Game centers in Japan are where you go to play arcade games or win prizes from crane games. They’re also full of gacha machines that vend trinkets and little toys for anywhere from ¥100 and up. Depending on the size of the game center, they may contain other activities as well.
Retro arcade gaming seems to be picking up steam here, and in addition to the worlds best arcade (in my opinion), Hirose Entertainment Center (which I blogged about a lot last year), one of the big Akiba GiGo arcades has now converted one floor to retro machines.
Game centers are very popular in Japan, and the ones in Akiba are always flocked with locals and tourists alike. The biggest draw seems to be the crane games, and the contents change at a dizzying pace.
This machine with standing otters as a prize is in a game center in the station I walk past every day to and from the hotel. One day these otters turned up – they hadn’t been there the day before – and I watched a couple feed money into the machine trying to win one (they didn’t). The next day the machine contained new prizes, and I never saw the otters in any other machine. This has happened a lot just this past week alone, and the release calendar on one of the big Taito game centers shows they get new prizes an average of two per day.
The variety is as always mind-boggling, and it seems anything can end up in these machines. In addition to the vast quantity of anime merchandise including figurines, I saw bike pumps, freezer bags, toilet paper and the always popular food and snack items. Almost everything is licensed as well, and the licenses are as varied as the contents.
Winning is never easy, although more than once this trip I got (very!) lucky on my first coin. I tried to win the above figure and was unsuccessful, so I walked to a nearby reseller and bought her outright. Almost anything you see in machines can be bought from such places, who obtain them from people who win and then sell them for profit!
I love the crane games, and always look forward to seeing what’s in them and tossing a few ¥100 coins in to try my luck. I wish I’d had more luggage space this trip; I certainly would have played more!
Gachas continue their inexorable path to covering Japan, and even more so than cranes the trinkets in them can be just about anything. Want a minidisc keychains, a Jason ring, a voice-activated RPG-themed room alarms or a kpop ring with your favourite singers name on them? Just head to the nearest bank of gacha machines!
What about a drag queen acrylic standee? A mini model kit of a camping girl? A tiny model fishing rod? Or even a model ‘flat gacha’ machine? Once again they have you covered.
Some game centers include pachinko machines like this Godzilla one I played for about five minutes on just ¥100 (and I still don’t know what was happening). They have entire floors of medal based games and gambling games (like horse racing). They’ve got networked quiz games and racing games and all sorts of IC card based games. I’ve blogged about it all many times over the years, and I still wish the USA had such a robust system of high quality entertainment complexes like the Japanese game center.
It’s one of the many reasons I love visiting here. Every time I’m in Japan I spent hours in these places and I love to see how they change each trip. I’m happy that they seem to have weather covid and are booming again 🙂