Casinos

So you may have noticed a complete lack of content on the blog over the last week or so.  That was because I was chilling out in Singapore on a nice little vacation with the wife and now I'm back and recovered from all that travel fatigue. 

Singapore is actually a pretty crappy place to go for video games.  There's lots of awesome non-game related shit that I did but most people over there play PC or mobile.  This means that the need for actual game stores that sell hard copies of things basically don't exist.  Granted I wasn't looking THAT hard for it but even my Singaporean buddies said that the prospects for physical content is pretty shitty.

However one thing I did do was hit up a Casino located on a resort island called Sentosa.  I know that Casinos aren't video games but its a kind of gaming that I've never talked about here on the blog and since I recently tried my luck with a couple dollars why not spend some time talking about it.

Before I continue about the casino though, let me tell you about the gambling situation in Japan.  It's illegal to gamble for money out here but there are many Pachinko and Slot Machine places dotted around everywhere.  The idea is that you use money to receive balls (Pachinko) or medals (slots) and you bet that currency on the machines.  If you win you can exchange your balls or medals for a ticket that will allow you to purchase prizes in the parlor.   That said, round the side of these places there's usually blacked out window where you can go exchange your ticket for cash.  As far as I know these windows are run by 3rd parties so it's not TECHNICALLY illegal, it's some weird loop hole and the police don't seem to give too many fucks.

Proper casinos though are a different story, these places are really cool.  They have a sort of nice atmosphere and I've heard that they pump oxygen into these places so that people have more energy to keep going.  The casino I went to was a little on the small side so the choices of games were a little limited.  I noticed there was an absolute shit ton of Baccarat, some kind of card game that I have no idea how to play.  Ideally I wanted to play Blackjack but I was there only for a short time and didn't feel like betting anything over than about $10 and the minimum bets were a little too high for me so I fucked off from my favorite casino game to play my two least favorite games, Roulette and Slots.

The roulette was all digitized, large banks of screens with the betting board on them and you used a touch interface to place your chips.  There was a real roulette wheel in the middle of all the machines where a staff member would spin the ball round.  Not only was I using the minimum amount of money possible but I was also only betting on red/black because fuck roulette and the chances of me winning anything on individual numbers are basically 0.  After a little while of that shit and winning a little bit I tried my hand at the slot machines.  Proper casino slot machines are very different to Japanese ones.  Japanese ones have 3 reels and there's all sorts of weird rules and conditions to make the shit pay out.  These ones you just had to get certain numbers of symbols to land on the board and shit would happen.  I put $2 in the thing and after a few spins and some weird alarms and shit going off and I ended up getting $18 out.  I had no idea what I was doing so once I saw that I was in the green I just fucked off.

Casinos are cool but these games can be a lot of fun and when you're betting with real money it's easy to get lost in the moment.  I got lucky a little bit on my holiday but more often than not you're probably going to lose so you gotta be real careful or you may be looking at debts you cant pay.   While enjoyable, I'll stick to video game casinos for fake money because if I lose I can just go and grind monsters or whatever to make it all back.  I need all my money for paying bills and buying games so I don't feel like taking my chances too much.

Japanese Medal Games

Up to this point, I've never seen the point of these things, but today I discovered why they are so popular!

For those that don't know, in a little area of pretty much every game centre I've ever been to, there is a section for "medal games".  These are games where you buy a load of medals, and feed them into a machine to earn more medals.  They are usually those push machines, you know, where you feed in coins so the machine can push a big stack and make coins on the edge fall off.  There are other machines such as non-gambling versions of pachinko and slots too, as well as an actual game that I will cover in a post tomorrow.

So what can you do with these medals?  Nothing.  When you are done, you feed them into a machine that tracks how many you have and then you can come back and use those medals later.  So you may be asking, well what's the fucking point then?  I know I was asking this question for a long time, but today I sussed it.

The reason these games are so popular is because they are a cheap alternative to actual coin-op gaming, or at least that's my theory anyway.  Just think, when I play Voltex Sound Booth, I spend 100 yen for 3 songs.  With a medal game, 1000 yen will get you a shit ton of medals, and assuming you win something (which isn't all that hard really) you can come back and play again for free.  Also these games are very laid back and don't really contain any potential competition, so people who like game centres but are worried about being bad at the proper games still have something to enjoy.  It seems to be quite popular with older people too, probably gives them something to do.

The cool thing about this whole medal thing is to access the account that you create with the game centre, you have to scan your arm.  Most games come with stat cards or something but from how the woman explained it to me today, the machines for medal games scans the shape of your veins or something, either way it's cool as fuck.

So, the next post will be the game that made me want to try this shit out, I want to pop down to the game centre tomorrow and play it a bit more before I write about it, so keep an eye out!

Pachinko and Slot Machines

Some people like to do a bit of gambling from time to time.  It may to be try and make a big win and walk away with lots of money, or some might just like the thrill.  Well in Japan you can go fuck yourself, that shits about illegal as it gets, but that doesn't mean there isn't something else in place for you to pump money into.

Dotted all over the country are these Pachinko and Slot places, that I have seen many times, but actually have very little experience with.  But what you have to realise is that these places aren't for gambling, not really.  You exchange money for medals (slots) or little round balls (pachinko) and as you play you can win more.  When you are done, you convert these medals or balls into a ticket, which you can then "cash in" for prizes.  Think of it like those ticket arcade machines, but instead of shitty plush toys you can get beer and cigarettes and stuff, hell I've even seen game systems behind the prize counter.  So kind of like gambling but not really.

That said, I've only ever seen pachinko, and I've only ever tried slots once.  I mean I don't mind heading to a casino in the UK to play some card games, but things like slot machines have never appealed to me.

However what does intrigue me is why almost all the machines are themed around some kind of video game or anime series.  When I think about the kind of person that would be into this kind of gambling, I don't think about gamers or anime fans.  These kind of people, at least in my head, would rather spend money on anime and video games than fucking slot machines.

The above picture is the only slot machine type I have ever tried, and I mean look at this fucking thing, it's all Neon Genesis Evangelion themed and stuff.  But they are ALL like this and it's not just slot machines too, there are Evangelion and Tekken themed pachinko machines too! The strangest one I've seen on YouTube was a Shadow Hearts themed machine, I mean goddamn is there anything they won't theme a machine after?

So yeah, that's the phenomenon of pachinko and slot that I just do not comprehend at all.  I've heard that you can go trade your prize ticket to a guy who will then give you cash, but the guy might be yakuza or something, I don't know I've never seen it.  If anyone does have any experience with this stuff I'd love to hear it, I don't really want to spend my money to find out.