House of the Dead Scarlet Dawn Gameplay Footage

Cool Things In Japanese Arcades

I always have to come back to talking about the arcades since it's probably one of my favorite things about living in Japan.  Now the thing that tends to blow most peoples minds, which is the whole idea of a sort of members card that tracks stats and progress I've talked about to death.  Here is a video of me talking about it so that I don't have to type it all out again if you don't know what I'm on about.

But that's not the only cool thing about these places so here's 3 more really cool things about Japanese Arcades you may not know about

1) Recording and Sharing

Usually if you walk into a big arcade these a big signboard at the front that has all the rules and usually one of those rules is you're not allowed to bring in a camera and take pictures and stuff.  However the people who run these places know that gamers like to come in, record their game play if they are particularly good and share it with Nico Nico Douga or YouTube.  I noticed about a year ago that a lot of the machines in my nearest arcade started hooking up capture cards to the machine nearest to the aisle which you could plug a USB device in and record to it.  Not only this but recently I found that the rhythm game Chunithm has set up these sort of holders for your phone that give you a perfect angle on the screen and controller so that you can record shit and basically upload it there and then.  Before all this started people were bringing in cameras and tripods and shit which would clog up the space for people so all of this is a welcome addition

2) Manage your shit from your house

There are certain games such as Gunslinger Stratos or Code of Joker along with others that allow you to manage gun loud outs, decks or profile details from the comfort of your own home so that when you actually get to the arcade you aren't wasting your time in menus and shit and you can just sit down and play the damn game.  The one I'm most familiar with is Code of Jokers Agent Lab.

https://coj-agentlabo.com/login?_ga=1.34699425.1013799049.1465114829

If you try to modify your deck in the arcade you are given a 120 second time limit and after that you start spending your paid credit and if you've ever tried to make a deck for a card game in 2 minutes it's a little tight.  However if you login to the above link you can sit, read through all your cards and make decks to your hearts content so that when you go to the arcade and scan your Aime you can just start playing right away. 

3) Actual Collectable Shit

I love collecting shit, it's just fun to do and one of the great things about the arcade is that they give you a chance to get your hands on quite a bit of swag.  Of course there's the UFO machines which give you prizes but they are actually worth trying for over here unlike the shitty plushies that you get in the UK.  However there are games like Sengoku Taisen (or whatever that new one is called) and Kantai Collection which give you actual physical cards to collect and trade which also level up in game as you use them, it's really cool.

My meager but much loved Kantai cards

 The best part is that you don't have to go to another shop to buy cards and then bring them to the arcade like it's Yu-Gi-Oh or some shit.  After you finish playing a round the machine itself will print a card for you to add to your collection so there's not really any extra effort required for amassing a decent collection of stuff.  There do exist specialist shops that allow you to buy the rare cards individually but these are mainly for the most hardcore of collectors rather than just regular players of the game.

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It's a real shame that we don't have these kind of games in the UK because I might not hate the idea of returning home so much if we did.  That said if we did put these games into English arcades they'd probably just get abused and become unusable within a week anyway, so maybe it's for the best.

IIDX Is Just Too Hard For Me

No one likes to admit they suck shit at a thing.  It's hard for one to throw their hands up and say "Yep, that thing, I'm fucking awful at it" but I think it's about time I throw my hands up and say yes, Beatmania IIDX (or 2 DX) is just flat out too hard for me.

I've been trying to git gud at this game for multiple years now and every time I just get frustrated and quit.  Back in high school, IIDX was the reason I got into importing Japanese games.  I got a Swap Magic, a IIDX controller and IIDX RED off Play Asia and tried to get good at it in my house since England didn't actually have any machines to play on.  Although I do think there was an original Beatmania cabinet in London, but who cares about Beatmania 1?

Rhythm games are usually something I'm pretty good at.  I play DDR fairly well and I can rock most of the top level shit in the arcades for certain titles.  Here's a video of me playing Night of Nights on Chunithm in the arcade just to prove I'm not a total inept moron when it comes to this genre.

