What are your views on current arcades?

I’ve seen killer queen locally. Is it really that good?

It looks good. As a team based pvp game it really matters if you have enough people to play it/are into it though.

Speaking of which, I just saw this photo article on Ars that covers some of the Japanese arcade scene…plus wanders into retro gaming. Kinda glad we don’t have something like Super Potato in the US because I’d be broke.

Ha, I played Killer Queen with the author a couple months ago at a reset meetup. It was shortly after he got back from Japan.

Stopped by a barcade today, played some Time Crisis II. They have an Initial D cab now too, tech was working on it so I’d didn’t get to play it. Giggity-giggity Super Eurobeat in my veins! /avatar quote lol

This mural in the barcade is awesome:

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I spent some more time looking through that Ars article and it’s amazing how different things are there. One thing I didn’t realize even existed was the NFC card-based arcade games. Seems like something that could only happen in Japan.

Anyone try something like this before?

I’ve seen a few of them on youtube.

Shame we don’t have Windows glass or anything to help counter the loss here.

Modern arcades are more like gyms crossed with theme parks, what with all the dancing machines, drum machines etc.

You have the odd fighting game still, but other than that do any games use joysticks at all anymore? It’s all gimmick controllers.

I see that those newer games are going up to something like 7k-20k per cabinet. They’re all going to have their own setup gimmick, so it’s not like common parts are going to be part of every control scheme.

I’m pretty sure you don’t see old games as much because they’re mainly on the collector buyer’s market. These new games are more rental and have a profit sharing requirement with the manufacturers.

I definitely miss having local arcades around me in the evenings now I’m back from Japan. Was a great way to unwind after a day of travelling, though obviously some of the smaller cities didn’t have them! But around Kanto I remember stopping by a few in Chiba and Omiya. Plenty around Tokyo of course.

Thing is - a lot of the modern games aren’t designed in the same way as the older games. The developers have definitely taken inspiration from the psychological tricks used to make GaaS titles retain players - literally everything has a grindy (and to be honest, unnecessary) progression system attached to it now.

It doesn’t really harm the core games where I encountered them, especially when genres like rhythm titles have selectable difficulties. But I raised an eyebrow when I was unlocking car upgrades in Sega GT. didn’t have enough time to figure out whether players who have played more hold an advantage above and beyond skill behind the wheel.

Saw this at a local arcade this weekend… Looked pretty awesome. The screen was probably 6 feet tall, I would guess.

I’ve been wondering what was going on about the situation with Shou over the EXA platform that shmups made an attempt to conceal a bit ago? I know there was something that caused a major commotion regarding publisher trust behind the scenes and the guy who is porting Chaos Code quit due to his brother passing away.

Rhythm games are fun at least.

I’m worried that a lot of arcades in Japan are going to go under, particularly independent ones. Nakano TRF already confirmed that they were having trouble about a week ago, and that was before any formal lockdowns were introduced. Fingers crossed the government’s safety package will protect them and their staff in some way.

Looks like they have a crowdfunding campaign.

Mikado did this earlier and it was pretty successful.

I’m really concerned of japan myself.

Last year they were taking more from collected earnings and a lot of smaller places would not be able to keep up with the rent. I just don’t agree that these manufacturers have to mandate royalties from every title. There was a multi system for games being used on the Taito Type X boards that would have been great for expanding their reach, but they took a good portion of that too, which is probably why it never came overseas.

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