I’ve heard that arcades here were affected by Covid, with some closing for good and others shrinking. From what I’ve seen in Tokyo, this doesn’t seem to be the case and there’s still lots of games present in most ‘game centers’.
Of course arcades have changed profoundly since the 1980s, and very few (if any?) these days are simple solo play cabinets. They still exist in certain Akiba arcades, but the majority of video games today are dedicated machines, often internet connected and multiplayer.
To make money arcades need to offer experiences the player can’t have at home, and the companies that make the games continue to innovate here in ways alien to the rest of the world. We don’t even have game centers in America, much less ones that can accommodate a half dozen of the above Gundam machine all connected together both locally and online.
The above is a quiz game that up to 99 players can play online. The arcade I was in at the time (Round 1 Kyoto) had about 20 of these machines in rows, as well as a separate machine for signing up or creating accounts. You can even win real-world prizes if you do well. Amazing!
Here’s one of those (addictive) fishing games where you hold a fake reel and wind in the fish when you catch it. This schoolgirl was playing all alone and as we walked past she was reeling in a gigantic ‘boss fish’!
This is a RTS game where you control the action using a joystick and a ‘light pen’. The graphics are amazingly good and nearby is a dedicated terminal where you can view player records and even replays! Once again the game is linked online so you can play against those in other game centers across Japan.
I don’t know much about this one since it didn’t have an attract mode but I’m guessing some sort of FPS moba (like Overwatch). As you can see it’s brand new and it’s even possible it was being tested (they had four cabinets) since I haven’t seen it elsewhere.
This was a curiosity: at a tiny Game Center in Kyoto we saw candy cabs modified to display the output from PCs (or even Misters) running Touhou doujin games. And if that sentence doesn’t mean much to you don’t worry: the gist is that some arcades these days even include ‘independent’ games! I saw similar in Nakano yesterday, and it’s reassuring to think that if brand new ‘official’ machines are all about multiplayer and dedicated cabs, then it’s nice to think of enthusiasts repurposing the old-style cabinets for retro-style gaming.
I played Bombergirl today which was a bit of a moba-rework of the old multiplayer game. You may also notice the graphics have received an… update. It wasn’t great, but it was fun, and once again you can see the cabinet was needlessly custom, with a tall vertical main screen, a lower touch screen, three buttons with their own screens and a strange thumb-joystick.
Music games remain ever-popular, and in fact are the most common type of machine in every arcade we’ve visited. If an arcade has only one single game, it will be a music game. As with other types of game they also have become fabulously customized and dedicated, with many features you’d never see at home such as circular touchscreens or unusual control systems.
The taiko drumming games are always popular and almost always being played. Many photos in this blog don’t have players in them because I was in the arcades very early, but even then the drum games are usually busy.
The music levels of arcades (and yes I mean level: the arcades are often multi-floored in Tokyo) are cacophonous and brilliant with flashing lights and vivid colour. Even if you don’t play the games it’s an exhilarating experience walking through one.
Here’s me playing an IC card game ‘for kids’. This one is based on Ultraman, and you put your IC cards of the Ultramen you want on your team on the game console, and the game ‘scans’ them in for the game. Of course it uses NFC chips in the cards and scanning is immediate, but kids must get a massive thrill getting a new card in a wafer pack or from the toy store and looking forward to using it on the machine to beat the next difficulty level! The game is a lot of fun to play as well, and naturally you can see I got an S-Rank my first try 🙂
I took many photos and this post could be twice as long, but you get the idea. Video games in arcades are far from dead in Japan, and in fact are still innovating. If I lived here I don’t doubt I’d go far down the rabbit hole the IC based RPG strategy games, but as it is I find it yet another aspect of this country that fascinates me every time I visit.