Pachinko and Japanese Pop Culture
4. The pachinko industry and the digital game industry
4.1 The gaming aspect of pachinko
Recently console and arcade game developers have been supporting pachinko development more.
In recent years, there is been both a decline in video game publishers, and an increase in video game development time due to always-improving graphics techniques.
The decline of publishers has a direct impact on the sales of video games, so in order to continuously develop a steady source of income is needed. Pachinko, with its constant development being in a shorter period than games, lends itself well to this source of income and is sometimes a side job for game developers.
Furthermore, there is one aspect of gaming that is even more suitable for pachinko than anime.
With the exception of some genres, the goal of a game is to succeed or win at something. This is perfect for the gaming side of pachinko in which “winning” means “jackpot.” Anime only exists as the original set of movies, so considering that the “winning means jackpot” is much easier implemented with games rather than anime.
4.2 Console games and pachinko
Many pachinko machines use the same hardware architecture as console games.
The knowledge gained from developing console games is easily applicable to creating graphics for pachinko machines.
Here are some examples of architectures that were used:
- 3DO
- Nintendo GameCube
- Dreamcast
- Playstation 2
Pachinko Gateway 