A few posts ago I mentioned Shinjuku Sportsland’s 32-cabinet Gundam setup. Well, here it is.

Game Spot 21 is a real-deal arcade. Finger-crossing that it comes back post-Covid – and dirtier than ever.

Easter eggshaped image from the loserdrop stairwell that squeezes you between the prize machines and a Chinese into a Fight Club-style fighting-game fight club.

In the 2020 metropolitan hellscape of 1988’s Akira, the overgrown, decrepit city is an analogue for sick, bulbous, industro-techno-organic mutations.

Pokemon was a multi-green Game Boy time-waste from the playground. You caught ‘em all, some of your friends did, then you grew up. In Tokyo, your kidhood just kept playing.

Bright lights in Tokyo simmer in the humidity and diffuse gently through the sultry air. In this way, competing multicolours and flashing bulbs seem somehow peaceful. They say “Come on in… chill out… GAME.”

Akihabara is the pristine gamer paradise daydreamt of over Mean Machines in the Mega Drive days.

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?

What do you think of when you see this slick plastic carrier with Shiny Sonic decal?

The legendary Taito Hey is portrayed as some sort of utopian wonderland, but it's actually a locked-down regime of authoritarian imperatives. Here are their inflexible demands:

Who says Japanese arcade gaming is all about teenage boys?

Yoyogi's mainstreet game centre, a hot night and nearly closing.

Which queue do you join? 

This is a seven-storey-tall billboard showing the teenage-girl-cum-aircraft-carrier stars of an arcade trading card game.