New Rhythm Games!

Holy goddamn all of a sudden at my local arcade there's been a couple of new rhythm games just popping up.  I've had a chance to give em both a go and since I'm having a bit of a slow period where it's hard to come up with topics, I'll spend a little bit of time talking about them.

The first is Chunithm, a rhythm game developed by Sega and apparently made by the same people who gave us that weird washing machine game Mai Mai

As what seems to be fairly standard for Sega-made rhythm games, the cabinet is all fucking weird and has all these bright lights and flashy bits on it for no purpose other than to look kind of cool and to pull your attention from all the other machines.

The game itself is fairly standard rhythm fare but the controller kind of looks like a piano keyboard but it's a touch panel rather than actual keys.  You have to slide, hold and tap your way through the songs but the game also has a sensor bar just above the controller so some notes demand that you throw your hand up in the air like you just don't care. 

The game also let's you unlock songs and characters with abilities as you play.  Last time I played there was an event for Persona 4 Dancing All Night so there are few Persona tracks and you can unlock the cast of P4 to help you clear songs.  At time of writing I've unlocked Rise and Kanji with Naoto on the way.  The music is also pretty good with plenty of stuff familiar to anyone who's played rhythm games for a while in Japan, there's also a few good original songs but best of all you can play All I Want (The Offspring) from Crazy Taxy and Concept of Love from JSRF!  What more could you want?

The second game that's just come out is CrossXBeat.  I can't for the life of me find a picture on the net of the cabinet so here's a shitty phone pic of me playing it

As you can see the game is just a big touch screen and notes fly at you every which way and you have to tap them in time with the song.  While it's not quite as fun as Chunithm, it still boasts come cool songs from Phoenix Wright and Megman 2 as well as a bunch of original stuff. 

There's not really much to say about this one, it's just your kind of standard rhythm game.  The one feature that does stand out though is the fact that if you have an Aime(?) card, I don't really remember if it's that, you can play once a month for free which is pretty cool.

However this game pisses me off with the way it presents difficulty levels to you.  Most rhythm games have a numbering system that's pretty consistent.  Level 1s are obviously the easiest, 8-12 is kind of medium level and 13+ is hard.  Cross Beat just says fuck all that where level 20's seem to be piss easy and the numbers go all the way up to fucking 60+.  This is fine but there's no good indication of what "Lvl 25" means the first time playing so there have been times when I've been wasting my time with easy shit when I want something challenging instead.

 After some practice I'll see if I can get some videos of these games up so keep an eye out for that.  If you live in Japan then you should absolutely give these games a shot, if you don't then I suppose you can just sit there and be jealous?  I kid, if you want to play Cross Beat there is a mobile version available on the Japanese app store so you could give it a try if you wanted.

Code of Joker: F2P Done Right

I've been playing a metric fuckton of Code of Joker recently and if ever there was a standard for what a F2P game should be then THIS is it.

I'm going to assume most people won't know what CoJ is but a long time ago I did a blog post about it so have a read here to clue yourself in.

http://identitygaming.blogspot.jp/2013/10/return-to-game-centre-code-of-joker.html

As a quick summary, it's an arcade trading card game that plays a little like Pokemon, Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh all slammed together into one really fun card battling experience.

Back when it was first released you'd pay a certain number of credits to charge an energy value.  You would spend those points to play games and any points left over at the end would be converted into currency for you to buy new cards with when you came back at a later date.

However this all changed and the game went free to play.  Code of Joker now works on a system similar to every iPhone game under the sun.  You have an energy meter that has 100 points and playing a game costs a minimum of 40.  These points recharge over time and 100 points is enough to play 2 games for exactly no money.

The complaint that I hear with a lot of free to play games is that there's a significant amount of stuff locked behind a pay wall.  If not that then it's a case of a lot of over powered, game breaking stuff being locked away from people who don't want to spend money. 

Code of Joker is not like this, you are not locked out of anything if you don't put any money into the machine with the exception of cosmetics.  The only thing putting money in the machine does for you increases the rate you get cards since you get 1 or 2 cards as a reward per game.  But even if you do decide to put money in, 200 yen ($1.60 or £1.10) gets you a maximum of 7 games.  7 fucking plays, for 200 yen!  That shit is NUTS!  £1 on a UK DDR machine would get you 3 songs, which lasts about 12 minutes while Code of Joker you can play for an hour or two for the same price AND receive a load of free shit while you do it.

