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Pachio-Kun: Maboroshi no Densetsu for PC-Engine CD brings back everyone’s favorite enabler
02.01.2024 - 00:53 / destructoid.com
I talked about Pachio-Kun some time ago for my Famicom Friday column because I thought the idea of an anthropomorphic pachinko mascot was amusing. Back then, I noted the staggering number of games in the series: at least 12.
I own more of the Famicom titles, but I wasn’t planning on making a thing of Pachio-Kun. It was fun to spit facts about the Japanese gambling industry, but I couldn’t possibly do that for multiple articles. But then I got the Analogue Duo.
When reviewing it, I wanted to get disc-based games to test, so I ordered a bunch from Japan. They didn’t arrive in time. In fact, they arrived mere hours after my review went live. Typical. I was looking for cheap games and came across two Pachio-Kun titles that confused me. Why does a pachinko game have cutscenes, I wondered. Why is there a weird hammer dude on the cover? I can never find much information on the series online, so I had to find out for myself.
Pachio-Kun: Maboroshi no Densetsu was released in 1991 on the PC-Engine CD-ROM². It starts out much like the Famicom games, where you take your spherical self out to a pachinko parlor to try and win big.
I’m not going to go into the background of Japan’s gambling pastime in this article. I did that (poorly) the last time I talked about Pachio-Kun, which you can read here. Or maybe read this article from Business Insider, which is possibly more insightful. All you need to know is that its popularity exploded as a way to get around Japan’s strict anti-gambling laws. It’s kind of a cross between a slot machine and pinball. You pick the force the balls get launched and try to direct them into various scoring holes to win more balls. The goal is to drain all the balls out of a machine.
After you win at a few machines in the first parlor, Pachio-Kun returns home to find his wife, Ginko (“gin” meaning silver, not like the plant) has been abducted and is being held for ransom. Before Pachio-Kun can give up hope, a magical pachinko wizard king appears and tells him to go back to the pachinko parlor… to play pachinko. I’m absolutely not making this up.
The ransom demand is plans or designs for the titular “Maboroshi,” which is commonly translated as “phantom.” The game has it written in katakana, but the kanji in the title relates to that meaning. Anyway, after draining the balls of a few more machines, the cashier at the pachinko parlor gives Pachi-kun one piece of the plans. He’s told that each pachinko parlor has one piece of the document.
Now, I want to point out that Pachio-kun had no idea that the pachinko parlor had this. His wife gets abducted and a magical ghost king breaks into his house to tell him to play more pachinko. He just says, “Oh, okay, that makes sense,” and returns to his
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