Pachinko

Waking up leisurely in the morning, he scratched his hair.

The oversized white T-shirt hung loosely, revealing a slender? fair shoulder. He pulled open the floor-to-ceiling curtains, and the morning sunlight scattered across the room.

"So comfortable."

Star Color stretched, exuding a lazy aura all over.

Last night, he'd been busy organizing the items airdropped by the drone, so he'd gone to bed a bit late. Luckily, he'd taken the morning off.

Star Color toyed with the golden dice in his hand, gazing at the azure sky.

"Then I'll go have some fun. It's been a long time since I played pachinko."

Wearing a black windbreaker and a disposable mask, Star Color looked a bit comical, rather like a popular child star trying to keep a low profile on the street.

In this carefree manner, he stepped into the pachinko parlor.

"Welcome... um... are you a student? Could you show me your ID card?"

The young, pretty attendant, noticing Star Color's petite height, awkwardly blocked his way.

"..."

After paying a hush fee of eight thousand points, he got in smoothly. What a pain—he wouldn't have had to pay that much outside. Pachinko more or less still hooked some high school or middle school students into addiction. After all, who doesn't like the idea of doubling their allowance with a bit of luck?

Star Color spent thirty thousand points, exchanging them for beads worth four points each. High risk, high reward~.

The student didn't use the pachinko parlor's QR code to pay; instead, he used the one from the café next door. It seemed the school had the ability to track payment records. And he wasn't the first student to come play pachinko. The shop was thoroughly prepared, even figuring out how to make money off students.

Times had changed. Mechanical machines were slowly fading away. The [electric] type, combining pachinko and slot machine mechanics, was now the mainstream. Although even now, almost all pachinko machines' basic layout and pin configurations followed the so-called [Masamura Standard], various gameplay tweaks had been made on that foundation. The most popular currently was the captivating [Role Object] steel ball bridge-crossing mechanic.

Modern machines were continuous-fire types, shooting 140 to 160 balls per minute. Because the game speed was drastically increased, people bet larger and larger amounts, and the money drained away faster and faster.

The harsh clatter of colliding balls, the blinding rainbow light pollution, the machines blaring out all kinds of rousing, blood-pumping broadcasts and piercing sound effects. The flashy, gaudy special effects on the screens—gambling, combinations—stimulated the brain. The noisy, dazzling environment was designed to keep players fired up, furiously shooting steel balls, rather than calmly thinking about whether they should call it quits and go home.

Even though it was now a time when the school had the fewest people, there were still workers off the night shift happily spinning the controllers, enjoying the thrill gambling brought.

With machine upgrades, past experience was becoming more and more useless. The battles between the once-popular professional pachinko players and cheaters against the shops used to be quite exciting, you know.

Cheating methods in the past were all kinds of wild. Fake cards for unlimited ball output, disguising oneself as a repairman to install illegal cheat programs on machines, using radio frequency devices to interfere with machines, stuffing celluloid boards, sensors, magnetic steel balls into the machines—all sorts of things.

Anyway, the gambling nature of pachinko (ball machines) and pachislot (slot machines) meant that some special cheaters were bound to appear.

They were called pachinko cheaters.

As machines were upgraded, alarms and various anti-cheat facilities and measures were added. Using external objects to assist cheating had become a dead end, a high-risk method.

This environment naturally gave rise to another type of cheater. They dismantled machines, understood the internal structure, calculated timing, established the optimal ball-entry route, and trained themselves to be human aiming devices.

The force of the ball shot, the angle and distance of the nails, the reflection angle—calculated with mathematics. Those guys were practically superhumans. Once trained, they could go show off their skills. These cheaters usually worked in teams.

There were both pachinko and pachislot machines, even ones with anime collaborations. How ridiculous.

Star Color decided to play [Angel's Wings], abbreviated as the Feather Machine. A machine that had appeared before the bubble economy burst. It was a popular, hot model back then; everyone, young and old, played it. With the end of the Feather Machine era came the rise of the bridge-crossing era.

The one in front of him wasn't some old relic; it was a rehashed machine. If the original was version 1.0, then this was version 2.0. It was fitted with a high-definition screen, no longer mechanical, with dazzling lights. They said shops with Feather Machines were already packed with old folks.

Both pachinko and pachislot were probability games with set parameters. Taking pachinko as an example, these machines were simply a points system. The steel balls you put in were points, similar to blackjack. If the previous player didn't reach 24 points, you'd find the right moment to take over their hand and draw your own to make 24. In other words, when the points put in reached a set value, you'd hit the jackpot.

The machine had three stages.

The best way for an ordinary person to win was to use the legacy left by the previous player; this gave the highest win rate.

[Stable Period], [Devouring Period], [Payout Device]—these three stages cycled endlessly. In short, no matter how ordinary players played, they always ended up losing. These three stages would slowly gnaw away, devour, and consume your steel balls. Occasionally, a small win or a JP would spit out some balls to keep you, this 'fat piece of meat,' sitting in front of the machine. But as you played on, you'd eventually find your balls had been completely cleaned out by the machine, and it would be too late for regrets.

A set machine was like a stunning beauty; she'd only take notice of ordinary players on a whim. Then everyone would go crazy, pouring in huge amounts of money, only to find out in the end that the stunning beauty was actually a black widow taking lives.

And a skilled cheater could turn the machine into their own, making it spew out balls and coins like a geyser.

While observing each machine, Star Color noticed a very 'special' one. You're it.

He sat down.

[Angel's Wings Gameplay Introduction] (See attached pachinko route diagram)

[1. First, aim for openings 1 and 2 from the top to start.]

[2. Once a ball enters opening 1 or 2, the feather mechanism above will open. Take the chance to shoot the ball in. The opening time for feather 1's ball entrance is 0.4 seconds, and for feather 2's ball entrance, only 0.8 seconds.]

[3. If five balls successfully pass through the obstacles and enter the side openings of the feathers, the screen's slot machine lottery will activate. When three numbers match, you hit the jackpot.]

A machine that extremely tests one's mentality, skill, and experience. Although there might be consolation prizes, if you want to make money, you'd better not choose this kind of machine. But higher risk often brings higher reward.