Location: Akihabara

Staring Down the Brown Tube

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!

Staring Down the Brown Tube

Restart Mission?

I’m hearing bad things about the independents. Even Sega is shutting shops. Akiba 2-kan – iconic! – is gone. Photos of staff bowing outside in thanks for years of patronage from also-bowing, clapping crowds.

Restart Mission?

Fight, Sing

Teeth bared; talons out. But look at the posture of their right hands. Claws, but relaxed claws, ready to swoop at the attack buttons with quite a travel. Wouldn’t your response be quicker if you started nearer the buttons? It’s not that kind of reflexes. You play with rhythm, where the travel helps. Reflexes are to quickly change rhythm. If fighters were music games they’d be jazz duo jam sessions.

Fight, Sing

Blood Warrior

Mortal Kombat was supposed to be a Jean-Claude Van Damme game. No JC in the end, so they went for guys in pointy hats and balaclavas pulling each other’s spines out. And lo, born was a multimedia franchise up there with Care Bears and My Little Pony.

Blood Warrior

Flying Power Disc

Flying Power Disc (or, stupidly, Windjammers outside Japan) shows you a future of total sports perfection. This ultimate sport combines the pseudofunctional fetishwear of beach volleyball with the hardpolished maple of the NBA with the candyised plastic bodyarmour of the NFL with the circle going back and forth of Pong.

Flying Power Disc