This is how Free to Play games SHOULD be.  Locking people out of things or charging in order to win is stupid, pisses people off and turns them away.  If you provide paid options that actually reward the player without pissing off those who don't pay too hard then you have a recipe for success and SEGA have fucking nailed it here.

Arcade Rail Shooters Need A Comeback

This weekend I was hanging out in a few game centres with some friends and while they were off playing the UFO catchers and other assorted nonsense I decided to jump on a couple of rail shooters. 

The first thing I played was Silent Hill arcade which I ended up pumping a few coins into in order to play to completion. 

I like this game quite a bit and it's one of the only Silent Hill spin off games that doesn't piss me off.  It's a solid rail shooter that's fun to play despite being a little slow at times and it's got just the right amount of fankwank.  The final stage is complete BS but then again these games are designed to eat your money so it's to be expected.

After that I jumped on some kind of Transformers rail shooter that was super fun to play, looked amazing and was bombastic as fuck.  The movies suck but I think they work way better as a mindless arcade rail shooter so I don't regret dropping a couple hundred yen into that machine.

The last game I played was Silent Scope: Bone Eater

I've not played a Silent Scope game since the Dreamcast days and boy it sure has changed.  Bone Eater is a 3D futuristic sniping game with an awesome sit down style cabinet and it has a little fan that blows wind in your face as the character jumps around buildings just for that added immersion.  It's tough as nails but good lord is it fun.

I wish there were more of these shooting games.  Back in the day games like House of the Dead and Time Crisis ruled the arcades but now I barely see them any more.  Hopping on one of these either solo or with a friend is one of the most fun experiences ever and it's a shame that they are such a dying breed.

I'll talk about each of these games in much more detail at a later date so watch this space if you want to see me gush about arcade rail shooters.

The Foreign Gamer Problem: Not So Bad After All

So as I've told you like a million and one times I'm a guy who lives in Japan, I'm sure you know this pretty well by now.

So today, I had a day off work and I decided to have a bit of a stint in my local game centre.  In that game centre there is a game I have mentioned on this blog before known as Code of Joker.  I did a post on code of Joker outlining what that games all about here

http://identitygaming.blogspot.jp/2013/10/return-to-game-centre-code-of-joker.html

To sum it up though its a card game that's sort of like smashing Pokemon, Magic The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh all together at the same time.  Now my record on this game is bad, I think out of the 21 games that I've played I've won 9 of them (it might be 6 but I'm pretty sure it's 9), which is a less than satisfactory performance to say the least.

Now don't get what I'm about to say twisted, I'm not making excuses, I do genuinely suck at Code of Joker but my suckage isn't the only factor at play here.  You see, everything in Code of Joker is obviously written in Japanese and as a foreigner it obviously takes me a little more time to understand what each card in the game does.  However, when you consider how the game handles play time and credits it creates problems for someone like me.

Inserting money into the game doesn't give you a credit equal to one go, it gives you something called GP which is equal to time on the menu.  Playing one match of the game costs a set amount of GP and after each game you are given about 45 seconds of "Service Time" to make any quick changes to your deck before you start the next match.  If the 45 seconds of service time run out, then it starts ticking down from your GP.

So how does this create problems for me?  Well because I'm sort of bad at reading Kanji it's basically impossible for me to create and effective deck for myself unless I pump the machine full of money and take my time working out what each card does.  This isn't a fault of the game, it's all my fault for being terrible at Kanji.  This has become a factor in a number of my losses at the game where I think a card does one thing, and then it doesn't and the mechanic works slightly differently to how I thought I read it and this causes everything to go wrong mid duel.  I'm then left to lick my wounds and scour my dictionary to re-translate what the fuck was written on the screen.

But it's not all doom and gloom!

Obviously I don't want to lose and I do really enjoy playing Code of Joker so I do want to get better at the game and what's the one way I can do that?  Practice my Japanese more!

So by sucking at the game I'm indirectly being forced to improve my language ability in order to increase my win rate.  As someone who is currently studying for the Japanese Language Proficiency Test, this is no bad thing.  So even though my performance at this game is laughably bad there is something positive to be gleaned from the situation at the very least.

