As with any Japan trip, we visited many game centers and were tempted by countless crane game prizes. These run the gamut from figures to toys to housewares to clothing to food to…
To a box of ziplock containers! Sometimes I wonder if the operators just put anything in a machine to see what people will try to win?
An attempt usually costs ¥100 (about 65 US cents) although some newer or more desirable prizes can cost ¥200 a go. There’s a lot of randomness and frustration involved with the machines, and one of the announcements periodically piped over the AV at one Akiba game center is on the nail when it simply says “You are unlikely to win”! The fun is in the trying though, and winning is icing on the cake.
I won two ‘prize figures’ (the term used to describe figures primarily available via crane games) this past trip. The first – Marin from Dress-Up Darling – cost me ¥4600 which is a ridiculous amount (that’s 46 tries!) but the character is a current favourite of mine. Here’s a better look:
I like this because it’s small! I didn’t know when I won her, but it’s also a very high demand prize figure right now, and we rarely saw it in the resellers (shops which sell prize figures) and the few times we did it was ¥5000 or more.
A few days after I won the above, a new figure of the same character came out and literally overnight was featured in many machines in every game center we visited:
That’s four machines at Gigo in Akiba.
And four others at an Ikebukuro arcade. If you look closely you’ll see they show off the figure in the machine, to tempt you further:
I got very lucky with this one, winning it in only four attempts (¥400). With so many in machines it was readily available at the resellers, but even then she was ¥2500 or more. Here’s mine:
She’s a lot bigger than the other Marin, and once I open her she’ll probably go in one of my curios.
In addition I bought the above two from resellers. They were each inexpensive (¥1500, or about $10) and the boxes were lightweight and not too big. I bought Shalltear (on the right) because I’d watched some episodes of Overlord the night before and I found her character funny! I don’t know anything about the character on the left but I like that one of her pupils is a clock 🙂
Buying figures at resellers can be challenging due to the abundance of choice. Many new prize figures appear in crane games weekly and the better resellers have hundreds to choose from! You may desire a particular character only to find five or more to choose from, some with multiple colour variants! Most prize figures are inexpensive, but occasionally older or very desirable/rare figures can be over $100.
On the last morning, during my Akiba ‘speedrun’ before we left for the airport, I was determined to win KLS a cute stuffed frog from a machine at Hirose in Akiba. I’d put a few yen in it the day before without luck, but money was to be no object this morning.
I was alone in the arcade except for an employee who I could tell was watching me repeatedly failing. After about ¥1500 in attempts I asked him if he had any suggestions and he obviously took pity on me by opening the machine and putting the frog right on the precipice (as you can see above)! Even then victory wasn’t certain but when I failed he did it again and I suspected he was going to ensure my victory. What a nice guy! The next go, the frog was mine.
Kristin was very happy with the frog, who will now live happily on a shelf.
