Crossword clues for pachinko
Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English
The Collaborative International Dictionary
pachinko \pachinko\ n. A popular Japanese pinball game played on a vertical board.
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
1953, from Japanese, "pinball machine," also "slingshot, handgun," from pachin, of echoic origin, + diminutive suffix -ko.
Wiktionary
n. A mechanical ball-dropping game similar to pinball, popular in Japan.
WordNet
n. a Japanese pinball game played on a vertical board
Wikipedia
is a type of mechanical game originating in Japan and is used as both a form of recreational arcade game and much more frequently as a gambling device, filling a Japanese gambling niche comparable to that of the slot machine in Western gaming. A pachinko machine resembles a vertical pinball machine, but has no flippers and uses a large number of small balls. The player fires balls into the machine, which then cascade down through a dense forest of pins. If the balls go into certain locations, they may be captured and sequences of events may be triggered that result in more balls being released. The object of the game is to capture as many balls as possible. These balls can then be exchanged for prizes. Pachinko machines were originally strictly mechanical, but modern ones have incorporated extensive electronics, becoming similar to video slot machines.
Pachinko parlors are widespread in Japan, and they usually also feature a number of slot machines (called or pachislots); hence, these venues operate and look similar to casinos. Modern pachinko machines are highly customizable, keeping enthusiasts continuously entertained.
Gambling for cash is illegal in Japan. Pachinko balls won from games cannot be exchanged directly for money in the parlor. The balls are exchanged for prizes or tokens, which can be exchanged for cash at a place nominally separate from the parlor.
Usage examples of "pachinko".
The rain kept up, falling along Harajuku, beading on her plastic jacket, the children of Tokyo trooping past the famous boutiques in white loafers and clingwrap capes, until she'd stood with him in the midnight clatter of a pachinko parlor and held his hand like a child.
A sort of vertical pinball game called pachinko involved dozens of tiny steel balls rolling around and around and bouncing into numbered and lettered slots.
Hence the fanaticisms and intoxications--religious, political, and sexual, the Nazis, the Klan, Hell's Angels, the Circus Maximus, the dreary fascination of the TV screen, witch-burnings, Mickey Spillane and James Bond, pachinko parlors, alcoholic stupors, revivals, tabloid newspapers, and juvenile gangs--all of which, as things stand, are the necessary safety-valves and palliatives for human beings whose very existence is defined in self-contradictory and self-defeating terms.