The Video Game Critic

PACHINKO / Odyssey2 / F

Ok Zen, here's the one you've been waiting for. After reading the VGC's relatively "ok" review of this monstrosity, the truth needs to be told.

First, a bit of introduction for those who do not know that PACHINKO is quite possibly the hottest gambling game in Japan. There are many,many PACHINKO game parlours there. REAL Pachinko is a gambling game that is basically an upright Pinball board with no flippers to control the ball. You buy balls, insert them and just SHOOT them, trying to get them into high score cups or holes that will award you a TICKET..get enough tickets and you could win a plastic figurine, stuffed animal or even money!

Obviously Odyssey had to change this game to make it playable on a videogame system. It was not a bad IDEA but the end results are awful.

The board still has scoring cups and a little man in the middle of the screen tosses the ball into play. Two players on screen bottom are mowing a lawn....oops, flipping ENERGIZER BARS trying to get the ball into cups...the computer plays the second man in one player games. If the ball hits the middle man, he tosses it again and if it hits the "magic mountain" in mid screen, the scores in the cups change.

While it sounds fun, it was totally botched for two reasons. First..YOU NEVER LOSE THE BALL. The game never ends! That alone would make it pointless, but even worse YOU NEVER ACTUALLY AFFECT THE BALL. To prove this I set the game for player versus computer and set my controller down. I did not touch it. After ten minutes the score was something like 75 to 23. I WAS WINNING! Without doing a THING! In fact you can see that the ball ignores your "flipper" and bounces through it!

Thus, PACHINKO is nothing more than a video light show! Since it is all random, there is ABSOLUTELY NO POINT TO PLAY THE GAME. If you have the multicart I suggest you watch the computer play itself....it's just as interesting!

Maybe if Odyssey gave away stuffed KC MUNCHKIN dolls for high scores PACHINKO would have reason to exist. As it is, I weep for those who paid $22.89 in 1980, expecting that this "GAME" would actually be "FUN".

Happy,zen?

http://www.ozyr.com/o2/o2pachin.html

A few points. 
1) It's meant to be played two player.  that way, you care who wins.  The luck then becomes similar to Mario Party, in that you can curse the other person out. 

2) The way you effect the ball is not straight forward.  The instructions say:

[QUOTE]When you hit the ball with your energizer, it will change to your color and rocket back into play. If your energizer is completely raised when it hits, the ball will continue its same horizontal direction. If your energizer is not completely raised, the horizontal direction of the ball is reversed. A player will move at one-half normal speed when the action button is depressed.[/QUOTE]

3) It does end.  It ends when one player gets 100 points.


I'm not defending it as a good game, but it's more interesting than any of the golden era console game slot machines for example.

Sorry about the no ending snafu. But it really doesn't change much, you're saying it just ends when the score exceeds 99 points that this game can display! I can't imagine anyone playing this long enough to get 100 points.

Maybe my copy is buggy, but the ball really does not seem to be affected by the energizer other than the color change.

I can enjoy very simple games, but even with two players this would get VERY dull VERY fast. I cannot imagine anyone actually LIKING this game, it may be less fun than Sssnake on the 2600, and that's LOW Dude! And comparing this to MARIO PARTY is like comparing playing with plastic toy soldiers to HALO!

[QUOTE=Alienblue]And comparing this to MARIO PARTY is like comparing playing with plastic toy soldiers to HALO! [/QUOTE]
That's not a good comparison for me.  If I could get away with it without feeling like a tool, I'd still play with plastic soldiers.   I guess I kind of do when I play Risk.

Also, I'm not defending it at all.  I'm just saying that as far as golden era games based on luck based gambling goes, it can't be the worst one.  That can still make it an F-.  Heck, that can still comfortably leave room for it to be a Z-.

I give you, Slot Machine.  Consider it exhibit A in the defense of Pachinko.

I stand corrected Atarifever.

I admit I would rather play with my toy soldiers then MARIO PARTY too (except possibly the GBA MARIO PARTY. Have you tried that? The games are 2D SPRITE BASED! It is like WARIOWARE for two players!).

I humbly concur that SLOT MACHINE and JAKE are both less fun than PACHINKO. F- on those. I also think 2600 MINIATURE GOLF is less playable than this, another F-!