Basically what I'm trying to say with this post is that if you're a foreigner in Japan and you enjoy going to the arcade, expect to lose...A LOT.  But don't get all sad and discouraged and use it to motivate yourself for some language study.  Doesn't matter if you've been studying it for 5 years like me or you're a beginner; if not wanting to suck at games is the kick in the ass you need to learn something new, then get to it.

The Japan Gamer Episode 3! Game Centre Tour!

The third episode of The Japan Gamer is here!  This time me and my friend give you a quick tour of my nearest game centre.  Due to complications we had to do it post commentary, but you get the general idea of things.

The Japan Gamer Episode 2: Stat Cards

It's pretty common in Japan for arcade games to have a card that goes with them.

In this episode I give a brief overview of the cards I own, what games they work with and what they do.  The next episode will be a tour around an actual Game Centre! so look foward to that one!

Gallery!

Works with Nesica

Works with Aime

Works with Aime

Works with Aime

Works with Aime

Works with E-Amusement

Works with E-Amusement

Machine for Charging Paseli Credit to an E-Amusement Pass

Some machines I couldn't find pictures for online and don't have a picture to hand, so you'll just have to wait for the episode!

Return to the Game Centre! Code of Joker

Well it's been a long time, but today I finally made a return to one of the many game centres of Japan.  Pretty much as soon as I went through the door, I was greeted with all sorts of new games just waiting to be played, but the one that caught my attention today was digital trading card game Code of Joker.

If you have seen my prior posts about the game Mahjong 5, then you may notice that the machine is basically identical to that, however the game is obviously anything but Mahjong.  Code of Joker is a trading card game but unlike other game centre trading card games, you don't actually have to buy any cards, everything is done in game and stored on an Aime stat card.

Due to the fact I was with a group of friends, I didn't really get to play all that much but I did the tutorial and one normal game against the CPU, so I got a good feel of how it works.  I guess the easiest way to describe the game play would be like a strange hybrid of Magic The Gathering and Yu-Gi-Oh.

Cards in Code of Joker come in 4 types that include Units, Combination Monsters, Trigger Cards and Intercept cards.  Units are your basic monsters that you can play any time and combination monsters are upgrades for your basic units to make them even more powerful.  Trigger and Intercept cards are things that you play like Yu-Gi-Oh trap cards but the difference being trigger cards are activated when you play monsters or call an attack automatically, while intercept cards can be activated any time you want.

While I haven't tried them yet, there are lots of other modes that include an online mode that will hook you up with another player anywhere in Japan.  In the game centre that I was in there was also a "live" version of the cabinet, which I can only assume streams the game somewhere for people to watch but I'm not sure exactly.

The only disadvantage to this game is that if you were only staying in Japan for a short time then it's basically not worth playing.  Also, with it being a card game, knowledge of Japanese language, especially Kanji, is required in order to enjoy the game, so if you were a tourist hoping to try out Code of Joker then unfortunately your out of luck.

If you do know Japanese then there is a really good trading card game in here, so I would suggest checking it out.  I'll be covering Code of Joker as well as many other arcade games in the near future, so stay tuned!

The October Playthrough Playlist and Other Announcements

Well it's coming up to October and that means it's also coming up to Halloween which means it's time to play a bunch of scary games for the YouTube channel!

I've put together a 6 game playlist that I hope to get through within a month but with all the stuff going on right now it might bleed into November, but that's OK because the games are fun anyway. 

So what are the games?  Well I've split the 6 games into 3 categories and they are as follows

Scary Bad (Games that cost about £1 on Steam and were gifted to me to play because they're shit)
-Dinner Date
-Fortix

Classic Scary
-Silent Hill
-Resident Evil

New School Scary
-Outlast
-Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs

So you have all that to look foward to, I hope you'll enjoy me suffering/cowering for your entertainment.  But that's not all! If you were wondering why there is a big fat Japanese flag at the top of the post, it's because I'm moving back to Japan in a couple of days so you may see a return of all sorts of Japan related posts and coverage of arcade games once again!

So keep your eyes peeled for all the content, it should be a good month!

The House of the Dead Memories

Today is a slow day, so let me tell you a story about one of the reasons why I love arcade games so much.

A long long time ago, back when I was just a kid and stuff like the Mega Drive and Super Nintendo were the best things I could get my hands on, going to the arcade was a big deal for me.  We're talking about a time when everything I used to play was 16 bit RPGs or platform games, so going into an arcade and playing something that was 3D and didn't use a standard control pad blew my goddamn mind.

