Magnavox Trigger Happy Manuel D’Utilisation

 

Trigger Happy 

276 

 

randomness with a continuous control over one 
important variable of the system. So do videogames. 
That one variable is the behavior of the player’s own 
character (animal, humanoid or mechanical), battling in 
an otherwise unpredictable virtual world. As the 
Pachinko control is analogue, furthermore, the tiniest 
variation in its position can produce large effects in the 
chaotic system. And this is comparable to the “deep 
controls” that Richard Darling enthuses over in games 
like Super Mario Bros. 

Thirdly, and again as with videogames, Pachinko 

assaults the player’s senses with the balls’ clacking, 
constant electronic music and a dazing miscellany of 
colored, blinking lights and computerized animations. 
You play Pachinko for twenty minutes and you come 
away empty-handed—yet you know you’ve had some 
weird kind of fun. And it was Pachinko machines that 
were Taito’s original business before they created 
Space Invaders. 

 

So far we have seen that videogames have 

some  things in common with films, with 
paintings or with stories, without ever being 
quite the same sort of phenomenon. But the 
example of Pachinko should remind us that