Japan Feb 2012 Part 8

Untold Anecdote:  While browsing The Broadway we stopped by the gallery.  The exhibition was cosplayers.  All of them were quite good an elaborate.  Between Yuri, Renfrew, U1, and myself we had a losing contest on who could identify the most.  The Japanese came out the winner, with Renfrew following, and I lost horribly.  Able to identify double the number of anyone else.  Go me.

Arrogant Sons of Bitches - So Let's Go! Nowhere!

Shibuya held a bright clear sky over my head.  I surprisingly didn't feel completely disgusting coming out of that love hotel.  I stopped by the Taito arcade opposite scramble crossing and found the delightful pikachu I'd be eyeing and trying to win this whole trip.  It even looked winnable.  Too bad Yuri and I had already sunk 1200 yen into the devil rat.

Guy didn't want to go to America.  Sorry my cousin's new baby.  We tried hard to win the adorable hate monster.  So instead I went and did some g-journ-ism.  Renfrew asked if I had played Border Break.  I said it was a gundam-counterstrike sort of thing.  I then told him I hadn't played it at all and only looked at it briefly.  I was called a horrible human being.  Now to correct that!

Border Break by SEGA for Arcades.  You're a giant robot that is more or less a person that jumps and dashes and shoots other giants robots that are more or less people.  The control scheme is an interesting fascinating combination of joystick and mouse bolted to the table.  The mouse is a little more mobile than the picture might imply, but you can't play it like you would a normal mouse.  It feels weird that it has no possible Z-axis movement, which happens more than you might realize.

My 200 yen gave me credits of time.  I played through the lengthy and too moronic tutorial (This is how you do X, watch X happen, now try and do X.)  I played a control points match against the computer which was probably a mistake.  There were 8 cabinets back to back and I'm sure the 3 dudes using the others would have liked company.  The computer ravaged me and my computer teammates.  They were merciless in making sure I died.  At the end I was getting spawnkilled.  I ran out of points before the match ran out of time which says a lot about the business model.

I have to give artificially high standards to Sega games.  This felt like a generic PC game.  It didn't have razor sharp controls I expect from Sega or arcade games.  The controls didn't feel as intuitive as they needed to be.  Switching weapons was particularly weird.  You had to hold a button and then move the mouse over to which weapon you wanted.  This is an team battle game.  Having a menu overtake the screen and then it being a strange menu to interact with is a good way to get killed.  I couldn't see why they had it like that.

Maybe I just needed to play a few more games, but the game didn't exactly make me want to play a few games.  Meanwhile Gundam Arcade whatever is by fierce and fast and even sucking at it is great.  I just wish the new PS3 release wasn't 100 dollars a copy.

 I hobbled up to the bookstore next door intent on buying the newest volume of Jojo, Jojo Lion.  I found a hell of a lot of Jojo, but not the one I wanted.  Jojo is a pretty great reason to learn Japanese.  It's one of the few things I've read in the language and immediately gone "translating this is fucking the point up."  Jojo-less I decided I'd actually try again for jeans in Harajuku, despite how difficult my knee would making trying on jeans.  First stop was LaForet to try and find a pair of Nudies I could love as my own.

2 weeks later, passing on them was the right play, probably.  I liked them but I didn't 16,800 yen like them.  That's a weirder fit the more I look at it.  Better move on.  MOVE ON.

I headed over to Oriental Bazaar the place to get your Japan Japan Japan souvenirs. I did a circle with the elevators and limping and picked up some gifts for my neighbors.  I would forget to try Kiddie Land next door for MonHun goods.  Oh well.  I went and had Lotteria for lunch.  I hoped to dine on their Tandoori Chicken Sandwich.  They no longer had it.  I settled on a burger from a korean fast food chain in Japan copying American fast food chains for burgers and fries.  An old man much like the one playing the DBZ game up there seemed upset that I was in there.

I looked like a tourist with my overstuffed backpacked (souvenirs).  I felt like a tourist.  I wished I had styled my hair.  My leg didn't like walking around all day and it was only 11:30.  I appreciated that they only gave me a small fries and I that I only ate half of them and didn't feel like I wasted money.  I got up and kept moving.

Bomb the Music Industry - Campaign for a Better Weekend

Look at that modern HRJK.  Family mart on the bottom, expensive clothing store on the second floor.  We got an old man examining the only ricer I saw the whole trip (Mitsubishi Lancer.)  I was pretty dissappointed outside of that weird ass car I didn't see any other ricers in rural mountainous Saitama.  By the way if there's a better term than ricers for "sopped up Japanese cars for illegal racing" please tell me.

I started to hobble towards Omotesando station.  I limped up the walkway to get to the other side of the street.  As I was going down the other side I heard footsteps running and then sort of stop right behind me.  I looked behind me and saw a guy just stopped in front of me.  I was continuing to go down the steps one at a time.  He still just sort of stood right behind me.  I skirted to the otherside of the three person wide staircase and he ran past me.  I asked him, "What the fuck is your problem?"  He timidly looked back and kept moving.

