Hey dudes! I went to Japan last week. I played a bunch of arcade games. I won a bunch of useless crap at UFO Catchers. None of the stuff I won was a Sonic the Hedgehog doll despite it being Sonic's Birthday because Sega's Joyopolis is a joy-less money sucker. Seriously skip that place and go up the escalator to Odaiba Ichi-chome street old-fashioned fun times. They have a sit down Outrun machine! And Virtua Cop 2. And Point Blank!
I also got to play Donkey Kong on a cocktail cabinet. If you've never had the opportunity you are missing out. That game is somewhat terrifying. It just has incredibly creepy music and sound effects. I'm sure there are people that have haunted childhood memories from the experience.
Also in that place was a Puck-Man. Which is just Pac-Man with it's original more graffiti capable name.
Also in Odaiba past the Toyota showroom thing and the ferris wheel was what was my favorite arcade in Tokyo. It had a wide variety of just about everything classic and neat and Sega. Now it's a freaking depressing ghost town (complete with an overpriced haunted house attraction). I almost cried over it's new state, if we weren't dog tired at that point. Instead I sat on a filthy panda and complained.
The new Elevator Action is pretty neat. It has an opening and closing elevator door and was almost too easy. Really expensive cool set up, but I'm fairly certain ultra expensive cabinet isn't the best way to go for today's game centers. Opening door, second TV monitor, elevator close, open, up, down buttons, light guns.
I almost feel bad that I couldn't tell you the name of Sega's Pirate couples shooting game that replaced the Ocean couples shooting game. Pirates are more interesting to shoot than fish. Especially ghost pirates.
As awesome as the atmosphere was, Warehouse was remarkably different than I was expecting. It didn't have any of the classic arcade machines I had seen on Game Center CX. Granted that was filmed at least 7 years ago, but still. I did get to try out Love Plus Arcade. You get two dates with the girl and an actual picture you took of her. The creepiest part about it (outside of all of it) was the take one/leave one photo stand. Can't believe some people don't care about their Love Plus girlfriend's privacy. Some of those photos are embarassing!
The Hatsune Miku Rhythm game that I don't know the proper name of was there to. It's an okay rhythm game. It features great big delicious buttons that are softer on your hands than Pop'n. Probably better if you have any love for vocaloid music. I don't.
It was probably more fun than JuBeat Knit. Which I think wins for being the biggest waste of my time. I had to do the tutorial which was about 5 minutes of my life and before each song it did a net search for other players so that we could play together. There was no option to skip this and it took about three minutes of my life for each song. I spent that time running around the machine. Also, holy fuck on that name huh?
In arcade that was everything I hoped the other arcades would be, Mikado in Takadanobaba is super awesome. Tons of games that you or anyone else would want to play. Virtual On: 4 Force, Shooting Love 20XX, Afterburner, Marble Madness w/Trackball!, every Capcom fighter, Starforce, fucking Challenger!
Good times for everyone. Play Challenger (it's for the famicom so just emulate it.) learn what Challenger is and all of it's problems. Then get a friend to play Challenger without any explanation. Giggle like a moron. It's one of the original kusoge.
They also had Darius Burst:Another Chronicle! It is a better experience that I expected. I even played it with two other people. What is somewhat an inspired choice is you share lives. That also backfires if one of you teammates is the girlfriend. The cabinet has extremely good (and no doubt expensive) speakers that really help the experience. I also wasn't expecting the bench to be as big as it was. There was room for the three of us and all of our bags/purse with room to spare. I'm saying is I was happy to spend 100 yen on something that cost the owners probably as much as a Mitsubishi Lancer.
The place also had working Darius Gaiden and G Darius cabinets. Which I think was the first time I saw both. I played Night Raider and cried I didn't find a single place with Space Harrier. Until I found a place with Space Harrier. I didn't expect it to be in Hey Arcade. It was though. I kept having dudes stop and watch me play. Which I didn't expect. But It was my goal for the trip. Play Space Harrier. The other goal was play Deathsmiles. Which also had to wait until Hey. I had already broken the high score table over my knee when the girlfriend got pissed off because I was taking too long.
Let's end on that, the worst moment of the whole week.
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