Is there a classic you long to play in the wild?
Border Break: play online – with school-skipping kids during the day or with family-shirking salarymen at night.
Good old rail shooters up for a one-coin-stand. Maybe these are for gaijin rolling off the escalator, spluttering into port from the alien seas of UFO catchers and Nesica Live.
In your capacious Western home you probably have *two* display cases for prizes you have won in UFO catchers: one for the Japanese schoolgirl figurines and one for the model aircraft-carriers.
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. This second post covers the original 1985 sit-in cabinet for Sega’s timeless jetpack-em-up.
You’re flying. You drive these paradise roads, wide open, five lanes all yours, a flawless plane of tarmacadam, whiteline paint in perfect rectangles. You stream through a pristine beach of white sand. Pristine – when you think about it – apart from the five-lane carriageway dragged through, weeks under construction by belching diggers. Don’t overthink it. You’re flying. Palm trees.
#SpaceHarrier at #TaitoHey. #Taito ashtray, #BubbleBobble strip and #100yen coin.
Arcade hardware is an aid to escapism. Just travelling to the arcade makes a ceremony of leaving your life behind – better than just tuning out your bedsit scraps and empties. Climb into a cabinet, climb into a game.
As a child I played Space Harrier on my friend’s Atari ST. It was beyond me. There was always another stage I believed in with unseen colours. Some magic just out of sight.
Continuing an unplanned miniseries of driving games over the last week or so, let’s go back to some legendary 80s racers by early Sega’s famous hotdog, Yu Suzuki.
The girls in Kantai Collection are aircraft carriers.
Taito Hey: the blue-lit legend arcade on Akiba‘s tower strip.
There’s something special about a young man and a young woman leaning together over a Kantai Collection machine.
What’s a nice aircraft carrier like you doing in a place like this?
Who says Japanese arcade gaming is all about teenage boys?
The basement battle arena blows out smoky gusts of sound as the door swings to and fro. Come on in.
Some people think Sega has faded away. Have they heard of Border Break?
The magic and disgrace of Japanese games all in one cabinet.
This is a seven-storey-tall billboard showing the teenage-girl-cum-aircraft-carrier stars of an arcade trading card game.