However, that's Chunithm, now check out this video of some dude playing an IIDX song.

It's just another fucking level that I can't wrap my head around.  What's depressing about this whole this is that I actually LIKE IIDX so being shit at it genuinely saddens me. 

Still though, I'm not one to give up.  Maybe from today I'll give it another shot and hopefully in a month or 2 (or 6) I'll be able to come and make another post about how I conquered it and got good.  The chances of that ACTUALLY happening are quite low though since 1) I'll probably get frustrated and 2) The machines are usually busy and I don't wanna wait.

Still, I can dream 

Time Crisis 5 Stages 4-6

So a long while ago I blogged about the latest iteration in the famous rail shooting series Time Crisis 5, here's a reminder

http://identitygaming.blogspot.jp/2015/09/time-crisis-5.html

One thing that I said that pissed me off about this game was the fact it wasn't finished and cost twice as much as every other game in the arcade.  Well, I'm not sure when it was released but the final 3 stages were added AND the game got a price drop to the standard 100 yen per play.

The game itself is just standard rail shooter fair and the new dual pedal system to peek out from 2 different angles is fun albeit a little tiring.  For example there's a cool boss fight where an NPC ally is fighting with the enemy in close quarters and you have to use the two pedals to change your vantage point on their battle and hit the enemy rather than your ally.  There's not MUCH penalty for hitting the guy other than minus score but I suppose if you're doing a run of the game where you are trying to get a high score then this scene would be extremely challenging.  There's also a sniping section where you have to kill dudes before they set off an alert which was pretty fun so the game does a fair bit to mix things up.

The other cool thing is that the game saves you progress via the Sega Aime IC Card so if you had already finished stages 1-3 in a previous session like I had done, you could opt to start right from stage 4 and not have to waste your credits battling through parts of the game you had already played through.  One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post on this game is that the game also has achievements in the form of Medals that will be displayed when you finish a run.  If you have the card scanned then these achievements will carry over to all playthroughs so there is a way to sort of 100% Time Crisis 5.

I've been playing these sort of games since I was a very young child and its nice to see that even now they are still doing well and companies are still making them.  If you ever have a  chance to try Time Crisis 5 I'd fully recommend it but don't be too sad if you can't get a go on it because TC2 is still the best one.

Arcades: How Far They Have Come

So recently I received an email that was asking me about some of my favorite classic games and the changes in the technology I've been using within gaming over the years.  There's plenty I could talk about since gaming in general has come a long long way since the old 8 and 16 bit era but the area where the advancements in tech feel the most noticeable is in the arcade.

Arcades are not too much of a thing in the west, especially not in the UK.  As a young lad growing up in Manchester the best I could hope for in the ways of coin op was a few barely functional machines in a local bowling alley on cinema lobby.  For quite a while though the only things I played in arcades were fighting games and side scrolling beat 'em ups so for a while my impression of an arcade machine was nothing more than a screen, a stick and a few buttons.  This all changed when my mother took me to a place called Sega World that was in London

Sega World was the my first real experience with a proper arcade.  It was located in London and was 5 floors of arcade joy that has now been shut down.  Last I checked it was replaced with something called Fun Land but if I'm not mistaken that's been shut down too, but I've not been back to England, let alone London, for about 5 years so I might be wrong about that.

Anyway, my young mind could barely handle all the awesome that was in this place and this is where I first discovered the rail shooter.  Big machines that didn't have a stick or little buttons to push but huge screens and big guns attached to them which you had to use to shoot enemies.  The one that grabbed my attention in particular was The House of The Dead because shooting zombies was way more interesting to me than blasting people in titles like Virtua Cop.  I even got my first taste of arcade multiplayer experience on that same day.

