Forums

Topic: The Japanese Arcade

Posts 1 to 8 of 8

Bankai

From my recent trip to Japan I learned something - Japanese arcades are awesome with one exception.

Why they're awesome:

  • The variety of games. In Australia, the dwindling number of arcades offer the following - DDR and clones - Motobike/ car racing and clones, skill tester games, and light gun games. Mabye some Air Hockey

Japanese arcades offer all that, as well as awesome stuff like Mario Kart: Arcade edition, Shining Force, Pachinko, Darts - and Magic: The Gathering style games.

It's the last one that is most exciting. What you do is go to a booth and buy a starter deck of cards. You then sit at a large game table, and use those cards to summon units, which you then move around the game board in a very strategy-game fashion. Your movements are recreated on the video game screen as your units wheeling around and attacking in real time. You can buy booster packs of cards to get more units, and save your progress on a specially-designed card.

In fact, many of the arcade games in Japan let you save progress to an individual card. So you create a character, do some fighting, save, and come back at another time.

The downside

You can smoke in Japanese arcades. The stench is almost overpowering and every time I went into an arcade, I came out tired.

Japanese arcades are awesome (and generally occupy 4-5 floors of a building). As far as I'm concerned, they could be popular in Australia/ US/ Europe too (especially with no smoking rules), but the better Japanese arcade games won't ever get English translations

Adam

I am infinitely jealous. That sounds like a dream. I do have a low tolerance for smoke in enclosed spaces though. If I ever go to Japan, I'll have to bring a mask.

Come on, friends,
To the bear arcades again.

Bankai

weirdadam wrote:

I am infinitely jealous. That sounds like a dream. I do have a low tolerance for smoke in enclosed spaces though. If I ever go to Japan, I'll have to bring a mask.

If it wasn't for the smoke, I think my girlfriend would have lost me for the entire holiday. Japanese arcades are easily as entertaining as a day at a theme park.

Oh and Mario Kart: Arcade edition was developed by Namco. Mr and Mrs Pacman, and a Pac-Ghost are playable characters. MR PACMAN IS THE GOD OF KARTING.

Adam

I've actually played the Mario Kart Arcade game. I wasn't particularly impressed. I found it hard to control, and the courses didn't seem that interesting. I didn't have long to play it though, sadly. Would love to get the chance again.

Come on, friends,
To the bear arcades again.

Bankai

weirdadam wrote:

I've actually played the Mario Kart Arcade game. I wasn't particularly impressed. I found it hard to control, and the courses didn't seem that interesting. I didn't have long to play it though, sadly. Would love to get the chance again.

I found it pretty playable as an arcade game - it didn't compare to the home console version, but at the same time, a home console version doen't have eight people sitting in booths racing against one another - the arcade vibe to it makes it an entirely different kind of entertaining.

I quite enjoyed the new Shining Force arcade game too - it's very hack-n-slash, but I have one awesome character saved on my credit-card like gamecard.

Adam

Ah, it was just a lone MK cabinet for me, unfortunately. Everything is better with eight players.

Come on, friends,
To the bear arcades again.

  • Page 1 of 1

This topic has been archived, no further posts can be added.