Taking a page from the Konami playbook, Namco has announced a 20th anniversary SoulCalibur release for pachinko parlors across Japan. 

Pachinko is big business. But as SNK Playmore president Koichi Toyama explained, more Japanese in their twenties are less interested in pachinko. The solution? Turn gamers into pachinko players. Eh...

Welcome to where time came to a standstill. And then, it collapsed in on itself. "Haikyo" (廃墟) is Japanese for "ruins". Across the country, there are deserted buildings for intrepid urban exploreration. Make no mistake: this is trespassing and even dangerous. These buildings are sealed off for good reason.

Are you a working dude? A popular working dude? If not, you might be giving off telltale signs to your female colleagues that you are not popular. Japanese research website Otome Sugoren (via Sugoren) regularly polls its women readers and has come up with the seven most popular ways women (in Japan, at least) know…

Do you like pachinko? Do you have a 3DS? Well I've got some good news for you. Japanese game maker IREM will be releasing a new game on the 3DS called Pachinko Parlor 3D: The Open Sea Stories 2.

Blogger and financial investor, Ichirou Yamamoto recently wrote for website 4Gamer on the danger and "slot machine-like" gambling nature of mobile and social games.

It's one of Japan's dirty secrets. Summer after summer, parents get their gaming fix at pachinko parlors, leaving small children in the car. Alone. To die.

Those looking to drop some money on pachinko can head to their neighborhood parlor in the hope of winning some extra scratch. Those looking to spend ¥7,000 (US$85) and win nothing but satisfaction, get this.

Pachinko? Boring. One of our least favourite types of gaming. A pachinko machine with adorable little Ghostbusters and an official license, though, well, now we are interested.

A small percentage of Japanese housewives lose themselves in torrid love affairs. An even tinier percentage become heavily addicted to online games, a new book claims.

The Japanese population is shrinking. Birthrates have been dropping for the past two decades, and the country needs more babies. The Japanese government is attempting to push through a national child subsidy program. Enter pachinko.

Did you realize there's a pachinko game on the iPhone? Did you realize that you should care that there's a pachinko game on the iPhone?

Street Fighter mainstay Chun-Li is getting her own pachislot game, courtesy of manufacturer Enterrise and it's... well, it's pachislot, so I'm genetically incapable of being excited about the prospect of such a thing. The game looks to feature Chun-Li in various mission-based situations, presumably all of which can be…

Sega has reported their financial results for the first quarter of the 2009 financial year, and while the video games segment of their business saw sales growth of 90.6%, the company is still reporting a $963 million loss. The problem? Those pesky Pachinko machines. With an operating income loss of $29 million and an…

In Japan, it's pretty common for video games to have pachinko machines. Heck! Movies, anime and manga character even get pachinko machines based on them. It's not just spinning metal balls! New pachinko machines even feature large LCD-type displays to keep players engaged. Pachinko maker Yamasa's Resident Evil machine…

In Japan, lots of video games get turned into pachinko or pachislot machines. No biggie! SNK, Sega and Konami have all spun off selected titles into pachinko parlors across the country. So when a rumor popped up that Square Enix was doing the same for Final Fantasy XIII, it did seem possible that, yes, Japan would be…

Corporate confusions! When Harvest Moon developer Natsume decided to found a pachinko company a few years back, it could've picked any name for the new company. Natsume didn't and instead gave the pachinko company a corporate game moniker we all know: Atari. Here's what the CEO of Atari Inc. says about the company's…