Near the end of my time in Sega World that day me and my mother returned to the floor where all the light gun games were located.  I was hoping to get one last go on The House of the Dead before we set out but there was someone playing already.  Instead of just giving up and walking away like I would do nowadays I just stood there and watched this guy play and I was fascinated by it because he was getting to parts of the game that my young self could have never of dreamed of getting to while on my mothers budget of £1 coins.  In that game there are 4 stages, and when he reached stage 3 he notices me and my mother watching, probably assumes we are waiting for a go and then offers the 2nd players gun to me.  I excitedly grab a few coins from my mother and start playing with this complete stranger and it all culminated in us finishing the game.

The rush of excitement as the games final boss, Magician, went down was intense and once the credits had finished rolling we shook hands and split ways.  I don't remember anything about that guy aside from the gaming experience but he really made my day.

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Fast forward to 2016 and now I'm living in Japan where arcades are pretty common.  I have about 4 all within 15 minutes of my apartment building and comparing coin op now to what it was back then it's incredible to think just how far these machines have come.

One thing I was always a fan of was rhythm game and things like touch screens have done a lot for that genre.  A few years ago I thought stomping all over a big metal pad was cool but now I'm using touch sensitive keyboards with hand sensors above them in games like Chunithm or just playing with the game screen itself in titles like Syncronica

If rhythm games aren't your thing then fighting games have huge followings and a lot of them can be played online from the arcade itself.  Generally speaking internet connectivity has really changed the game centre for the better with people now being able to compare stats or track progress against other players.  This also extends to have accounts that are stored on IC cards which means that as you play you can unlock more content for your games. There are new WiFi systems out there like Luma, a startup I was just introduced to. They have a surround home wifi system that was built for advanced connectivity among the multiple devices online, with added security that allows any obstacles that might block your signal and keep you from playing to be removed.

My Cards have seen a lot of use

My favorite use of these cards is for a game known as Code of Joker which sort of plays like Magic the Gathering.  An online trading card game exclusive to the arcade, the IC card stores your profile with not only things like your wins and losses but your entire card collection and decks.  Stick to cards for a moment, for those who prefer their trading card games in a more physical form there's Kantai Collection and Sengoku Taisen.

Kantai

These games involve either collecting the cards to be scanned by the machine in Kantai or placing them on a table and moving them around in a more RTS style of game play in Sengoku Taisen.  If I could go back in time and tell my young self that trading card games would be available in arcades I think my head would have actually exploded.

Just to finish up this post and bring it back to the old House of the Dead comparison, one of my favorite light gun games in modern times is Gunslinger Stratos

While it may look like a sort of space age version of the old rail shooter this game is actually a 3on3 online 3rd person shooter that plays sort of like Unreal Tournament or something.  Movement is controlled with the sticks on the backs of the guns and you can change weapons by holding them together and slotting these sort of magnets into each other, it's crazy.

I could talk for HOURS about all the fancy new stuff in the Japanese arcades but then this post would go on for way way too long.  It's mental to think just how far the coin op experience has come in such a short amount of time and quite frankly, I'm super glad that I'm living in Japan and am able to experience all these things as they are released.

Coin Spiral

I stopped seeing these things around in my teens so maybe if you're younger than about 24 you might have never have seen these things.  I know they aren't video games but my schedule got all crazy busy again so I'm just going to write something quick that I remember from my childhood.

Arcades weren't exactly a common thing for me as a young British lad.  The only proper, full on arcade that existed to my knowledge growing up in England was the London based Sega World but even that eventually shut down and faded into obscurity.  Up north where I was from arcades didn't really exist at all per se.  There was still coin-op but they existed as small banks of machines found in bowling alleys and cinema lobby's.

What England had an awful lot of though is shitty little side attractions.  The most common one are those coin dozer things where you have a big thing pushing a large amount of coins towards the edge of the play field and you put a 10p in the machine in the hopes that once that gets added to the pile it'll push a bunch of coins off and allow you to play more.  Aside from that, grotty UFO machines filled with cheap, unwinnable kak and similar games were available but the machines were usually in bad condition and you wouldn't want to touch the joysticks or buttons anyway.

