ZXPACHINKO

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This game simulates Pachinko, that Japanese sensory assault where you fire steel balls through metal pegs amidst blinding lights, anime screens, and deafening noise whilst your brain floods with dopamine until you swap your balls for prizes that mysteriously turn into cash at the "totally unrelated" shop next door.

 PACOVESPA has captured this experience as 32 monochrome diamonds on a black and white screen where you've got 5 balls per game launched by hammering SPACE to watch a a lonely ball crawl with all the excitement of watching paint dry, bouncing via a physics engine so advanced it just flips a coin (left-straight-right) at each peg, scoring "points" that are literally the column number where it lands (0-9 repeated). The ball moves like a melting glacier because the programme laboriously checks all 32 pegs each frame, and brilliantly only erases the previous ball when it's NOT on a peg, leaving ghost trails of floating balls like circular acne across your screen. Best of all, when your 5 balls run out and "GAME OVER" appears, restarting doesn't reset your score—you just keep adding points forever in a bonkers infinite counter. 

PACOVESPA has nailed Pachinko's essence though: a hypnotic, addictive game with zero player control, except instead of strobe lights, J-pop at 120 decibels, animated waifus and millions of balls thundering in a parlour where Japanese salarymen chase the dream of "this time it'll pay out", you're sat in sepulchral silence pressing SPACE five times watching a single ball crawl across a grid while your Spectrum hums, achieving the brain stimulation of counting sheep—which explains why the author admits it's a "Japanese game of chance that bores sheep".