Pachinko Set to Bounce Across Pacific

Move over, karaoke, Pokemon and Pacman.

Mikohn Gaming Corp. and Anchor Gaming said they will jointly develop a new machine that will incorporate conventional-style slot play with a pachinko-style bonus system.

Highly popular in Japan, pachinko is a form of vertical pinball in which the player shoots small metal balls into a pin-filled playing field. The balls bounce from pin to pin until they come to rest in one of many compartments with various payout values.

“While we are at an early development stage, we think a concept based on pachinko is a natural for casinos,” said Dean Ehrlich, general manager of Anchor Games.

With about 4 million machines in Japan alone, pachinko is easily one of the most world’s popular gaming machines, said Shannon Bybee, executive director of the University of Nevada Las Vegas International Gaming Institute. By comparison, conventional slot machines now number about 500,000 in the United States, he said.

But Bybee said the import of the huge hit from Japan may not necessarily translate to success on American shores, much the way karaoke has enjoyed more limited success in the U.S.

“When I was on the [Nevada] Gaming Control Board in the early ‘70s, we approved pachinko games on trial at Union Plaza in downtown Las Vegas,” Bybee said. “My recollection is . . . they never drew enough business” and were eventually discontinued.

But Michael Caloiaro, Mikohn’s product manager of games, said today’s high-tech features and other bells and whistles should bring new life to the decidedly low-tech game.

In fact, the pachinko system is part of a larger trend among slot machine makers to incorporate “bonus” playing rounds into conventional machines. A bonus round is typically awarded when the player gets certain combinations on the regular slot portion of the machine.

Pachinko, whose name is derived from the Japanese word “pachi-pachi” meaning the clicking of small objects, is believed to have descended from the “Corinth Game,” which originated in Chicago.

The game made the transpacific jump in the early 1920s, and the earliest versions of today’s pachinko machines were developed a few years later.

The industry was said to generate about $243 billion in 1997, with about 18,000 pachinko parlors in Japan at that time.