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Hard to tell. Wish the article was more clear on that. I then spent 10 minutes on YouTube watching gameplay of modern pachinkos, trying to understand the skill

Hard to tell. Wish the article was more clear on that. I then spent 10 minutes on YouTube watching gameplay of modern pachinkos, trying to understand the skill and game play. I failed. I had one of these in the 70s. There was no skill involved back then (well, maybe a little bit). I was hoping the modern generation was skill-based… then I’d buy one as a pinball fan. Here is where she bought hers: https://a-pachinko.store https://a-pachinko.store $400 shipping to the US

nubinetwork 4y ago
My understanding was that you need to hold the dial at a certain angle to get an optimal arc into the center pocket... much like the skill shot on pinball machines with a physical plunger.
- toast0 4y ago
  I had a pachinko machine at home with an autolauncher, and yeah, if you twist it all the way, it goes over there, and you're adjusting and trying to get it to be more towards the right place. But also, it's tremendously boring, at least IMHO. A lot of pinball skill shots also let you cheat --- most of the ones where you're trying to get it into a lit lane, you can change the lane with the flippers; you still need to get it to go through the lanes and not elsewhere, but you don't need to be quite so precise. Otoh, there's a lot of them where the target is always the same --- one particular hole in a ramp, etc. But either way, there's lots to do with the flippers, and just shooting more balls I can't control very much just doesn't entertain me for very long.
  - nubinetwork 4y ago
    I think the thing that turns me off to pachinko is the lack of flippers. Sure, Medieval Madness and Attack on Mars are essentially the same game, but the music and table effects are some of what keeps me playing them... Pachinko is just loud and there isn't enough interaction to keep me interested.
    - toast0 4y ago
      Well, the castle is a little bit to the left, and the trolls are in closer and only two of them instead of four martians, but yeah fairly similar, but also different. Taxi and Road Kings are a closer pair, but older, I guess. And then you've got stuff like High Speed and High Speed 2, or Pin-Bot and Jack-Bot. Or Shrek and Family Guy, I think it is?
      - syntheweave 4y ago
        There are a lot of reused layouts and "sequels" in pinball, e.g. the three Black Knight games all share the upper playfield concept. El Dorado/Cities of Gold is another such example where there is a slight adjustment. They can still play different just because of rules and manufacturing changes. The AoM/MM layout tends to be called "fan" layout since it resembles a fan outward from the flippers. But then when prompted to define that the forum threads get very long. After all, most shots in pinball are going to be directly off the flippers and therefore will have fan elements - the games that don't respect that tend to be older EMs that emphasize the game-of-chance aspect. I think the main thing making "fan" games feel like that is just in the extensive use of ramps for controlled returns. When the ball returns freely down the playfield it has many possible trajectories, when it goes onto a wireform it rewards you with a clean return every time(barring the ramp shaking loose). So you end up making more of the same shots and you're tested to accurately hit what you know, vs your ability to recover a bad bounce. Drop target games from the 70's like El Dorado present a much different experience since not only are there open bounce trajectories, they change as the targets go down.
- glandium 4y ago
  The only time I ever went to Pachinko, it was with a cousin-in-law. The first thing he taught me was how to place a coin at the right place to hold the dial. That leaves you with almost no interaction with the machine, except when it wants you to press buttons in the middle once in a while. Combined with the noise and (at the time) smoke from cigarettes, it was a dreadful experience.

nubinetwork 4y ago

My understanding was that you need to hold the dial at a certain angle to get an optimal arc into the center pocket... much like the skill shot on pinball machines with a physical plunger.

toast0 4y ago
I had a pachinko machine at home with an autolauncher, and yeah, if you twist it all the way, it goes over there, and you're adjusting and trying to get it to be more towards the right place. But also, it's tremendously boring, at least IMHO. A lot of pinball skill shots also let you cheat --- most of the ones where you're trying to get it into a lit lane, you can change the lane with the flippers; you still need to get it to go through the lanes and not elsewhere, but you don't need to be quite so precise. Otoh, there's a lot of them where the target is always the same --- one particular hole in a ramp, etc. But either way, there's lots to do with the flippers, and just shooting more balls I can't control very much just doesn't entertain me for very long.
- nubinetwork 4y ago
  I think the thing that turns me off to pachinko is the lack of flippers. Sure, Medieval Madness and Attack on Mars are essentially the same game, but the music and table effects are some of what keeps me playing them... Pachinko is just loud and there isn't enough interaction to keep me interested.
  - toast0 4y ago
    Well, the castle is a little bit to the left, and the trolls are in closer and only two of them instead of four martians, but yeah fairly similar, but also different. Taxi and Road Kings are a closer pair, but older, I guess. And then you've got stuff like High Speed and High Speed 2, or Pin-Bot and Jack-Bot. Or Shrek and Family Guy, I think it is?
    - syntheweave 4y ago
      There are a lot of reused layouts and "sequels" in pinball, e.g. the three Black Knight games all share the upper playfield concept. El Dorado/Cities of Gold is another such example where there is a slight adjustment. They can still play different just because of rules and manufacturing changes. The AoM/MM layout tends to be called "fan" layout since it resembles a fan outward from the flippers. But then when prompted to define that the forum threads get very long. After all, most shots in pinball are going to be directly off the flippers and therefore will have fan elements - the games that don't respect that tend to be older EMs that emphasize the game-of-chance aspect. I think the main thing making "fan" games feel like that is just in the extensive use of ramps for controlled returns. When the ball returns freely down the playfield it has many possible trajectories, when it goes onto a wireform it rewards you with a clean return every time(barring the ramp shaking loose). So you end up making more of the same shots and you're tested to accurately hit what you know, vs your ability to recover a bad bounce. Drop target games from the 70's like El Dorado present a much different experience since not only are there open bounce trajectories, they change as the targets go down.
glandium 4y ago
The only time I ever went to Pachinko, it was with a cousin-in-law. The first thing he taught me was how to place a coin at the right place to hold the dial. That leaves you with almost no interaction with the machine, except when it wants you to press buttons in the middle once in a while. Combined with the noise and (at the time) smoke from cigarettes, it was a dreadful experience.