I passed through even more stairs and ramps to get to Omotesando station.  I don't know why going there was at all a good idea with my leg.  I got on the train that rushed me up to Suehirocho.  I decided to make one more pass at Akiba.  I was looking for a combination of things I have been looking for on this trip.  I was looking for the first Jojo Bizarre's Adventure game for the PS2.  Hobbling up and down Akiba I didn't find it.  I also checked a store I had known for years as a great place for shooters and somewhat rarer stuff.  I discovered it was actually a Trader.  It also no longer had a lot of shooters and rarer stuff.  I picked up the amazing Eschatos for a friend at a different Trader.

My limp was making me feel more and more like a sleeze.  The backpack was making me feel like a tourist. It was time to hit Don Quioxte and check out the absolute headquarters of everything AKB48, also to hopefully and successfully buy the JoJo phonestrap I had seen in the DQKWSK.  I even took a break to play Deathsmiles IIX.  On the escalator up three schoolgirls approached the AKB merchandise store and screamed like...well.   That's all I needed.  I headed back down.  Outside there was a line of about 200 people there to maybe see one of the two daily AKB shows.  Do you know those things are sold out far in advance?

Everything about me made me feel to sleazy to try and get a better picture of the line.  So settle for the back of the end of it so you can't see how long it is.  I'd say 80% of it was dudes and 20% of it was high school students.  Why do HS students wear their uniforms on their days off?  School was out that week as far as I knew.  Yes they were actual students (I think?)


It was approaching 3pm so I caught the train to Shinagawa planning on coming back to Akiba without my bookbag so I could play some arcade games.  That didn't happen.  From here on Yuri and I would be staying at the Shinagawa Prince Hotel.  I wanted something kind of fancy and with an amazing view to send off the last time I would see Tokyo for a while.

It turns out I had to pay 100 yen if I wanted to use the lobby computer for 10 minutes.  Also that my view was mostly of other buildings and the Microsoft Japan headquarters.  So I took a shower to refresh, and dried myself in full view of that illustrious corporation.  Life goals you didn't have until 30 seconds before you perform them.

NEXT TIME: That evening, the next day and to the airport maybe!? To Part 9!

Japan Feb 2012 Part 5

The Blue Hearts - Mayonaka no Telephone

A story from the previous day I had forgotten to mention.  While at a green crosswalk I started to cross but a white van turned and just about ran me over.  A policeman chased them down on foot.  It was a two part crosswalk passing over a highway so I got a front row view of the policeman giving the guy a ticket and frequent pointing at me to show, "Hey you nearly killed this guy."

This is by far the most photo heavy entry so far.

Japan Feb 2012 Part 2

Mighty Mighty Bosstones - Like a Shotgun

After waking up we checked out of the hotel we had planned to enjoy the nice day and walk down to Ueno, all of one station away.  It was windy as hell and my Texas body wasn't adapted to such piercing hurricanes.  So we caught the train and waited inside the gates for my SBro to arrive.

 

I'm still stupidly proud of how that image turned out. I should maybe actually watch 48 Hours for the first time in celebration.  The title almost proved true too ho ho!

Parodius (Various)

I've never really gotten into the Parodius series and last week I decided to go ahead and play as many as was convenient hen read the HG101 article.  Basically they're parodies of Konami's other shooters primarily Gradius.  There are a lot of cross over characters and most of the games also use Twinbee's Bells.  Twinbee is another series I plan on going through soon.  I played Gokujou Parodius, Parodius Da!, and  Jikkyou Oshaberi Parodius S. 

It helps that I played mostly the SFC versions of the games and my emulator decided to recognize rewind.  I wasn't playing these for skill.  I was playing them for research more or less.  They aren't as interesting as I was expecting and even while I was playing them they sort of ran together.  The most identifying mark between them was the cast of characters I could control.  Also that Da! was incredibly hard possibly based on the character I was chosen.  After about 20 minutes of rewinding and dying in the same 30 seconds I quit.  It feels like some sections of the game are completely based on if you get an invincibility bell or not.  I know that saved my skin a 3 or 4 times across the games.

Jikkyou is notable because it has a guy narrating all the way through on a SFC game.  I believe the cart size is impressively huge.  Also you fight Twinbee with tits.  I mean Twinbee has breasts.  yeahh...  I guess I need something more than honk honk splurt bwaaoooohhhh humor.  I couldn't tell you a think about the music. There is a lot of non-necessary animation which in my mind reads "these guys really liked this project and were proud of it" than engaging to me.

I guess I'm just wired weird.  Sorry Parodius!  I might still buy Otomedius despite everything telling me it's not a very good game.

Japanese Arcade games in June 2011

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.