Arino holding the DS game for the show.

If you don't already know what Game Center CX is well, I'll tell you: a Japanese T.V. show which started out being about Japanese arcades and retro games, with a "challenge" featuring Shinya Arino, a Japanese comedian with meagre gaming skills. The series has had its own DS game (released in the west as Retro Game Challenge) and a sequel has just been launched in Japan, too.

The segment featuring Arino has ballooned in popularity and is now the centre of the show. Possibly his most famous challenge has been playing through Takeshi's Challenge (the infamously worst/hardest Famicom game ever) in one sitting. If you haven't seen it before it's well worth it:

[youtube:hvjYp7mpKV4]

The latest offering is a two part special on the Japanese Nintendo Channel and is basically just Arino-san playing a few games from the Virtual Console wherein the words "Game Over" appear with regularity. With any luck this will get subtitled by someone in the near future and put on You Tube. In the meantime just enjoy the visuals and Arino-san's "unique" playing style:

[youtube:IQcV_SsEIVQ]

The games featured include:

  • Yōkai Dōchūki (PC Engine, a port of a Namco arcade game never released outside of Japan)
  • Ninja JaJaMaru-kun (Famicom, available on NA/EU VC thanks to a Hanabi Festival in 2007)
  • The Super Shinobi (Megadrive, known as Revenge of Shinobi outside of Japan)
  • Kaizou Choujin Shubibinman (PC Engine, an action platform game from NCS)
  • Alex Kidd in Miracle World (SMS, yet another action platform game. I'm sensing a theme here...)
  • Golden Axe (Megadrive)
  • Super Gussun Oyoyo (Super Famicom, a puzzle game where you need to build blocks to help a baby get to an exit -- like one of the modes in Tetris Party)

I've gotten some more ideas for future Virtual Console purchases; hopefully you'll be inspired too!