Trigger Happy
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
Power tools
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
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