So one day, I'm in London with my family since my dad had to do some work down there or something so to kill the time my mother agreed to take me to Sega World.  Now I've blogged about that place before, but holy shit it was amazing.  For a British child who loved video games, Sega World was gaming Mecca to me.

Anyway, one genre of game I really enjoyed playing back then was the rail shooters.  I really enjoyed using the light guns and there wasn't really a lot for my stupid child brain to figure out, I just had to point at the baddies and fire the gun.  House of the Dead was one of my favourites at the time, I loved the levels and when you died you got that cool little map that showed you how far you got.

Anyway, I'd had my session on House of the Dead and I went to some of the different floors to play other stuff like Fighting Vipers and Metal Slug and after the day wore on a bit I returned to the shooting floor to see if there was any other rail gun games that I hadn't played yet.  Then I saw this guy playing House of the Dead, way WAY older than I was and obviously a lot better than I was.  He was really far, to a point in the game that I had never even seen before, I couldn't help but just stand there and watch.

Once he beat the 3rd chapter he turned to me during the results screen and asked if I wanted to hop on with him.  My mother gave me a pound coin and I slammed that shit in and started shooting.  Now in hindsight I was probably fucking this guys game up, it becomes harder with 2 players and I probably wasn't pulling my weight, especially in the boss gauntlet.  We pushed on and made it through to the final level and then fucking Magician appeared.

When this motherfucker pops up he has NO weak point (apart from the blatantly exposed cables on his arms and legs, but I was young, whatever) and I lost my shit.  I had no idea what to do, my heart was going a mile a minute and my hands were shaking pretty bad.  We endured his attacks and shot wildly at him and eventually the last sliver of health dropped off and we beat the game.

We didn't really say much after that, I just thanked him put the gun back in its holster and then we went our separate ways.  That said, his kindness in letting me join him for the final stage to share that excitement as we fought the final boss is something that has stuck with me to this day, and it's a reason I enjoy going to arcades so much.

I've only really been to a proper arcade in Japan recently, but even to this day they still have that great environment and the people are quite friendly.  The games are also quite cheap and a lot of places do deals like 2 credits for certain games on certain days.  I'm glad there is one part of the world where coin-op is still a thing, I think gaming would be a lot worse off without it.

Dark Escape 3D Impressions and Gameplay

If you have been reading this blog since the start, you may remember that I posted what I thought of the upcoming rail shooter scarefest called Dark Escape 3D.  Well it came out, and the good folks at the mall near my apartment installed a machine, so I managed to get a go and record some footage.

There isn't really a lot to say about a rail shooter, and I did do some commentary in the video to say what's up, but one thing that I noticed is that in this game, your aim has to be fucking immaculate.  In games like House of the Dead, if you hit the zombie, they would recoil a little bit, so even if you weren't landing headshots you would have still bought yourself some time to not get hit.  In Dark Escape 3D, you get no such luxury so if you're not landing headshots CONSTANTLY, you're fucking dead.

Also, I didn't play it with the 3D on, because I would have been impossible to get decent footage for the damn thing if I had, so when I go and play it again, I'll do another little post about how good (or bad) the 3D effects are.

So yeah, the rest of what I want to say is in the video, so watch that for more info.  There is a little bit of glare on the screen despite the whole thing being pretty much sealed off, but this is due to the fact that the game centre near my apartment is lit by super powerful floodlights, but it doesn't affect things too badly I don't think.

Before the video, have a little bit of a photo gallery.

The Gun!

The Glasses

A screen saying that you can switch between 2D and 3D

The stage select screen

Alrite, alrite, enough fucking photos, VIDEO TIME!

Sengoku Taisen

Break out those umbrellas because its about it get gushy again!  There is so much awesome in this game that it cannot be contained.  THIS is the reason why coin-op in Japan is so popular, the innovation and the ideas that you get with these kind of games is something that you can't really do as well with a console or PC game.

So what is this thing?  This is an arcade RTS game based in the warring states period of Japanese history.  If you are into your history stuff, then you'll like this game.  I personally never learnt anything about this era of Japanese history, but I had a friend who did and he got a colossal history boner for this game.

