Pachinko (パチンコ): Functioning

Players buy metal balls which are shot into the machine, with the chance of winning more balls.

Originally, machines had a spring-loaded lever for shooting the balls individually, but modern machines use a round "throttle" that merely controls how quickly an electrically fired plunger shoots the balls onto the playfield. The balls then drop through an array of pins, and usually simply fall through to the bottom, but occasionally fall into gates that make the machine pay out more balls.

Most current machines include a slot machine component and are known as pachisuro (パチスロ), a portmanteau of "pachinko" and "slot machine". In pachisuro, big winnings are ultimately paid not from the balls falling into gates but from the slot machine matches that follow. In many modern machines the balls have nothing to do with determining winnings, which are based strictly on electronic random number generators.

The winnings are in the form of more balls, which the player may either use to keep playing or exchange for tokens or prizes such as pens or cigarette lighters. Under Japanese law, cash cannot be paid out, but there is virtually always a small exchange centre located nearby (or sometimes in a separate room from the game parlor itself) where players can conveniently exchange tokens for cash. In Japan, gambling is theoretically illegal, but from the sheer number of pachinko parlors in Japan it is clear that the activity is at least tacitly tolerated by the authorities.

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