How the mighty have fallen. Silent Hill, a series once renowned for its atmosphere and ability to strike fear into the hearts of the strongest-willed gamers, has been reduced to a gimmicky Japan-only pachinko slot game.
Silent Hill has had a rough ride ever since the series left the PlayStation 2, with the majority of the original development team being disbanded to let Western developers take the helm and steer the series in a different, ultimately unsuccessful direction. It hasn’t been the same ever since.
After a decade of disappointing additions to the Silent Hill name, fans of the series finally saw some light in Silent Hills, the proposed collaboration between film director Guillermo del Toro and game director Hideo Kojima to bring the series back to its rightful place.
If you’ve been keeping in the loop, you know Silent Hills was unfortunately canned when Kojima left the company. We’ll never see what it could have been. Instead Japan gets this atrocious Silent Hill 2-themed pachislot game. Check out the video in the header.
Pachislots are a combination of Japan’s traditionally preferred game to gamble on, pachinko, and slot machines. It’s not unheard of for a publisher to use its IPs for pachinko and pachislot machines — SNK has famously stayed afloat due to its pachinko machines (along other companies saving them). Konami has been especially fond of using their IPs for pachinko and pachislot games over the past five years or so. It’s easy money.
It’s sad that Silent Hill has all but disappeared from the gaming community’s collective conscience, and it’s even worse that its one glimmer of hope was stamped out. Using Silent Hill 2 for a pachislot in the same year as the Silent Hills cancellation isn’t even a surprise, it’s just painfully disappointing.
