in grand narratives and instead consume random bits of content from the “database” of their favorite franchises. A Garo fan will be interested in the bits of narrative randomly found across different media from figurines to pachinko. The intense fan is less a consumer of a particular medium like videogames and more a consumer of effects across interfaces. As Galloway (2012, Loc. 55) writes “Interfaces are not things, but rather processes that effect a result of whatever kind. … Interfaces themselves are effects.”
Conclusion: The Social Interface We conclude by talking about where pachinko is going. Pachinko is a platform that stretches our imagination as to how interfaces can be built out of both physical and virtual components. Like any platform it remediates other media and franchises from videogames
4 Some of the newer videogame titles for kids like Skylanders include a “toy-to-life” feature where you can buy figure figurines and then “load” them into the virtual world to play them. See
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to dolls. Given the revenue we expect it to continue to be a site for investment and innovation as pachinko parlors try to attract the next generation of players. The playfield of nails may get slowly crowded to the periphery, but it will continue to be part of the game if only for legal reasons as there is a legal regimen in place that would be difficult to recreate for other types of gambling. What could change? There is still no networked play for machines comparable to what is available for videogame consoles or certain arcade games in Japan. We predict that this will be the next evolution in audiovisual effects. Pachinko machines could be networked so digital content for the central screens can be updated automatically and continuously to bring fans back for exclusive content. You might even be able to play against others, the way you can with consoles and certain arcade games. We expect it will keep the creative integration of physical effects, if only because that is what differentiates a special purpose parlor game from the general purpose PC and home console machines. In the meantime, affordable physical computing, smart peripherals and IoT (Internet-of-Things) suggests that we may see more and more hybrid physical/digital things. The tyranny of the keyboard, mouse and screen as interface is being challenged by smart speakers like the Amazon Echo and toys-to-life franchises. By comparison pachinko machines look like monsters of baroque design from another time, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be a site of design innovation. What would the interfaces of our digital humanities tools look like if designed like a pachinko machine? Why do we have to be so serious in our designs?
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