Having lived in Japan for the past decade I can say that game centers (arcades to those outside Japan) have changed. I remember playing rhythm based games (pop-n-music, taiko drum master, etc.) and some fighting/shooting games for a few years. But, within the last two years or so, the NFC card requirement for almost all games has come to fruition. Wanna play that racing game? Gonna need to "grind" a vehicle and save that progress with an NFC. Wanna play that rhythm game? Scan your NFC first. Wanna shoot at dinos? You know the drill. This is why I won't put a single yen in the machines. Arcade games were put your coin in the box and see how good you were at it. However, they have turned it into a scan your NFC and see how far you've "grind"-ed to mastery. Instead of "grind"-ing an arcade game at 100 yen per round I could actually use my money on other things that bring more pleasure.
Reasons those arcade games requiring (or giving benefit) for NFC (like Paseli by Konami):
* Game company want to collect money more from arcade shop.
* Managing many coins aren't easy task.
* Consumption tax is raised from 5% to 10% in past decade, but coin (100 JPY) game can't apply the raised tax precisely.
* Flexible play options thanks to ability of flexible pricing
* Anyway most player want to save game progress
But coldly treating coin user is bad for newcomer. Maybe general credit card NFC payment solves some problem, but it's not well accessible for teenages in Japan.
It don't think OP was complaining about the payment method so much as the change in gameplay where before each play was equal where you just play as well as your skill dictates while now arcade games have become more like console games where starting out you are at a disadvantage and must level up while paying for the whole time.
I'm surprised you have that takeaway for NFC since you have played some rhythm games at least. For the most part I'd say on most rhythm games I've played (IIDX, SDVX, Groove Coaster) it's pretty much storing your song scores so you can see what you've played before and you can go to another arcade and have the same data there too. I feel it's less of a grinding thing and more of a player convenience there.
An interesting thing is that you don't have to buy their NFC card either, most of the Konami cabs (e-amusement) can accept a Suica/any IC transit card (a side effect of their card systems both using FeliCa).
I've played rhythm action games for decades (since circa 1999). While "grinding" has been generally increasing for years, in my experience their "grinding" had been mostly for time spent, not money spent. I think game companies are well aware that their grinding scheme is not as cost effective but can't make it more aggresive due to the dwindling arcade gamer population.
I suggest trying to find a "retro arcade" which has older machines, often with discounted rates (eg, two credits for 100円 for a game which originally just gave you one). Obviously these will usually be in more out-of-the-way places than standard arcades; I fondly recall one from my days in Nagoya that was on the top floor of a shopping center that had to have been built in 1975 at the latest.
Granted, I'm sure some of them have also been hit by the troubles, but if you can find one, you can have the Japanese arcade experience without the newer gimmicks.
That said, I didn't mind the cards. I think I still have a Wangan Midnight in an envelope my "Japan Stuff" folder, patiently waiting for the day when I can finally get my butt back to Tokyo.
Here in Sweden, mainstream arcades disappeared in the late 90s. But you can still find some hidden away, ran by enthusiasts. Especially pinball, probably because the experience of real steel balls bouncing around is hard to replicate satisfyingly on a screen.
A slightly smaller city 2 towns over has an arcade with over 80 pinball tables and several original classic arcade videogames, like Pacman, Missile defence, Mario Bros, Asteroids. I think there’s a Sega Rally machine too. https://www.pinballseye.se/
Brisbane Australia here. We have at least one venue in the city that is a pub dedicated to original gaming - and it is a very popular place. You can go in, choose from about 40 different craft drinks on top, order some excellent food, and play any of:
- About 20 pinball machines
- Original arcade games like Tron, Space Invaders, Galaga, Simpsons 4 player, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat.
- NES, SEGA Megadrive, SNES, N64 Goldeneye
Almost all those games are running on CRT TVs as well, and the arcade games are in their original cabinets as much as possible. When you go to the bar you can buy a bag of 20 $1 coins and each pinball and arcade game is $1. Consoles are free. Great atmosphere and great concept. People are friendly and its not uncommon to have a small crowd watching and shouting at goldeneye on the small TV in the corner as players get killed.