But there's one thing that really sticks out in my mind from these shitty mini-arcade things and it's the coin spiral bank thing pictured above.  The idea of this thing is that you'd put a 10p piece inside the slot and just watch the coin spiral round and round on its side into the hole.  Nothing electronic, just simple physics made it work and there was nothing more to it than literally wasting your money. 

As a small kid though coin dozers and UFO machines used to piss me off.  These things that LOOK like games but are actually just cheap excuses to steal your change.  Proper arcade games, even coin guzzling titles like House of the Dead etc. didn't piss me off because even though they were out to take as much money as possible, blasting things with a light gun was a ton of fun for me when I was small.  This thing however managed to be nothing more than a colossal waste of change and it wasn't pretending to be anything more than just that.  You'd put 10 or 20p in it, watch it go and then it was done, you got your little thrill and the thing wouldn't ask for more or tempt you with unwinnable prizes.

Anyway I don't really know what I'm fucking on about, I just remembered these existed during my work day and wanted to write something about it. 

Silver Ball Planet Osaka

I realize that content has been a bit thin on the ground recently, job stress, large backlog and a packed schedule has made it hard to find time to write stuff for the blog.  One of those things taking time away from me was a trip to Osaka where I checked out a place called Silver Ball Planet, a huge pinball hall somewhere in the middle of what my friend called the "American village"

I know that strictly speaking Pinball isn't video games but its always been one of those things I've enjoyed.  Granted, my experience playing on actual tables like this is extremely limited but I've always enjoyed the odd stint on a pinball video game and when I do get a chance to play on actual tables it's always an absolute blast.

The place itself is this huge sort of warehouse looking place filled with all sorts of Pinball machines.  Some are insanely old while others are surprisingly modern.  The one that struck me the most was a machine based on The Walking Dead.  I didn't snap a pic myself but here's a image of the layout I got off Google

I mean, I've not looked too deeply into its production but my guess is that it must have been made and released at somewhat recently with the rise in popularity of the comic and TV show.  I find it cool that despite pinball being a somewhat niche thing, they are still making new tables in the modern day, that fact makes me kind of happy.

On the flip side there are machines made from the god knows when old times but the fun thing about these machines is that they were 10 yen per play

Most of the machines were priced, as one would expect, at 100 yen per play but if you were running out of coins then there were a few machines like this priced at 10 and 50 yen per go.  There was one machine that was 100 yen for 4 plays for some reason and if, unlike me, you're good at pinball then one coin can last you a long time.

One of the more video game related things that surprised me a little bit was that sitting next to the Tron pinball table was the goddamn Tron arcade game

It felt a little out of place surrounded on all sides by pinball tables and I was a little busy so didn't have a chance to try the thing but it was cool to actually see an arcade cabinet this old in the flesh.  I'm already planning my return trip to Osaka to play more pinball so this will probably be the first thing I try on my return trip before I start playing any actual pinball.

It doesn't matter if you're a pinball wizard or a piece of shit who just smashes the flippers and hopes for the best, Silver Ball Planet is a fun and cheap day out that I think anyone could get at least some degree of enjoyment out of.  Pinball is one of those games that's easy to get into but has qualities that make it hard to master.  There was an advert in the place for a beginners tournament which made me curse the fact I don't live in Osaka because I would have loved to check that out.  Anyway, to round out this post here are two pictures of the Super Mario tables.

The small shitty looking one

The bigger, more impressive table.  Notice the Space Invaders table off to the right too!

Time Crisis 5

Holy crap this series is STILL going?!  I thought the genre of light gun based rail shooters had gone almost completely out of fashion with the exception of a few sit down cabinet games but guess I was fucking wrong.  Granted this appeared in my local arcade quite a while ago but I only just got around to playing it .

Just in case there is anyone stumbling on this blog who has never played or heard of this game, let me give you a quick primer.

Time Crisis is a long running series of rail shooters that has been going since 1995.  Most games in this genre usually just put you on a straight rail and had you fend of a bunch of enemies and not taking damage was based on knowing where they are coming from and picking and choosing the right targets.

