Philips Magnavox Videogames and the Entertainment Revolution Trigger Happy - Manual (Page 270)

Trigger Happy
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stylish businesswomen on their lunch hour, lean elderly
men in tatty suits dropping cigarette ash into the
machines’ integral ashtrays. Lined up in endless rows
like workers on a factory conveyor belt, the players are
nevertheless all alone, gazing intently at the machines
in front of them. The air is electric with a thunderous
clacking: the result of thousands upon thousands of
silver balls hitting each other in a mesmerizing dance.
The name Pachinko is supposedly derived from
pachi-pachi, a Japanese term describing the clicking of
small objects or the crackling of fire. The game is set
up vertically: behind a covering pane of glass, hundreds
of small pins are set perpendicularly into a board. When
the knob is turned, a stream of tiny silvercolored steel
balls shoots out of a funnel at the lower left-hand
corner, spraying up to the top and thence downwards,
where they bounce off the pins (thus making the
clattering noise). Lower down the board are a few
special slots; if a ball bounces off the pins in the right
way and falls into one of these, it sets off a
computerized slot-machine-style set of three “wheels.”
If these wheels come to rest at a desired combination,
the player wins something. What is the prize? Uh, more
tiny silver balls. They gush out of the bottom of