Well, apart from being an arcade game, what makes this different from any other RTS game out there?  Well let me show you

Well straight away you can see it already looks a  ton different from any other arcade machine you have probably seen.  Well let me show you yet another thing.

Those are cards!  That's right! this is a trading card game as well as being an RTS!  Each card represents a general and his or her unit of troops.  Each card is then split into one of many types such as gunners, spear men, archers, cavalry etc. You then place these cards on the machine, and where they are on the machine dictates where they are in game.  So to move a unit, you simply slide the card across the playing field.  I have a video of this which will be shown at the bottom.  Basically it's fuckin' AWESOME and it makes the game very fast.  You have a lot of decisions to make very quickly and correct positioning is key to winning.

There is also a lot of depth here too.  Each card has a sort of points value.  You can only take 8 or 9 points worth of generals into a game, so you have to try and choose units that complement each other.  On top of that, they are all split into their various armies, so you get a bonus for choosing all generals from the same type of army.  The next thing to consider is that each general has a special ability that you can activate mid battle, so choosing abilities that go well with your play style is another thing you have to worry about.  Then FINALLY you have these in game magic type items that have various effects such as increasing strength or lowering the death timer on a fallen unit, so you really have to put a lot of planning into how your going to tackle a battle.

Example of a prep screen

There are also a few different modes to chose from when you fire up the game. 

So, going from left to right.  First you have the local battle mode, where you and a friend on the same bank of machines can play against each other.  Next you have the world battle mode.  Each machine is hooked up to the Internet, and it will search all of Japan to hook you up with an online game to play.  The standard here is pretty high so you might wanna try and get some good cards before trying this one.  Then there is the story mode, where you can pick an army and play through their campaign, the battles here aren't TOO easy, but they won't kick your ass like a human opponent will.  Finally is the tutorial mode for all the newbies out there.

So you maybe thinking now "but if the standard of play is so high, I'm going to have to drop loads of money on boosters right?" WRONG!  The absolute best thing about this game, is that when you finish, the machine spits new cards at you as a reward for playing, win or lose.  1 credit is one card, and you get discounts of playing 3 consecutive times, so each session, while maybe a little pricy for a standard arcade game, at least you get a lot out of it.  The final thing to mention in this overview is that each card levels up independently.  In order to play the game, you need something called an Aime card.

This is a stat card used for a few games, but in this case it tracks your player data, army experience and what items you have as well as your online records.  You can't play without one, but it's cheap anyway.

One thing I just realised I forgot to mention was this thing

You will see this thing near every bank of Sengoku Taisen machines, and when they aren't showing adverts like in my photo, they are usually running replays of online matches from the top ranking players.  So you can even get some tips from the best by watching this thing for a while.

If you find yourself in Japan and you have time to give this a whirl, DO IT!  It's a little bit pricy but it's so much fun, worth every single goddamn yen. 

HAVE SOME VIDEOS!

Lethal Enforcers 3

When I do posts for this blog I try to write about stuff I've played fairly recently or news I've heard about within the last week or so, but all this having a job stuff is getting in the way and if I stick to doing that I'm going to run out of shit to say in the next few days, so today I'm going to write about a game I beat about a month ago.

So I was in this sports centre type place called Spoccha in Japan.  I think it might be worth doing a blog post on Spoccha itself because it's actually a really cool place to go, but the best thing about it is that they have a free-play game centre right slap-bang in the middle of everything.   Usually the games found in this free-play area are old games or shit nobody ever wanted to play.  Unfortunately, Lethal Enforcers 3 falls under the shit nobody wanted to play category.

I'll give you a little background on this series before I go on.

Lethal Enforcers 1 and 2 were old school arcade light gun games that later got ported to things such as the Megadrive (Genesis) or the Super Nintendo.  Now when I say old school, I really do mean old school.  The game had this weird digitised graphic look so all the enemies looked like actual people but aside from that, it was standard light gun game stuff, shoot the baddies and don't hit hostages or fellow officers.  If you play it now the game is kinda ass, but back in the day it was pretty good I guess. 

I would just like to point out at this point, that due to being from a pretty poor family, I never really got into light gun games properly until House of the Dead came out on the Sega Saturn, so I don't have all that much experience playing these really old shooters when they were new, couldn't afford the gun peripheral.

