Bagatelle (from the
Château de Bagatelle) is a
billiards-derived indoor table game, the object of which is to get a number of balls (set at nine in the 19th century) past wooden pins (which act as obstacles) into holes that are guarded by wooden pegs; penalties are incurred if the pegs are knocked over. It probably developed from the table made with raised sides for
trou madame, which was also played with ivory balls and continued to be popular into the later nineteenth century, after which it developed into
bar billiards, with influences from the French/Belgian game (with supposed Russian origins). A bagatelle variant using fixed metal pins,
billard japonais, eventually led to the development of
pachinko and
pinball. Bagatelle is also laterally related to
miniature golf.