Otaku « Robot Claw

Archive for the ‘Otaku’ Category

‘Adamski Type’ (aka. The UFO Catcher Post)

Saturday, June 6th, 2009

UFO Catcher is the japanese term for ‘claw games’. These are devices where you manipulate a claw in an attempt to pick up a prize and drop it into a hole for collection. Here’s a shot of a typical UFO Catcher:

< UFO Catcher

These things are extremely popular here in Japan. As I mentioned in an earlier post, they are the ‘hook’ that gets people into arcades. They are typically the most abundant type of machine in any arcade and are placed at the most visible positions (almost always at street level). The range of prizes available are staggering and run the absolute gamut, with a tendency toward the cute, perhaps because these machines are very popular with female players (and not just young females). Here’s a random collection of shots of various catchers and their prizes:

From top left: sausages, stuffed bears, a pillow, Haruhi figurines, Monster Hunter cats and big stuffed bear heads. (The bear mascot incidentally is called Rilakkuma and is stupid popular here these days). In parts of town popular with girls (such as Shibuya) the machines are typically more likely to have cute goods (and not always toys), whereas in places popular with dudes (ie. Akihabara) the machines have dude-ish contents such as cute girl figurines or Gundam merchandise.

However these things don’t just contain toys, as you can see here:

From left: a refridgerated machine vending ice creams; a machine (in Odaiba) with live beetle prizes, and at right a machine (in Ueno) with panties as prizes (this was in a decidedly sleazy arcade…)

If you can imagine it, I’m sure someone in Tokyo has at one time or another put it in a UFO Catcher.

The machines come in all shapes and sizes, from very small with tiny claws to large with massive claws. Here are two examples of the latter:

The one on the right is actually a slight variant because instead of a claw is has two separately controlled fingers. It looks difficult.

The machines are almost always Y100 (about $1) per go, usually with 3 tries for Y200 or 6 for Y500. If the prize is particularly good (such as an iPod or something similar) the cost per attempt can be as high as Y500. However it is more or less moot because the technology in the catchers means that they are as much about chance as they are about skill.

Consider the following case. First, look at this image:

< Rabbit Bonanza!

That was a machine we saw yesterday in Ikebukuro. I wanted to win a rabbit, and KLS (happily) recorded me trying.

Watch the video here.

Yes I won a pink one, more by luck than skill (the claw hooked between the ear and the body). But you saw in the video the first time I tried the claw easily had the strength to lift the yellow rabbit (my initial target) into the air. I had three more attempts after the end of the video (the attendant asked us to stop videoing!) and the claw was so limp it basically couldn’t grab anything. It seemed very much so that the tension of the claw decreased dramatically after my win.

If you read this entry, you can see that this is extremely likely and almost certainly what happened.

Take a look at these images as further illustration of the canny ways the arcade owners use to minimize wins on UFO Catchers:

These images show the same prize in two different machines (a Gurren Laggan sheet). Look closely at the left image – note the anti-slip material placed under the sheet? On the right you can see the sheets are placed in a manner as if to suggest they could easily be knocked down. The catch in both cases is the sheets are quite heavy, probably heavier than the claws could even lift. So they can’t be budged due to the anti-slip stuff, or lifted due to weight. It would only take one try for a player to find this out, but they’re already out their Y100…

Another clever ruse. The prize is dangling directly over the slot you have to drop it into. But the claw can only just come down to the height of the ring. But that tiny ring is supporting all the weight of the Kapibarasan stuffed animal (which is over a foot long). So even assuming your aim is dead on, the chance of actually dislodging it is minute. This setup – making a win look trivial – is quite common.

The left image shows a Rilakkuma stuffed bear that is absolutely massive – easily over 1m in height. There’s no way it’s falling through the prize slot of any machine, so the arcade has an alternate win system – you have to pick up a balloon from a dish of water and drop the balloon into the slot. I’d wager this is borderline impossible, but I had to wait to take this photo today as a couple kept trying 🙂

The thing is, even when I know victory is unlikely and these things are engineered to keep my money. Even when I know the cost of playing is almost more than the value of the prize, well I still enjoy trying these guys. For instance…

< Rilakkuma

…I spent a good 5 or more minutes analyzing the above earlier tonight. Obviously there was no chance of actually picking up the motorized walking toy, but I kept wondering maybe I can knock it to the right if I do xxxxx…

I eventually gave up and walked away, but the machine came damn close to taking some more of my cash 🙂

I’ll end with a shot of something that did not come from a UFO Catcher, but very well may have come from a UFO!