Anyway, back to Lethal Enforcers 3.  I'm going to admit right now that upon playing this game in the free-play game centre, I didn't even realise it was a Lethal Enforcers game until I got home and looked it up.  In Japan it's called 正義のヒーロー (that's Heroes of Justice for the non Japanese speakers) and it doesn't really play like any other game in the series.

Also unlike every other game in the series, Lethal Enforcers 3 is FUCKING BORING!  I played this shit through to completion in the two player mode but holy crap is it a dull game.  There are about 6 stages, all of which are EXACTLY the same.  You and your partner start off and your character begins running and moving your gun away from the screen will make you stop and defend yourself with a riot shield.  If you are playing the two player mode, the game is kind of like a race so whoever makes it to the checkpoint first wins.  When you reach the end of a few check points, you fight an extremely easy boss and then move on to the next bad guy.  Rinse and repeat until the end of the game.

This game has so many problems it doesn't even deserve to be a shitty downloadable game, let alone an arcade game.  First of all, it's not a nice game to look at and not because the graphics are ugly exactly, but everything is just so bland and boring it puts the player to sleep.  Second of all is the difficulty, this game is way to fucking easy.  Enemies don't use cover or anything like that and they'll just stand in open space taking potshots at you (and usually missing) until you cap them in the face a few times.  Also the bosses are a complete joke,  blocking their attacks is so easy that it's actually more of a challenge to actually try and get hit by them, and this leads me into my next problem.  The racing mechanic is fucking stupid and it's a waste of time.  You can beat the level without killing all that many enemies really, as long as you don't stop running forwards, you'll get there pretty quickly.  On top of that, the enemies are so fucking stupid they barely ever hit you so you may as well just be shooting at wooden targets for points.  The whole check point thing really sucks some of the fun out of the game really.

The exception to the difficulty is the final level where the enemies aren't hard because they are more accurate or anything like that, it's just that the level is fucking dark and you can't see shit.  You'll be running along and then BAM! a wall of bullets come at you, but they won't hit you, you just put your shield up and then spray wildly into the blackness and move along.  It's just a pain in the ass to have to do that every few seconds, so it's not really hard, just really fucking tedious.

To cut a long story short, go emulate Lethal Enforcers 1 or something or go dig out your Megadrive and play it with the gun, just don't go hunting down this piece of shit.

Dark Escape 3D Pre-Release impressions

If you remember my post a while back about game centres in Japan, you probably know that I love me some coin-op games.  One thing back from my childhood that I used to play a lot of was light gun games such as Virtua Cop 2, Time Crisis and House of the Dead.  Unfortunately, these games have become a bit of a rarity even in Japan, and maybe I have the case of the old nostalgia goggles but the newer light gun games just don't seem to be as fun anymore.

The last light gun game I had a good amount of fun with was Time Crisis: Razing Storm

A fun little arcade game in the Time Crisis franchise that drops the pistols and lets you go nuts with machine guns killing huge robots and whatnot, it was a solid game and was worth every Yen in I dropped into it.

So while browsing some gaming websites today, I came across Dark Escape 3D, a new lightgun horror game due to hit game centres some time soon I think. Take a gander at the trailer below

My Kanji dictionary is dead so I'm unable to give a full translation of it (given the fact my ability to do Kanji is awful) but you can get the general idea with the visuals anyway.

Just to give you all a little bit more detail, the game is one of those sit-down shooters like Deadstorm Pirates and the machine comes kitted out with vibrating seats, surround sound, 3D Specs and things that shoot air at your face, neck and legs in order to really try and immerse you in the game.  Sure, it doesn't look that scary, but trying to combine the light gun shooter and horror genre together is a cool idea and if done right I can imagine the arcades rendering the old haunted house idea obsolete.

The big gimmick with this game though, is the heart sensor in the gun that makes an attempt to gauge just how scared you are while playing.  Sure, we all laughed at the heart sensor that popped up at E3 a few years back, but I guess now they've finally found a way to put it in a proper game.  Sure it may sound like a crap gimmick, but if you play this game multiplayer, then not only can you test your shooting skill, but also who's got the biggest balls.

When this game comes out and I eventually find it, I'll try and get some footage for it, so watch this space.

OK Tekken...What the hell are you doing?

