From Nagoya to Southbank: A Short History of Pachinko

Candy shops and the Corinth game

Pachinko's ancestor was the Corinth game, a tabletop ball maze sold in American sweet shops in the 1920s. Japanese shopkeepers shrank it down, stood it upright, and hung it outside candy stores — children played for a sen and won sweets.

By the 1930s the machines had spread through Nagoya's shopping streets. The name came from the sound: pachin, the snap of the spring-loaded launch — the same snap you'll hear tonight in Hall B's classics corner.

The parlour era

Postwar Japan turned the candy-shop toy into an industry. The first commercial parlour opened in Nagoya in 1948, and within a decade there were thousands. The 1960s added tulip pockets and fever modes; the 1980s brought digital screens and the modern frenzy.

At its 1990s peak, pachinko was a bigger industry than Japan's auto exports. Parlours lined every major street — loud, bright, unapologetic. The games you play at our lounge are direct descendants of that golden age.

"Pachinko survived a century because it never pretended to be anything but play."

How it reached Australia

Pachinko barely existed outside Japan until the 2010s — regulation, machine supply and sheer cultural specificity kept it home. Our founder's notes from opening the lounge in 2016 say it best:

• Australia had no pachinko culture — we had to build one, not import one.
• Every early machine was sourced used from Osaka parlours retiring them.
• The token-and-prize model translated naturally under Victorian law.
• Australians understood the game instantly — they just needed a venue.
• Nine years on, Melbourne has the biggest pachinko community outside Japan.

Which brings us to tonight: 180 machines on a Southbank floor, a classics corner full of machines that started life in Nagoya. History you can play.