Pachinko, from what I understand is a “totally not gambling” gambling machine popular in Japan. It seems to be a mixture of a pinball machine, 10p machine and a slot machine. As you buy tokens and win prizes instead of cash, it skirts around gambling laws in Japan.

You buy balls and then use a dial to aim them into the machine, where they tumble down and activate the various parts of the slot machine, hoping the hit the jackpot.

You can walk around three pachinko parlours. Even though these are built in 3D, it controls like a Myst-style point and click game as you turn 90 degrees and only stand in specific locations. The graphics are terrible with really bad tiling everywhere and humans that look like barbie dolls with shrunken heads.

The machines don’t fare much better. As they’re based on real machines and not designed specifically for the N64, they try to fit in far more detail so they just look like a blur. You can tilt them for a slightly different view at the vomit-inducing mess.

Also, while pachinko is really simple, the controls are terrible. The only actual control is the dial, but all the variation is within one segment of the analogue stick, meaning you have very little control.

And, at the end of the day, this is the kind of thing you’ll find in a crummy seaside arcade but with the tickets and prizes removed. What little fun is removed, the whole risk is removed and the whole point – winning prizes is just there. A game version could have cosmetics or something, perhaps a room to decorate, but there’s nothing.

It’s a pointless game.

Worst

Pachinko World 64 is not only supremely, supremely dull – to such an extent that the more familiar game of pinball starts to look intoxicatingly good fun -but it’s also cretinously programmed.

Tim Weaver, N64 Magazine #13. Review Score: 12%

Remake or remaster?

No. Just…no.

Official ways to get the game.

There is no official way to get Heiwa Pachinko World 64