I am running a series of posts about my travels to the game arcades in Hong Kong and Tokyo from November 2011. This is obviously number eight in the row of posts, so please look at the backlog if you have missed the other parts.
Well, with that little piece of information, let's get on with the show!
My wife and I had spent a whole day in Akihabara, Tokyo. This district is famous for shops selling state of the art electronics, but also retro boutiques and arcade games. I was obviously there for the latter, but we also did some shopping in between all the playing.
We were on the way back to the JR train station when we passed what looked like a discount shopping mall.
Here's the Google street view, so you can see where it is:
View Larger Map
..and here's my picture of the very same spot. Looking at the dark sky, it's obviously getting late. What caught our eye in the beginning was that this mall had a camera focused on the pavement outside, so anyone who passed by was automatically on TV! No, of course not. They had a monitor showing the picture from the camera, nothing was broadcasted. But this stupid marketing trick worked on us, because it stopped us long enough to catch our interest. And so, we went inside.
The mall had various shops, carrying everything from bathroom equipment to Batman costumes. In one shop I found a cheap dance machine! Although it's not exactly Dance Dance Revolution, I'm sure this DDR-style alarm clock must be a hit in the community. Who knows, maybe you need to "dance" the correct combination with your fingertips to stop the alarm?
After numerous trips to Hong Kong, I knew that almost all of their pinball games are long gone. I had some hopes for Japan, though, as I read about dedicated pinball clubs and locations with numerous games. But it wasn't until I arrived at this mall that I actually found one! A Stern Sopranos, standing alone in between the more usual suspects.
The condition wasn't great, but it was definitely playable. Looking at the playfield made me wonder if spare parts are hard to find in Japan, because they had done some MacGyver style fixes.
Seriously, who covers drop targets with tape? Did they do this to make it stay down? Or to make the ball roll smoothly over it?
At least it looked like lots of people had enjoyed this title. I've never seen such amount of wear around the flipper buttons! There was a smooth finger groove almost half a centimeter into the cabinet, obviously coming from thousands of games worth of wear.
Like I said, Sopranos was positioned in between shooters, music games and titles I had grown used to throughout this day in Akihabara.
Here are some stereotypical Asian games: Pop N' Music, and a DDR machine in the background.
Other music games included Reflec Beat and Taiko Drum Master.
Did I mention that there was a strict NO PHOTO policy everywhere I went? We have always said that Japanese tourists bring the most cameras, and there's a myth that they take pictures almost constantly. Now I know why! They are not allowed to take photos in their own country!
I tried to be careful, but I was carrying a large DSLR. In retrospect I should have chosen a small compact camera. Or maybe I shouldn't have taken any photos at all, but then you wouldn't be reading this. :-P
If I remember correctly, this shooter was also music related.
This is called Elevator Action - Death Parade, but the gameplay looks very different from the 1983 original. You can look at a random YouTube gameplay video
here.
It was a nice surpise that we bumped into this little game arcade in this bargain shopping mall, and it offered one or two games that we hadn't seen earlier in the day.
The evening was getting late, and we were on our way to leave Akihabara for the night, but there were still some more places to explore. More about that in the next post!
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