Time Crisis was a little different in this regard because the machine (and the later console releases) used a pedal to duck in and out of cover.  That's right motherfuckers, before we had all this 3rd person Gears of War cover based shooting crap, it was done in the arcade with a pedal and a light gun.  However, in order to stop people cheesing out the game by just hiding behind cover and waiting for the opportune moment, each screen had a time limit (of 40 seconds if I remember correctly), meaning that you had to take a few risks if you wanted a chance to survive the timer.

It was an interesting title and the sequels only went on to build on the concept.

Time Crisis 2 and up were essentially the same game but what made them interesting was the multiplayer component.  Usually in these games 2 players would work together on one screen but in Time Crisis each player had their own screen.  This meant that each player was seeing each screen from a different angle and that they could help each other pick off enemies from the other screen.

So that's old school Time Crisis, so how's the new one?  Well it's OK and while it introduces some cool stuff it's kind of short and a little bullshit.

The big new thing with TC5 is a dual pedal system.  Up to now, every Time Crisis has had 1 pedal but this one has an L and R pedal.  All this means is that each character has 2 vantage points per screen from which they can shoot from but using the pedals effectively is paramount to winning some battles and boss fights.  There's also a couple of QTE's and a number of slow motion "shoot the targets" sequences that are used to award bonus points or to take a life off if you fuck up.  It also utilities the Aime/Banana Passport stat cards to track high scores and achievements if you're into that kind of thing.

The game pisses me off a little because it's too short and it cops out at the end with "ANOTHER CHAPTER COMING SOON!".  This wouldn't piss me off it was normal priced but the cost for entry into this thing is fucking 200 yen with 100 more to continue if you die!  Almost every game ever in a game centre is 100 yen per play but this huge fucking thing wants 200!?  There is less content here than most 100 yen rail shooters too so I don't know why the fuck the price is double what it should be.

Still, as much as that pisses me off it's nice to see that the old school stand up rail shooter games are clinging on for dear life in the modern age.  If you get the chance to try it then you absolutely should, but I can't imagine it seeing the light of day in the west because the cabinet is HUGE and the western coin-op scene sucks.

Please let me know if anyone finds one though, especially in the UK!

Transformers: Human Alliance

I'm not a massive fan of Transformers and I never have been.  When I was a child it was something I had a mild interest in because big robots fighting is cool but I was never heavily into it.  However I really hated the movies so I have no idea why I bothered to climb in this giant yellow machine and insert 100 yen but I'm quite glad that I did.

I hear a lot of people slagging off Micheal Bay because all his movies are just explosion montages but if there's anything one of his movies translates well to, it's a arcade rail shooter.  I have no idea what the story is to this game because I would just mash the start key to get to the action and the action is good.

If you have no idea what these theatre cabinets are like inside, they have a big screen with 2 guns in front of it on a pivot.  You sit down in the big seat and move the gun around the screen blasting stuff.  Occasionally the game might ask you to hit the start button for a QTE but these moments are few and far between in most games that use this style of cabinet.

The game play is simple; there's a bunch of Deceptacons on screen and you have to shoot the fuck out of 'em.  When you have shot enough of them, a boss appears and you shoot the fuck out of him until he dies.  The action scenes are cool and it's fun to watch when your Transformer buddy jumps into the action and starts kicking things to death with your covering fire.

The last rail shooter I played for any amount of time in an arcade was Dark Escape 3D and my problem with that game is that there is so much downtime watching dirty corridors as the game attempts to build atmosphere but Transformers is the exact opposite of that.  There is very little downtime from actually shooting things and if you're not shooting things you are watching things explode, it's great.

It has its fair share of bullshit moments that you could never see coming the first time round but I'm not going to dock points for it because that's the nature of these kinds of games, they are out to take as much money as they can.  However the game isn't very long and I beat it on a handful of spare change so it's bullshit factor is actually pretty low compared to a lot of other games in the genre.

I know arcades in the west are mostly dead but if you ever see this game in a cinema or bowling alley, give it a go.  It's a fun way to kill an hour and it's way better than any of those shitty movies.