Pachinko Balls

Pachinko is a similar kind of game to pinball, but using a vertical playing surface, and without the flippers you get on the sides of a pinball machine.
The play area looks rather like that on a pinball machine, with a pattern of upright pins and a number of pockets or gates into which the balls can fall.

The player buys their pachinko balls and drops them into the loading area. They then start launching the balls, propelling them into the play area.

Vintage pachinko machines use a spring loaded metal flipper or lever to launch the balls. But modern machines fire the balls electronically. The
player can turn a dial that controls the frequency with which they are launched.

Once launched the balls bounce around the playing area, hitting against the pins.  Unlike in pinball, where the player can bat the ball around the play
area using the flippers, in pachinko the player has no control at all over what happens to the ball once it has been launched.

Usually the ball will fall through the pins to the bottom. But sometimes it falls into one of the winning pockets. This gives the player a number of
extra balls.

Most modern machines include a slot game in the centre of the board, which is triggered if a ball falls into a particular pocket. It is this game that gives the big jackpot wins, ie large numbers of extra balls.