< UFO Cat

Posted in Family, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku | 2 Comments »

Acrosatan

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

The title is the name of a monster from an old Ultraman series, a tiny model kit of which we saw today in a retro toy store in Akihabara. I don’t remember the cost, although it was probably low (under $20). However the Mandarake in Akihabara sold a Y2,100,000, approximately 20cm tall vinyl toy of another Ultraman monster, still bagged and in great condition. That’s US$21,000 approximately. Even for an unopened toy from more than 30 years ago that seems a tad steep 🙂

Akihabara is where the otaku (maniac fans) go for all their manga, anime, games and toys. It’s also the best place in Tokyo to buy electronics, play video games, or eat at maid cafes 🙂

The ‘big’ franchises these days are Monster Hunter (both the games and the merchandise), which is massive and featured in every store; Neon Genesis Evangelion (yes, even after almost 20 years the franchise is as strong as ever, bolstered by the recent films) and Queens Blade (the series of ecchi gamebooks has spawned a mini merchandising empire).

We checked all the major shops yesterday, and most of the minors, paying particular attention to the figure stores and the game stores. I managed to find the latest volumes of Guyver and Bastard!!, and picked up a Monster Hunter artbook and a slew of TCG cards from such series as Duel Masters (the 52nd expansion just came out!?!), Monster Hunter & Queens Blade (yes every big franchise gets a TCG…)

No Railfan yet Jim, and you can bet we’re looking everywhere. We’ve even discovered there are three games in the series (Japan, Korea and amazingly Chicago!) but the PS3 sections in stores are tiny and the used PS3 sections are tinier still.

In fact game stores are mostly about DS and Wii these days (unsurprisingly), with the next biggest section being PSP. PS2 still has a healthy following, but 360 sections are small and, as I said, PS3 sections so tiny they are hard to find. This will all change in time though, as the system is picking up steam. Not to mention the 800 lb gorilla of FF13 about to be released.

Even so, in most game stores the section of shelves devoted to advertising the upcoming release of Monster Hunter 3 on Wii is typically bigger than the entire PS3 sections!

Above left is a maid, who was handing out fliers advertising the maid cafe you can see in the middle photo. On the right is a shot of a billboard used to advertise all the maid cafes just in the Akihabara region. What was a novelty when we were here in 2006 has become a local tourist attraction, and as you can see there are a great many cafes now. Basically they are (apparently) overpriced restaurants serving average quality food, the attraction of which is the waitresses all dress in maid outfits.

< In Animate

The above was taken (on the sly) on the 5th or 6th floor of Animate (one of the mega otaku shops) and shows just the maid outfits they sell for cosplay. The professionally made Bleach outfits ($100 and up) were much more impressive, but as they were next to the counter I couldn’t get a shot due to the no photography rule 🙂

A couple more random Akiba shots. Once again, I’m guessing AW is boggling at the fact that you can just find gashapon out on the streets here. Put it this way – there are so many in just the few blocks of Akihabara, they have to put some out on the street!

In Japan, ninja slice kebab meat.
In Japan, some drinks are bionic.
In Japan, well I’ll let you work out this photo 🙂

We actually walked to Akihabara via Ueno, and spent some time in the park before most people were up.

This next shot is of the two statues outside Ueno Zoo entrance, overgrown with vines. Can you identify the two animals?

< What are these?

When I review the days shots, especially the ones KLS loves to take of me eating, I’m always struck by how it seems as if I had posed or hammed it up for the camera. The rightmost shot (dinner) is an ‘American Dog’ (which was eaten cold, but was actually decent). The middle shot though is more interesting, since it was a piece of chicken at KFC. And it was great. Here’s proof:

< Mmmmmmmmm

I bet most of you will like this video though!

And what better way to end todays entry that this way?

< Lest you forget

Posted in Family, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku | Comments Closed

Verschwende deine Jugend (aka The Arcade Post)

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009

Today in Akihabara (you can read more about our day’s events tomorrow, this post is all about video games), I sat down to play Death Smiles on the 5th floor of a Taito game arcade. Next to me was a Japanese man playing DoDonpachi Dai Fukkatsu, the best ‘bullet hell’ shooter ever made.

He was a savant. He may have been, and I swear I am not exaggerating here, the single best arcade gamer I have ever personally witnessed playing. His ability to dodge bullets was borderline supernatural. He did things I would not have believed a human could do had I not witnessed it. To understand: a ‘bullet hell’ shooting game is one in which the challenge is based not just around destroying the enemies, but also avoiding the seemingly unavoidable curtains of bullets they shoot your way. Not to go into too fine a detail, but success in the game results from practice, memorization, complete understanding of ‘hitboxes’ and awesome, just awesome amounts of skill. He demonstrated all these things in a way only a true master could.

