Pachinko Sexy Reaction (Arcade) review "Are Japanese games of chance and peeks into the dressing rooms of changing women your two greatest passions? Then it just so happens that Pachinko Sexy Reaction is an arcade game that you should invest some time in. It's about as deep as a child's wading pool, and stays in that shallow territory for the entirety of the experience. If you like cheap little table games like pachinko and pinball, here you go. If you like buxom animé women who like to conveniently "forget" that they're not un..."

Are Japanese games of chance and peeks into the dressing rooms of changing women your two greatest passions? Then it just so happens that Pachinko Sexy Reaction is an arcade game that you should invest some time in. It's about as deep as a child's wading pool, and stays in that shallow territory for the entirety of the experience. If you like cheap little table games like pachinko and pinball, here you go. If you like buxom animé women who like to conveniently "forget" that they're not undressing to an audience, here you go. By not pretending to be anything more than it is, Pachinko Sexy Reaction is a success on at least the most basic level.

As stated, PSR puts up no pretenses whatsoever - you get what you pay for (or don't, if one factors in emulation). The premise is simple: you start out with 100 tiny steel spheres similar to ball-bearings and launch them one by one onto the table, using a knob that adjusts the velocity at which they fire out of the hatch. The hope is that they will land in pockets positioned along the table so that you can slowly increase the amount of balls you collect overall. The game just sort of plods along until your total reaches the amount of balls designated at the beginning of the round (always an increment of 500) or until the slot machine in the middle of the board stumbles upon a favorable sequence of symbols. At that point, the whole table goes into a fever pitch as you launch balls with reckless abandon in a lightning round of sorts, trying to get your tiny orbs into opening and closing slots at the bottom of the screen. Do a mediocre job, and things return to business as usual. Perform well, however, and you are rewarded with interstitial clips of the girls changing into the outfit that the mannequin modeled at the beginning of the round. The farther along on a particular table you get, the skimpier the outfits get. Simple as that.

At the table selection screen, you're given the choice to follow one of three girls behind the curtain. Since this reviewer can't read Japanese, he's forced to differentiate between them by hair color. There's Pink, a young adolescent whose table is ludicrously easy to score on, has a desire to try out any outfit that's even slightly showy, and doesn't quite seem to know the difference between "kinky" and "erotic." Blue is the second, a slender lass who is very reluctant to be seen in the nude and does not pretend to hide her embarrassment and anger through a litany of breathy sighs and rolled eyes. Blonde's table is the toughest of the three, an intricate mess of pegs that lead your ammunition off in an uncountable number of directions. Her cutscenes are also the most laborious; she has the biggest goods, but she also does the best job of covering them up. Choosing a table boils down to preference; for my money, Blue's is the most entertaining to play. She studies the slots sternly and becomes awash with dread when they light up in a blaze of lightning and threaten to show a sequence that spells "clothes off."

Perhaps because it was intended for wide release (in Japan, anyway), PSR keeps the view tastefully above the equator. Most parts are kept concealed unless they're amply covered, except for the chest, which the girls do a half-addled enough job of covering that they successfully perform the act of putting a shirt on merely for the sake of keeping the tease going. Personalities, however archetypal, are given a chance to shine through and have the ability to communicate universally where their vocal utterances cannot, providing a draw other than bouncy bosoms. For such a throwaway game, it's actually pretty entertaining, adding some incentive (take it for what you will) to a game of luck that really only exists to eat money. It's fun, but while the girls are nicely drawn, it's not that much fun.

Odds are that if you expressed an inkling of interest in this game when you read the title, you'll probably derive at least a little bit of enjoyment from it. The Engrish is good for a chuckle if you spend a few minutes deconstructing it, and it's just kind of fun to turn your brain off for a while and send a spate of ball-bearings careening toward the pockets below. The girls are just along for the ride, so it's best to play like you are as well, adopting the same unfazed attitude toward nudity that the Japanese do. It's just pachinko that just so happens to have boobs, which makes it kind of like a steak that just so happens to come with a salad. Even if you didn't order it, it's part of the main course, so you may as well enjoy it.

Bon appétit!

Community review by snowdragon (September 27, 2004) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.