A few posts ago I mentioned Shinjuku Sportsland’s 32-cabinet Gundam setup. Well, here it is.
The lights in Hey are famously blue. First foot off the IN escalator is *that* row of a dozen or so Egrets on either side. They actually have a Kodak PhotoPoint(TM) standee there now, yellow greyed by the blue light, with a cutout for where experts say to point your camera. That’s actually true!
I feel like I should have an obituary prepared for this game. It’s on a hell of a run – since 2006!
You had me at “you climb inside a big cupboard”.
Gundam Extreme Vs. absolutely does not give a shit about the modern world. Let’s go back: before Japan’s superfuture tech got caught pants-down by the smartphone era.
Pokemon means pocket monsters. Tekken means iron fist. Therefore: Pokken means pocket fist. Named for the scooping of hundredyens – or the skulking home in the cold.
A controller dangling off the front of an arcade cabinet? What a flimflam! Like a Toys R Us demo booth with a coinslot.
Dragon Ball is one of those franchises where you could easily spit out another something at a fingerclick. Everyone wants to make it; everyone wants to publish it; everyone wants to buy it. How many decades and a bottomless appetite. Click! Dragon Ball Zenkai Battle.
Since 2006, most Tokyo game centres have housed dark rows of glowing pods that look like a clandestine genetic experiment from The X Files. Inside these nerd incubators are rich supplies of gamer nutrition flowing to every available inlet of the body.
Taiko no Tatsujin: very Japanese but known out West after its PS2 dip in 2004.
Wangan Midnight is a typically epic Japanese comicbook streetracing story that ran from 1990 to 2015. Older gamers grew up with it like a sibling. To younger gamers it’s more like a parent – present since before your world existed. Just a fact of life, presumably eternal.
When has gaming ever let you down?
Caterpillar tracks, Tupperware-grade munitions, thundering tactile feedback. Which toylike kids’ Wii U game would you expect to have an arcade cabinet like this?
Get in the stink of the Tokyo arcade. 2 suits for ¥40,000. Made in China but made for Japan. They’ll last.
Yokohama Chinatown Sega, another of Tokyo's little heavens.
What do you mean the commas are in the wrong place?
Welcome to the Pokken room at Taito Station Shinjuku Minamiguchi Game World.
With these face-suckers you exit the world and have human interaction HarrisonBergerised by the asinine safespace of a videogame.
Where’s the best arcade in Tokyo? Anywhere upstairs.
Funabori is home to this perfect embodiment of the Sega World concept, flawlessly preserved from the 90s.
Which queue do you join?