The shot on the left is me playing, but you can see his hands and his game to my left. The rightmost shots were taken by KLS to try to show the sorts of obstacles he was seemingly easily overcoming. To watch him dodge pixel-by-pixel through these clusters of bullets was awe-inspiring, and I felt very lucky to have had the opportunity.

In the end he beat the game on a single credit. I’ll bet their are only a handful of people on this entire planet that could do that…

The arcades in Japan are going as strong as ever, but they are adapting with the times. Conventional, single-cabinet games are relatively uncommon, usually relegated to a half of a floor or so of the five to eight story mega-arcades that are common in areas such as Ueno or Akihabara. In a typical arcade of this size, each floor will usually hold a particular type of game:
– one floor will be entirely UFO catcher machines (aka ‘claw machines’). This is almost always the entry level of the arcade.
– one will be entirely ‘Print Club’ sticker-making booths
– one will be dedicated to ticket redemption machines, which themselves run the gamut from RPG-like quiz games to things like Gallileo I showed the other day.
– one floor will be large scale linked competitive games, like Star Horse or Football Manager. The biggest arcades will have 10 or more consoles linked to a gigantic screen for such games.
– one floor will be dedicated to magnetic card based games, such as the various MahJong games or SquareEnix’s latest game Lord Of Vermillion
– an entire floor will usually be dedicated to fighting games. Popular titles not include SF4, VF5, Tekken 6 and the various Gundam battle games. One arcade I was in today had no less than 12 linked Street Fighter 4 cabinets. Players can save their stats onto a magnetic card and reuse it every time they play (this is very common for many games here)
– one floor will contain old school cabinet games, including retro games (which most of these are these days). Very, very few games of this type continue to be made. The most recent one – Death Smiles 2 – has even been distributed free to arcades to get them to stock it. In the mega-arcades, retro games are increasingly rare and if they are present are almost always shooters (including bullet hell ones by Cave or any of the games from the Metal Slug series)
These arcades are astounding, and it’s very hard to describe to a video game fan just how amazing they are to visit without actually going to one. It’s particularly heart-wrenching for me because they simply don’t exist in America any more – not even tiny ones with a half-dozen games. So visiting arcades is one of several things about Japan I really enjoy, and I’ve been trying to do it as much as possible this trip.

The above sequence is designed to be viewed in order from left to right. As you do, imagine 2 seconds in real time passing between each image. That’s about how long my game of Gals Panic S2 lasted 🙂 (To the two of you wondering, this was an anime style Gals Panic, not a bad-digitized nudie game style)

< Half-Life

Western PC games do notoriously poorly in Japan, so Valve had an idea to release Half-Life 2 in arcades over here. The result is what you see above, and was more ‘interesting’ to play than ‘entertaining’. My feeling is it was a bit of a failure, especially since I’ve only seen it in one arcade so far. (This makes me wonder where these large dedicated cabinet machines go when the arcades no longer want them…)

The above is a redemption game that simulates the classic Japanese fair game of catching goldfish from a pool using a tiny net. The real thing is a diversion for children (the net is made of paper, so catching the fish is harder than it looks since the paper will break if you move it too quickly), but this version seemed more appreciated by the same types that are content to waste their lives on Pachinko!

< Gundam

The above is a shot of a Gundam ‘pod’ cabinet. When you get inside it closes, completely encapsulating you inside. Multiple wrap-around screens attempt to make it seem like you are actually piloting a Gundam robot. You then fight others in a 3D action game. The big arcades have up to a dozen of these cabinets as well as a large screen on which those not playing can watch the fights in real-time on a tactical map. The pods are linked all over Japan, so even if no-one is playing at the arcade you can see how they fights are going. Basically it’s a persistent, large scale massively multiplayer Gundam FPS that you play in these amazing pods at the arcade. In fact it is so impressive I’m somewhat pretending it doesn’t exist because it makes me sad such tech is Japan-only…

Random shots of random games. The leftmost shows the nice Street Fighter IV cabinet, which I don’t think made it’s way out of Japan.

