Pachio-kun FX By MissaFX

Pachio-kun FX is one of the more forgotten FX titles. It was released in the first real year of the FX (’94 don’t count) and was an upgraded version of a PC-Engine CD game which normally would be things going in favor of a title. But it was 8,800 yen instead of 6,800 yen like most other “board” games on the FX and sold in November, well after the Japanese summer break famous for selling so many copies of so many games. These two factors plus the fact it was a PC-FX exclusive title all but guaranteed its epic failure and ensured that it would be well forgotten under a mountain of much more appealing console games. Pachio-kun FXs other hindrance in really taking off is that at its heart Pachinko is an elaborate scam where parlors change the payout odds of the machines daily and where people with inside information stand to benefit most in the best of circumstances and in the worst the parlors manipulate the pachinko machines on the fly from a central computer to either cheat or benefit a customer. Pachinko is about the endless assault of the sound of billions of tiny metal raindrops falling, the countless lights and cacophony of a hundred digital songs all competing to be heard. It’s about wrist pain and strain, having to dress not in your big-girl panties, but in a diaper just to keep the balls going during a kakuhen streak. And most of all, about having to quit your job, to go pro. There’ s really a lot any gambling game has to make up for when it is converted into the digital realm and it is understandable why so many fall short. It all comes down to the simple truth though of “is it fun?”.

Well Pachio-kun FX isn’t terribly fun, but the odd thing about it is that it isn’t boring either. Playing Pachio-kun FX is like being in a very intense state of apathy. Sure you have several things to concentrate on at once, and to keep the throttle at the optimal level you do have to adjust it a lot, but given the sometimes very random nature of how the balls fall, at times you just begin to wonder if it is worth the effort to keep the throttle optimal. Just about at the point you stop caring, usually you begin loosing balls fast enough you suddenly care again and fix everything…but I guess in the end, you have to ask yourself, “does my victory feel hollow?” Maybe it is the lack of any real risk, or the lack of any real prize, but then again, this is not something easily overcome by most electronic gambling games. I have put quite a few hours into another gambling game called Neo Cherry Master on the Neo Geo Pocket B&W and to be perfectly honest, digital gambling machines in real casinos feel about as exciting to me as Neo Cherry Master. If I were in a Pachinko parlor in Japan and there were only digital Pachinko machines, I imagine I might feel a very similar way.

Gameplay: Pachio-kun FX features a story mode and a “free” mode for play. The story mode lets you be one of the Pachio-kun characters and wander from place to place in the town of Pachio-kun seeking battles with Pachinko masters. You can also play pachinko machines with your starting allowance of 500 balls to gain more balls and special points. Special points are used in Pachinko battles to stop the opponent’s balls for a period of time. When you choose a special move it superimposes a FMV of your character doing an attack over the pachinko table thus showing off the FXs ability to use FMV and real time game graphics at the same time. You must defeat 7 people and one final boss before they declare you the Pachinko-mon…err Pachinko master, and since this will take a lot of time probably, they have luckally included a save feature located at a central fountain/park with an umbrella.
Free mode lets you just do one single Pachinko battle and in this battle as you earn more balls, you earn more special points. This allows you to do multiple special moves per battle and is the easiest way to see your different animations.

Graphics: The tables in Pachio-kun are generally pretty interesting looking and someone obviously put some time and care into them. The animations are quick and responsive, everything looks clean and you can turn the status graphics on and off at your choosing. They probably could have used some more animation in the background of the machines themselves, but maybe the developers thought that would make the game feel like something other than Pachinko. When the character talk before battles their faces are adequately animated. The one thing you will notice however is that Pachio-kun seems to be missing an intro before the menu. The way the menu loops it seems to me like they intended there to be an intro playing between the loops. Maybe the animation studio didn’t have it done in time for the game’s release? It’s hard to say.

Music/Sound: The majority of the songs in Pachio-kun are entertaining to listen to and well done, however whenever the machines are in any kind of reward mode, they usually play a very short looping song, sometimes for minutes at a time. This looping song is often annoying and one of them really, really sounds like the Indiana Jones theme playing on a broken DVD menu. If only there was a way to turn this reward song off it would have greatly helped as I often find myself turning down the sound whenever the game goes into this mode and turning it back up whenever it leaves it. The sound effects are very basic gambling machine sound effects which do the job. More sound effects would have just been clutter, less would have made the game feel too dead.

Is Pachio-kun a great game? No. A good game? Probably not. But is it a bad game? No way! Pachio-kun FX will probably appeal most to the Japan enthusiast, not the console gaming enthusiast as it allows you to taste the Pachinko experience without having to sit through a 12 hour flight on Korean Air to just be able to afford to play Pachinko for real. If you’re looking for something different, Pachio-kun FX might just be the title for you.

Gameplay: 6.0

Graphics: 6.5

Music: 8.0 for the songs / 2.0 for the loops = 3.5

Sound: 8.0

Difficulty: 5.0

Language Barrier: 1.0

Keep spreading the Joy! By MissaFX