Pajatso

Pajatso is a freeware Macintosh adaptation of the traditional Finnish coin-drop game of the same name, written by Kari Kulmala (kk@mac.pp.fi) and distributed through Info-Mac. The Pajatso machine is the Finnish cousin of the Japanese pachinko, and version 2.7 packages the experience as a fat binary that runs natively on both PowerPC and 68k Macs.

Gameplay

Pajatso recreates the classic Finnish slot-and-ball amusement device in which coins or balls are launched into a vertical playfield studded with pins and pockets. Players try to land payouts in the scoring slots, mirroring the rhythm of the cafe-counter machines the game is modelled on.

System requirements

The minimum configuration is a Macintosh Plus running System 7.0 with about 400 KB of free RAM. The author recommends a color monitor and roughly 1500 KB of free RAM for the best experience, since the artwork and effects shine on color hardware.

Distribution

Pajatso 2.7 is freeware. It was released as pajatso-27.hqx on Info-Mac and is a fat application, meaning the same package contains both 68k and PowerPC code so it runs natively on either CPU family without emulation.

Author

The game was written by Kari Kulmala and posted from kk@mac.pp.fi, one of a small cluster of Finnish Mac hobbyist developers active in the late 1990s who localized regional pastimes for the Macintosh.