The title of this entry (‘Waste Your Youth’) is a pun – arcades here are not the sole domain of the young. Quite the contrary actually. Children have their Wii’s and their DS’s – arcades here are for adults. The above three games are those typically played by middle-aged ‘salary men’ on their way home from work. The leftmost is a magnetic card based strategy game. You buy cards from a vending machine and create a deck to play with. The surface in front of the screen reads the cards in real time so you actually control the gameplay simply by moving the cards around. This tech was cutting edge when we were here in 2006 but many machines utilize it now. The middle shot is of a Football (soccer) game. Each player takes one of the chairs you can see, and has his own screen on which he controls the actions of his team. This is another game that uses cards that are purchased separately, and in many arcades I’ve seen every chair being used by older male players that are obviously enjoying managing their teams to presumed victory. The rightmost image is an even bigger redemption game than Galileo, and is another absurdly complex take on the old ‘knock tokens into a bin by throwing other tokens at them’ genre.

The Hummer game. Sega’s latest arcade racer, which I believe only came out a few weeks ago. BS would cry if he saw how detailed the graphics were 🙂

We have yet to visit Ikebukuro, which has a couple of mega-arcades itself. I also plan on spending more than a few more hours in the arcades in Ueno, so expect a few more arcade images before the end of this trip!

Posted in Games, Otaku | 1 Comment »

Duffy

Monday, June 1st, 2009

Just now I was watching a TV show that seemed to be about sending a cute girl to cake stores all over Tokyo and showing her response to eating delicious cakes. Such things are typical for Japanese TV 🙂

Also, my whack-a-bison video from the other day has already received 2 comments! Maybe I should post another UFO catching video and try to surpass the hits on my one from Australia?!

Anyway… here’s what we did yesterday:

As with other Disney parks, Disney Sea is one of the happiest places on earth, and you can be absolutely sure you won’t be rubbing shoulders with criminals here:

< Read that fine print!

Disney Sea is built around a large lagoon, and features a half dozen or so themed areas including ruined South American temple, a Jules-Verneish zone (inside a volcano), a Mexican zone and an early-twentieth century America. Architecturally, this is perhaps the most impressive of all the Disney parks, and it is a real treat to just walk around and admire the attention to detail Disney put into virtually everything.

That edifice on the right is the Tower Of Terror, a reimagined version of the ride of the same name at Hollywood park in Florida’s Disney World. It is a ‘drop ride’ where you sit in an elevator car that drops in the dark three times. It’s thrilling and a lot of fun, especially when 75% of the car are Japanese teenage girls screaming their brains out. It is clearly the most popular ride in the park, and only minutes after opening the ride looked like this:

< Tower Of Terror ride

The line is visible on both sides of the image, and curls around behind me. The actual end of the line is not visible (it’s beyond what you can see on the left side) and that’s just where it enters the building – there’s a good 30 minutes more wait inside. We joined this line! Why? Since the Fastpass line was almost as long! It took us maye 45 minutes (maybe more) to ride the first time 🙂

Disney Sea yesterday was very, very busy! I’d estimate attendance at about 30% families, 30% dating couples, 39.98% gaggles of Japanese teenage girls and 0.02% westerners. Happily Japanese people love the parades and the shops, so even a very very busy park doesn’t translate into absurd lines (above exception notwithstanding), so it wasn’t a problem for us!

We ended up riding Tower Of Terror 3 times during the day, and it got better every time. Here’s a couple of photos of photos of our rides:

Obviously, by the third time (rightmost photo) we had worked out when they actually take the shot. Note my Billy Mays impersonation!

We’d been to Disney Sea once before, way back in 2002. The park has changed a lot since then, mostly since it was very new before (for instance, all the trees have grown in now). There seem to be a few new rides (our memory of ’02 is dim). Tower Of Terror is one, and Raging Spirits, a rollercoaster, is another.

< Raging Spirits

This ride is notable for two reasons:
1) It has a loop, which makes it (to my knowledge) the only Disney ride in the world with one. You can see it in the left image if you look closely
2) It’s a half-man ride. During the actual ride (we waited about 45 minutes…) I was heard to yell out “This is a ride for babies!”. Given the excessive amount of warnings during the line I was expecting something thrilling, but had I been asleep upon boarding I’m not even sure it would have woken me 🙂

Aquatopia, by the way, is the worst ever Disney ride. I’ll provide images, but spare you the details of it’s horror:

Random Disney photo time!

From the left: KLS looking sweet in the Tower Of Terror Line, Goofy with the levitation buff, and a wedding parade through the park (yes, an actual wedding). Lord knows how much they spent for that!