I WAS going to give a bad review to THUNDERBALL - it certainly cannot begin to compete with 2600 VIDEO PINBALL. What are your feelings on this (choke) um, "Pin...Ball" game?(cough cough)

Also, my main beef on Pachinko is the CRITIC gave it a passing grade and we both know he gave an F to POLE POSITION on the 7800.
Critic, we are still waiting for a re-reviewwww.

I'm here to drop you a personal line Alienblue......

My hothmail is acting very broken for about 2 days now. Yesterday, it allowed me to read emails, but NOT reply to them and NOT delete them.

Today, I can't even open emails to read. If anyone is reading this and has hotmail, PLEASE let me know if all of hotmail is bad, or if my account just went bad for some weird reason!!

So whatever your "long dark tunnel" email is about, I'll never know. I hope this gets fixed.

I'd better say something about video games to get this post approved, so here it goes~

SSSNAKE IS A MASTERPIECE, HOW DARE YOU INSULT IT!!

Also.......had a crazy idea. Alienblue, you'll know when I'm truely mad at you, when you get a big package at your door. You're all excited, thinking "Zen has struck again, oh boys, tons of great gaming stuff", and you open the big package to discover it's nothing but 100+ loose Sssnake cartridges!!

I kept imagining this last night, where you open the package, you get so freaked out, that you scream, run frantically, and go flying out of your apartment window and plunge to your death. Perfect crime, they'd never suspect me!

Zen, you can't hide, I know you hate me and everyone in the world and are planning to destroy us all. In binary ZEN=666 everyone!
HE IS THE BEAST! ONLY THE BEAST WOULD LOVE Sssnake!

Okay seriously. Zen, I said in my email that I KNOW YOU ARE PROBABLY BUSY! I know you have bigger concearns right now. My health just took a big U-turn and thats what the "LDT" email was about. It has nothing to do with YOU, it is ME who is broken, kaput, hanging on a thread,living on a prayer, spouting nonsense.

Honestly I thought life had lost all meaning until today when I BEAT LEVEL TWO ON SPACE INVADERS EXTREME! HA HA! MEANING!

Hope your computer works soon. My O2 Freinds want me to tell you that SHOWDOWN beats 2600 OUTLAW! TOLD YA! PHBBT!

Now now Alienblue, we both know that the worst 2600 game of all time is Burgertime. That game has every flaw you can think of, it's ugly, it moves too slow, and it's very glitchy and prone to freezing and crashing. On top of that, it's a translation of a game that we all love!! With other poor 2600 ports, like Pac-man, Defender, Donkey Kong, etc, you can at least say those games aren't full of bugs, glitches, and crashes.

Don't you love it when a  point-blank  blast of  pepper  randomly doens't affect  a  food -foe and you die?? Don't you love it when  falling burger  parts don't squish  food-foes?? Don't you love it how it takes  15 seconds to move 2 inches on the screen?? Don't you love it how there's a total of 4 colors  on screen at once??

Sssnake wasn't based on a beloved arcade hit. It has no bugs or glitches.

2600 Burgetime is WAY worst then Sssnake, admit it!

Since my hotmail has gone to hell, I'm gonna be using my yahoo email account, whcih I haven't used in 16 million Pluto years!!

So when you get it, don't delete, and tell me about your health!

WOW! This is a record! It took SEVEN MINUTES to open the "reply"
box here, so I'm posting double messages hoping they will be
read.

ZEN: You got me. Burgertime is certainly the most UNPLAYABLE game for the 2600 I own, buttttt that is because my copy does not WORK at all! I cleaned it 20 times and all i get are bars on the screen. I have BURGERTIME for INTELLIVISION, COLECOVISION, and on the MIDWAY PSONE disc. Even though CV is IDENTICAL to the coin-op and INTV is not, I like INTV better because the mazes are more fair and better laid out (also it was the first version I ever played. I also love the cute attract mode.)

COLIN H: I could not get REPLY to work on the general forum. If you read this, I was unable to open that MOUSING CAT Instruction page on my iMac, not enough memory.

Just tell me if you know, WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO DO? Catch the mouse, eat the food, juggle my Odyssey2? I am getting the idea this is not a great game.

CLAY PIGEON was okay. Better than VCS Skeet shoot,Zen! (like that is saying that rock collecting is better than stabbing yourself to death). Black Hole looks boring. I cannot get BLOBBERS to run at all, i.e. I get the aforementioned lines again. Is that VIDEOPAC compatible only (I know NORSEMAN is).

Now to try and actually post this....