From our other sites
The story
On 5ch’s Hardware & Industry (Geha) board, a rumor that Square Enix might license out Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy for pachinko and pachislot machines became a hot topic. Some posters argued that the story about Akira Toriyama hating pachinko is just an urban legend, while others pointed to the different treatment Dragon Ball gets under Shueisha’s management, or brought up Yuji Horii’s well-known love of gambling. One comment drew widespread agreement: “Both the DQ and FF generations are hitting the age where games get physically tiring, but pachinko can keep squeezing money out of you well past 70.”
What people said
Put another way, doesn't that mean it's fair game now?
You know what licensing rights are, right?
Don't tell me that — tell whoever got the trademark approved.
He's already passed away, so maybe his wishes no longer apply, which is why the trademark got filed. Or did you seriously open this thread without even knowing he'd died?
But if they actually go through with it here, that'd lend some credibility to the story.
Shueisha would block that. Turning their flagship boys' magazine property into a gambling product would be career-ending, even in name only.
No, plenty of creators say no to gambling tie-ins. And it's not even about whether they personally like or dislike gambling, or have gripes with the pachinko industry — many creators pour their own philosophy and soul into their work, wearing themselves down to create it. It's not like most commercial works are just 'use it for anything as long as it makes money.' That's simply how it is, and it has nothing to do with the era.
That's Battle Road! I played that as a kid.
Skimmed through the thread, and this comment nails it best. It might honestly be the most fitting path for Dragon Quest and FF as they head straight toward becoming a 'dying fandom' (an aging fanbase with no new blood). As someone right in that generation myself, it's kind of sad though…
Whether the machines see more play or less, Square Enix's revenue doesn't change either way. At most they can charge the manufacturer a hefty upfront licensing fee. That's the difference between them and companies like Sega, Capcom, or Konami.
The 3DS team finished development early, and while waiting around they used the extra time to add the time-traveling Yotta content. Then they forced extra/exclusive content into the PS5 version too…
For example, if you look at the rights notice for the game Hokuto ga Gotoku:
The copyright credit reads "©SEGA ©Buronson・Tetsuo Hara/NSP 1983, License No. GA-217"
So it looks like it's credited to the original creators. Meaning as long as they're not using anime footage, it's probably a matter that sits with the original creators' side, not Shueisha.
But I could be wrong.
There are plenty of cases where Shueisha holds the rights and it still got turned into pachinko.
It's not solely pachinko money's fault, but a bunch of factors have combined into a slow-acting poison for the anime industry. If they don't preserve the environment and relationships that let creators make what they truly want to make and pour their souls into it, the industry is finished.
Kind of similar to how mobile-gacha addicts and the flood of 'Narou-style' web-novel isekai have caused their own set of problems, lol.
From now on, you can't call yourself a true believer unless you've completed both of the big two, lol.
These days pachinko parlors are basically being carried by Tokyo Ghoul, pushing all those older franchises aside.
Also, Attack on Titan seems like it could stand alongside Fist of the North Star in scale — though turning it into pachinko seems like it'd be tough.
A rip-off gacha game that just drains your wallet and actual gambling like pachinko are surely on a different level.
They're different in kind, but I get what you're saying.
You could argue pachinko is actually more honest, since it doesn't pretend to be 'just a game' — but then again, that world is its own black box full of shady stuff too, lol.
https://p-town.dmm.com/machines/3324
https://p-town.dmm.com/machines/2978
Yeah, nobody remembers those, lol.
Looked it up, and there are only a handful of paid one-time-purchase smartphone apps too. But if you're going to beg anyone for it, it's probably Yamasa (the pachislot maker), not Bandai Namco.
Both are trash, but at least gacha pulls leave you with something (items, account data), right? Most pachinko addicts don't even end up with that much.
With mobile games you can just tap to pay for gacha while lying in bed. That's clearly more harmful in practice than pachinko.
Background and Key Points
Pachinko and pachislot machines are Japan’s dominant form of legal gambling — technically “adult gaming parlors” that skirt criminal gambling laws through a three-shop token-exchange system — and the industry has spent decades licensing anime and game characters to draw players, paying publishers large flat licensing fees for the right to use an IP’s music, characters, and catchphrases in the reels. Akira Toriyama, Dragon Quest’s character designer, died in March 2024, which is the backdrop for posts wondering whether a trademark filing means his personal wishes “no longer apply.” Yuji Horii, the series’ actual creator and scenario writer, is separately known for his enthusiasm for games of chance, which posters raise as a counterweight to the Toriyama story.
The thread doesn’t really split over whether Square Enix should do this — most treat it as inevitable given how thoroughly Capcom, a rival publisher, has already pachinko-ified its own catalog. The real fault line is over whether “Toriyama hated pachinko” was ever true, and by extension whether a Dragon Quest machine would validate or debunk that legend. A secondary disagreement is whether Dragon Quest getting licensed would create pressure on Shueisha to do the same with Dragon Ball, which several posters insist won’t happen because Shueisha guards its flagship Shonen Jump properties far more tightly than a video game publisher guards its franchises.
What the thread likely gets wrong going in: pachinko licensing isn’t a revenue share tied to how much players lose. As one reply notes, Square Enix’s payout is essentially a fixed up-front fee from the machine manufacturer — the company’s income doesn’t rise or fall with how addictive the machine turns out to be, unlike companies such as Sega or Konami that also operate in gaming more directly.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (Hardware & Industry / Geha) thread “[Good News] Square Enix Reportedly Bringing Pachinko/Pachislot Versions of Dragon Quest and FF!?“.
Leave a Reply