Arcades in Japan are rad.

Dead in America, Dying in Japan, still awesome.

I recently visited Japan, and during my time in japan I ended up visiting quite a few arcades and discovered that not only do they still exist (Dave & Busters doesn't count), but they're actually awesome and continued to be updated with games that aren't just pachinko machines. (they do have a bunch of those too).

One of the first machines I gravitated to was the Wangan Midnight 6RR+ machines. I put in my 100 yen ($0.63 USD) and sloppily navigated the menus as (obviously), they're all in Japanese. At first I didn't have a "Bandai Namco Passport" as I didn't know where to get one, eventually I figured out I could buy one from a nearby vending machine. Essentially it creates a NFC card with an account associated to save data.

Anyways, it plays like a PS2 era arcade racer with a somewhat cheap FFB wheel and a 6 speed shifter on the wrong side. A bit too oversteer happy for my taste but fun nonetheless. The UI is a highlight as when your in third person they use the matching car's gauge cluster. The car selection was also a major highlight with a few hundred options, though lacking American and some german and Italian cars. Not running out of JDM anytime soon though. Also the AI quite obviously cheats, but what are you gonna do, it's an arcade game.

They also had a lot of fighting game machines, in Akihabara they had some retro fighting game machines with CRTs for the older games, as for modern offerings; mainly Tekken 7 and Street Fighter 6. I was kinda sad they didn't have Tekken 8 as that's the fighting game I have the most experience with but nonetheless it was still awesome to see so many people playing fighting games in the same area. With SF6, while it ran well it did kinda look like shit, it looked like all low PC settings at like 50% internal resolution. I was honestly kinda shocked when I saw SF6 on my desktop back home again because the only other reference I had was my steam deck while I was in japan.

Taiko no Tatsujin (Taiko Drum Master in the west) was very popular, hell they even advertise most arcades with "Claw, Racing, Game, Taiko" and I played a few songs on the Japanese machines (they did have english versions but I didn't get a chance to play one). It's Taiko, not much to say other than a decently fun rhythm game (i'm not too great at anything other than beat saber when it comes to rhythm games).

However what I spent most of my time on were the Dragon Ball: Super Divers machines and even started buying the cards at the nearby Bic Camera (it was literally an elevator ride away).

Anyways, it's the replacement for the Dragon Ball Super Heroes game that came before, sadly since most of these are JP only I'd never seen or played these games before. Seeing these machines lined up 5 in a row right in my ongoing dragon ball phase was basically just Taito Station Shibuya robbing my coin wallet in 4k.

It's honestly pretty fun, kinda mindless with like one main mechanic being a QTE and then a few minigames occasionally. You play with 3 RGB buttons, it's pretty simple, more of a strategic game based on your cards arrangement combined with their stats. I played 1 or 2 ranked matches and it seems like Chiaotzu is the meta.

Arcades in Japan have one major thing that US arcades completely lack, the people. While I was in these arcades I had little moments where even if I didn't speak their language, they understood me in how I played and our shared love of these games. In some of the more popular arcades I visited there were even lines of people just waiting to play the most popular games.

Man, arcades in japan are fucking rad.