Warehouse Games: Goodbye to a Legend
This is the Kawasaki branch of Anata no Warehouse (“Your Warehouse”), a chain of amusement arcades in the Kantou region around Tokyo. The Kawasaki branch is a fantasy recreation of the Kowloon Walled City, a mutant rat-king of buildings housing a Hong Kong slum that was demolished in 1994. Warehouse Kawasaki is also home to some very important original arcade cabinets from the 1970s, 80, and 90s.
On 17 November 2019, Warehouse Kawasaki will close down.
In tribute, Arcade Tokyo is running a series of posts about this legendary arcade and its games, starting today with an overview of its incredible presentation.
The Kowloon Walled City is a fascinating story, appealing to architects and anthropologists alike for its emergent organisation and inventive, regulation-defying physical structure. At Kawasaki Warehouse, it’s a run-down metropolis of street food and neon lights – a Blade Runner back alley.
The grimy facade sits in pristine surroundings in Kawasaki. Anything rusted, worn-out or dilapidated has been very carefully presented that way.
The neighbours must have been thrilled.
Inside, a retro game corner sits in a street scene of exposed and roughed-up concrete, scattered with worn-out posters and notices from Hong Kong backstreets. Washing hangs up high at an apartment balcony; a stall of plastic roasted ducks sits next to the vending machines.
The themed decor runs to the toilets — the darkest, filthiest corner of the establishment. But it’s not really filthy of course, because we’re in Tokyo. The Toto Washlet bidet-lavatory awaits in the stall with its extensive electronic control panel. Anything you touch is impeccably clean.
Amusingly, the faux-filth is deemed unbecoming of female patrons, whose bog looks like they moved it brick by brick from Disneyland.
Games, though?
So this place is nuts. It’s done the rounds online over the years, and the whole Kowloon thing is phenomenal. But this is an arcade – so how are the games?
The retro cabinet collection is jaw-dropping. A trio of sit-in Sega cabs at the entrance: Space Harrier, Outrun, and Rad Mobile. Then there’s Darius, Gauntlet, a deluxe Street Fighter cab, a sit-in Virtual-On, Sega’s 1979 Monaco GP stand-up with the wheel and a handful more, plus some cocktail cabs of Space Invaders type stuff. The retro corner alone is worth the journey from central Tokyo.
Beyond the museum pieces, there’s all the latest Big Things – in long rows, clean, up to date and well implemented: all the music cabs have headphone sockets, all the racers are in multiples and the layout is spacious and cool. They’ve even had designated smoking locations since way before that caught on, so it stinks less than most places.
Expansive as the videogame section is, it only takes up a fraction of the building, the rest of which is given over to medal games, darts, a manga café, a pool hall (where you can get a beer) and a restaurant.
Heading out to Kawasaki for a night at a game centre might seem like a bit of a trek, but this place is special. The game selection is top drawer and, ironically given its styling, it’s cleaner and more spacious than anything in the middle of Tokyo. The themepark presentation and non-videogame activities might even give you a chance of convincing less game-obsessed acquaintances to join you.
Goodbye, Warehouse Kawasaki. Happy memories.
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More posts coming this week, looking at some of the classic games at Warehouse.
Photographer and writer covering Tokyo arcade life – the videogames, the metropolis and the people
