Tam-Tam (Playmatic 1975) - Loading

Format: 1080p60

I'll be honest: this kind of pinball machine with an "exotic" theme makes me nervous.  It can be difficult to figure out what is going on and it's also possible that the people making the game are relying on stereotypes and not really thinking about the culture they are depicting.

After a fair amount of research, I figured out that what's probably going on here is a particular kind of festival in Vanuatu.  I based this guess on a couple of things:  One, the name of the game, "Tam-Tam" probably refers to a particular type of wood slit drum that is used in Vanuatu (and other nearby islands), even if I couldn't find any examples of a tam-tam that looks like the drum on the backglass.  Two, the way that the main figure is dressed and the sticks he is holding suggests that he might be taking part in a dance performed at a Toka festival, a cultural event that happens every few years in Vanuatu.

With that in mind, I kept the video simple in order not to introduce more uncertainty.  The video is made with the game's backglass, and the audio is taken from a tam-tam performance at a recent festival in Vanuatu that was broadcast on YouTube.