I love me some Tekken, with the punching and the kicking and the boom boom POW! It's great!  The amount of hours me and my buddies at university spent kicking the shit out of each other, the amount of assignments left unfinished due to the online mode of Tekken 6, it was a good time, and then Tekken Tag Tournament 2 got announced and I was excited as all hell.

I've seen it running in the Japanese game centres near me, but I've yet to have a go as I was more intrigued by all the rhythm games and that Persona fighter that just came out recently, but Tekken Tag 2 looks like more of what we love.  But then we have a problem, not a huge problem that will stop me from playing the game, but a problem none the less.  I was browsing Gametrailers late last night when I came across this video


http://www.gametrailers.com/videos/17bpoj/tekken-tag-tournament-2-big-bikini-bundle-trailer

This is a video for some pre order bonus you get, that involves putting the entire cast into swimwear.  Now you may be asking why is this a problem?  Well first of all, I don't mind the concept, it's not like the women in Tekken have ugly designs, and putting them in swimwear just makes it even easier on the eye.  It's also not some feminist view that doing this demeans women in video games, because it ain't that either, the men are just as scantily clad as the women here, so take your "boo hoo women in games" bullshit elsewhere.

No, my problem is that this kind of thing just doesn't really belong in a Tekken game in this form.  Sure, sex sells, I get that, everything will use sex appeal to push copies but Tekken was one of my go-to games when trying to explain to non-gamers that fighting games aren't all about just mindlessly punching the shit out of people.  Tekken is a game that does require some semblance of skill to be able to play well with learning combos, juggles and making sure your timing is right so you don't get your head kicked in by the other guy.  But now it feels to me that it's starting to slip into that stupid Dead or Alive mindset, where the only way to push sales isn't to have a good fighting system, but to just put lots of pixiliated women in swimsuits and if I'm trying to use this as an example of gaming being a good thing to any naysayers, this isn't helping!  Leave the bikini fan service shit to Dead or Alive and keep the focus on the fighting here in Tekken, thank you very much.

Maybe I'm over reacting here, I mean the game is still really good and the fighting engine is as solid as it ever was, but if this new direction does start to bring in new players, then I have a fear that future games will be dumbed down to accommodate the newer audience, and that would be a shame.  We don't want Tekken turning into DOA basically.

But that's not my only problem here, right at the end of the trailer there is this!

So let's look carefully here.  4 playable fighters, sure that's fine.  Big Bikini Bundle...don't like the direction your taking Tekken here but OK, I'm sure there are many people who will like it. Snoop Dog Stage?  FUCK. OFF. with your Snoop Dog stage, now you're literally pulling anything you can out of your ass to make this game sell.  Is Namco Bandai so worried about sells of Tekken Tag 2 that they start having to pander to people who like rap music?!  What place does Snoop Dog have in a Tekken Game?  Also, if he has a stage, does that mean the game is going to have Snoop Dog's shitty rap music in there too?! Fuck THAT!  I'm not anti-rap, but Snoop Dog is just garbage.  Why don't they focus on making the home version of the game even better for all the loyal fans that have been buying this shit for years by giving us more features to make it seriously competitive or something?  We suffered through Tekken 4, we don't deserve this shit now! 

The arcade version looks really good, but I have concerns for whats to come...

The Japanese Game Centre

This is a topic I'm actually surprised I've not covered up until now since these happen to be my favourite hangout spots when I've got some time to kill as I'm milling around the streets of Nagoya.  But what makes them so damn good and why don't they exist in the same way that they do in the UK and other countries?

First, let me tell you a story about a game centre from ages past, Sega World in London!

That there, is a promotional picture for what was probably the only real game centre in all of the UK.  Sure, I'm aware that there are coin-op machines dotted round the country at bowling alleys and cinemas, but they aren't proper game centres, THIS was the real fuckin' deal.

Sega World was some hardcore shit back in the day, it had an amazing atmosphere, almost like a theme park for gamers.  The place was about 5 or 6 stories of just games, shittons of fuckin' games.  On top of that, every floor had some kind of ride or attraction to go on so that even if you weren't
 much of a gamer being dragged around by your buddy, you still had something fun to do.

Then guess what happened?  God shit on my soul and pissed in my face, Sega ran out money or some shit and the whole place got closed down.  But the dream wasn't over!  Segaworld basically got downsized and given a shit name, Funland.  Despite the shit name Funland was still pretty good.  The game selection was actually pretty solid and the machines were well maintained most of the time.  The atmosphere had kind of died a bit, it felt more like a seedy underground bar that you see in a post apocalyptic sci-fi movie than a proper game arcade, but there was still funtimes to be had at Funland.