< Wow

The above shows planters full of… orchids! It was amazing seeing so many in one place like that. The park as a whole is full of flowers that have been placed as part of the Spring festival that is ongoing.

< Tiny Burger!

< Nadeshiko

The above shows an attendant on the Tower Of Terror line. All the attractions at the Tokyo Disney parks have unique uniforms, but this was one of the best.

< Donald Duck

Although we didn’t stay for the fireworks, we ended up spending over 8 hours at Disney Sea yesterday, which (believe it or not) made for a relatively restful day compared to those so far! Dinner was Denny’s (KLS choice, not mine!) before collapsing into a dead sleep.

Those Denny’s fries tasted like the fries we used to get at the Oak factory in my youth. How’s that for a memory?

And JAF, you’re not keeping Emi!

Posted in Family, Miscellaneous, Otaku | Comments Closed

Titty Boo

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

Before I start today – no comments??! Is anyone reading this?

Yesterday started with an as-soon-as-it-opened visit to the Tokyo Institute Of Nature study in Ebisu. A fancy name for an untended park (think Blackbutt), which is one of the very few of it’s type in Tokyo. Nice enough, I suppose, but no doubt much more appreciated by a Tokyoite that rarely gets to spend much time in nature.

Afterwards we headed over to Harajuku and the Meiji Shrine. We have been here before, but the shrine is so close to Harajuku (itself so close to Shibuya) that it seems silly to get off the train there and not visit. As it turns out it was a good thing we did, since we got to see two separate traditional shinto weddings in progress:

The meiji shrine is a monument dedicated to the eternal souls of a departed Japanese emperor and his wife. It’s beautiful, serene and very popular with tourists (both Japanese and foreign). One of it’s big attractions is writing a wish/prayer on a wooden postcard and placing them around a sacred tree. Eventually they are collected and burned in the hope the prayers will come true. Here are some examples of the thousands hanging there yesterday:

Of course we had to make our own, or at least I did. I caved again to disbelief in superstition, and instead embraced absurdity.

Harajuku and neighbouring Shibuya are the two most popular destinations for trendy Japanese teens to go shopping in. And when I say popular I mean really popular, as ininsanely popular 🙂

< Harajuku, Shibuya

We were getting tired by now (it was mid afternoon) and headed back to the ryokan for a couple of hours rest. As we were riding the train back the heavens opened and a truly monsoonal rain fell. By the time we’d got back to the ryokan, we were drenched (even with umbrellas!)

< !!!

After a rest, we headed back out (the rain had stopped) on a lazy walk toward downtown Ueno (about 30 minutes). In Ueno park we were quite surprised to find a flowering bonsai tree competition, or at least the end of one (it was being packed away). There were about a hundred of the bonsai originally in display, and happily quite a few grand ones had still not been picked up by their owners .

Are they azaelas? Maybe AS or JAF could identify. By the way the hydrangeas are blooming all over the city right now, and KLS always stops to have a gander!

The more I visit Ueno, the more I like it. The ameyokocho shopping street is a crazy mix of pachinko parlour, restaurant, adult establishment and game center and really comes alive at night.

The third shot above is of a Pachinko parlour. Can you see the gigantic Evangelion poster on the side? Evidence of the marketing towards younger players the parlours have (successfully, apparently) undertaken in recent years. Every licensed property you can imagine – from Harry Potter to Thunderbirds – has been used in Pachinko!

Here’s some shots of some very, very, very expensive fruit (think 100 yen = 1 US dollar approximately).

Would YOU pay over $100 for a rockmelon/cantaloupe? I think not! (These are in the special fruit gift shop in the basement of a department store and are popular gifts to give when you really need to impress someone)

And the obligatory arcade shots of the day, including the ‘dating game’ House Of The Dead EX (left), the Arc-Systems fighting game BlazBlue (center) and the (awesome) fighter Tatsunoko vs Capcom (right).

To quote Doctor Who quoting someone else (yes I know), in Tokyo, there are “more games to see than can ever be seen and more games to play than can ever be played”!

I did see a cute bunny cake though!

And KLS purchased a tiger washcloth, and also some coffee that came packed with a cute girl ‘bottle topper’:

Yesterday’s food choices for breakfast (Wendy’s) and lunch (Subway) were bland, and chosen simply because they happened to be nearby when we got hungry. Dinner though, well that was another story…

< Delicious!

I’m writing these in the mornings, as you may have guessed. Which means I already know the plans of the day after the day you’ve just read about. So what will you read about tomorrow…?

Posted in Family, Games, Miscellaneous, Otaku | 3 Comments »