Josh's Brain Archive

I’d never laid eyes on a real Pachinko machine until this one, so I spent a long time at the sale trying to gauge whether it really worked or not. I didn’t know enough to be certain, so in the end I saw enough happening that I was willing to take a chance on it. It hadn’t been touched in a very long time, so our first step was to get as much dust and cobwebs out of it as possible with a rechargable air duster. After that, it took the better part of a weekend to work out why the firing mechanism didn’t actually want to fire, which helped me to learn about how the feeder tray and lower track worked to pay out winners. By the end of the first weekend, we knew enough to fire balls successfully into the play field, so we knew we had a working machine.

I feel like a lot of kids, at least around my age, probably had little trinket Pachinko toys when they were younger; of course, pre-internet, I had no idea that’s what they were called as a kid but I definitely remember having a few small hand-held toys that more or less met the criteria. I actually remember my daughter having a little Mario-themed one that she got maybe in a Happy Meal or at a birthday party or something just a few years ago when she was little - though it’s just as likely that I’m imagining it. Anyway, I always thought the mechanics of the things were cool, and remained so once I found out about the real thing somewhere along the way, and I always thought it would be neat to have one (but not neat enough to actually go out and find one, I suppose). But now that we’re in 2026 and I have a little time and just enough disposable income, I stumbled across one at an estate sale and pretty quickly talked my way into buying it, with my daughter’s prodding, and bringing it home.