Then once again I get a huge kick in the nads when Funland shuts down unexpectedly, and now what was once the greatest game centre in the UK is now home to a few fucking air hockey tables and it's full of bastard children running around breaking everything.   Actually I think it may have a In The Groove machine too, but fuck that game I quit playing DDR a long time ago.

Fuck you Air Hockey

Since then, every English "arcade" I've been to is a fucking mess.  The machines barely work, its full of bastard kids breaking everything and the only remotely good game any place ever has is DDR, but like I said before, fuck DDR,  I've played the shit out of it and I don't want to play it anymore, we need more varied rhythm games for crying out loud.

So after moving to Japan, I've been hitting the Japanese game centres, and holy shit, it's like my childhood all over again.  Sure, the vast majority of them are not as big but they are all basically like the London Segaworld.  They are clean, have a fun atmosphere, a good selection and best of all, everything fucking works.  When I say the selection is good, I mean it's really fuckin good, lots of innovative stuff that really capitalise on the fact that they are not limited to what home consoles can do.  You have games with interesting control schemes like Jubeat or Reflec Beat and then you have really cool ideas like Sengoku Taisen (something I'll blog about tomorrow maybe) there is basically something for everyone.

Please note this is not Sengoku Taisen but they are basically the same fuckin' thing so shut up

So why is this shit so popular in Japan but not in the UK or basically any other country for that matter?  I think there are 2 factors at work here.  First of all, gaming is a hugely popular past time here, huge amounts of people play these things.  There are more people willing to drop a couple hundred yen into a tekken machine than there are in the west.  Second, and the most important factor, is the busy lifestyle of your everyday working man.  If you are a Japanese Salaryman and you enjoy video games, you probably don't have time to be going home and diving balls deep into the latest console releases.  If you were a Salaryman you'd probably want something that you can drop a coin into, play for 30 mins to an hour, and then fuck off home to cry and prepare for the next day of boring, grey routine.

I'll probably spend the next few posts covering some of my favourites, dig through the archives and there is already info on one, Sound Voltex Booth.  So more to come soon!  If you do get a chance to come to Japan, a game centre should be one of the first places you go to, it'll blow your fuckin mind.

Sound Voltex Booth

Sound Voltex Booth is a new rhythm game I've come across during my travels around the various Japanese game centres and despite the strange name it is a hell of a lot of fun.

For those of you that need a western comparison, I suppose this game is most similar to DJ Hero, but even that is a pretty bad comparison as the control schemes are completely different.  It's your standard rhythm game though, notes flow down the screen and you hit the buttons in the right order not to fail the song. 

What you are probably noticing in that picture though is the two little turny knobs on the left and right side of the buttons.  There are notes in this game that take the form of long bars that you need to trace with an indicator in order to get the points.  In order to make that indicator move, you turn the knobs.  It's a very simple control scheme but the game still feels challening, and the way in combines button notes with the knobs can actually be rather challenging on the higher settings. 

Speaking of the settings, there are 3 difficulty levels in Sound Voltex Booth; Novice, Advanced and Exhaust.  I've not had too many runs of this game yet as I've only just started playing, but even on Novice the game can still be a bit of a challenge depending on the song.

As you can see in the above image, the Exhaust mode is locked, so I hope to god you brought your e-amusement pass card.  For those of you who don't know, an E-Amusement pass looks like this.

The E-Amusement pass is a stat card that works basically for all Konami games (IIDX, Jubeat, DDR and more) and having one is basically a requirement to enjoying any Japanese coin op rhythm game.  You see, playing without one is fine but the song list is actually pretty small.  As you play with a registered card though, you gain skill points and unlock points in order to get new music to play through.  Also having one of these cards allows you to access any new songs they upload to the game via the internet and they are not expensive to get hold of, about 300 Yen from a little dispensing machine inside the arcade.

So if you ever find yourself in Japan, give this game a spin.  If you don't ever come to Japan, or never plan to then cross those fingers and hope that they release a console version for you to import, but I don't think it's likely.

Just as a little bonus I've uploaded 2 gameplay videos so have a lookie see.