Yep. This and the fact that each arcade has maybe 5 flavor of the month games, none of them remotely appealing to me, with the rest being countless floors of crane games, makes it kind of hard to care.
Like, I get it, they’re going for the whales who’ll waste loads of cash on “games” that just swallow coins. But leave at least one floor with some variation and some games that average people will want to play.
These are not new developments. Plenty of arcade games (Midnight Maximum Tune, Jubeat, Ghost Squad to name a few) had these features well before the 2010s. They might have become more mainstream as of late because the casual audience have mostly dried up thanks to mobile games and arcade owners need to make their money back from the more dedicated players.
Visited Japan a few years ago and even then I found the arcade experience kind of bewildering. I was fully prepared to accept the crane games, rhythm games, and the genre sorted levels of the big arcades.
What really threw me was the absolutely impenetrable MOBA style games that seemed to fill entire levels on their own. They looked like they were designed for lots of long term play and grinding, and needed some kind of way to store progress. Even though I must have seen 50 of these machines filling entire floors at the few arcades I went to, I never actually saw anybody playing them.
There was however a dedicated "scene" in the basement of one of the arcades where they were playing some kind of competitive mech game. The cabinet was unusual in that it had arcade style controls, but also looked like it had a playstation-like controller as well (maybe as an option?)
I have no idea what the arcade culture or scene is like in Japan, but going in I thought I'd spend more time there and have more fun trying out weird stuff that hadn't made it to the U.S. In the end I think I found a Tekken 5 cabinet and played a few rounds against a few players and then left.
The words "Team", "Hero" and "Action" are conspicuously missing from the acronym MOBA.
Given that the phrase "multi-player" traditionally didn't say anything about playing on the same side, I'd say that Starcraft fits the bill just as well as League.
Its a shame, Tokyo of the 90s and 2000s felt like stepping into a new cyberpunk world with arcades, advanced cellphones, net cafes and karaoke booths, wild fashion music and subcultures etc. When Thomas Freidman came out with the World is Flat around then I thought it was kind of ridiculous, and it hasn’t played out in work but the world of consumer culture sadly is becoming much flatter. No market can resist the iPhone and Netflix forever.
Japan resident here. I grew up in the arcade scene in the US. It was the thing to do when we were kids. Sadly, it began to die just as I entered university age. I moved to Japan in my mid 20s and was thrilled to see arcades not only plentiful, but also decently packed.
Before online play was ubiquitous, there was always a line of people to challenge. I loved it! But yeah, the scene is rapidly approaching what I saw back in the US. Even before the pandemic, the scene was dying out. I suppose this is just the nail in the coffin.
On the other hand, I've also lived in South Korea and visit quite often (only a 2 hour flight). The arcade scene is HUGE. It reminds me of its heights back in the US. The places also offer offer a huge variety -- from your typical fighting, MOBA, and crane, to darts, basketball, and target shooting. And oh yeah, little 2 person karaoke booths. It even seems like a popular date spot for young couples. There is also a huge growth in VR arcades and retro arcade bars. The latter is pretty awesome. They'll typically have some retro console/emulators set up, and you pay a flat fee (and a drink minimum) for unlimited play. Can't wait to get back!
I believe it's a culture thing. The more wealthy the average citizen becomes, the less they need to share with others. And once you're starting to get used to having everything to yourself on-demand, it becomes difficult to accept that in an arcade, you might have to wait for someone else to finish playing before it's your turn.
This is real. I don't have arcades near me, so I converted my garage to an arcade.
I think a lot of private collectors like me are sweeping up old equipment that doesn't have a profitable public home anymore.
Would -love- to open a non-profit retro arcade/hackerspace in the peninsula area some day if I can secure a building somewhere, but in the mean time I'll just keep collecting equipment to selfishly enjoy at home.
I coincidentally, was looking for a DDR machine yesterday. How do you fine your cabinets (any not just DDR)? It seemed there were a couple small national sites, and one or two local, and their inventory was it
I'm fairly removed from the scene at this point but Bemani arcade games have been thoroughly cracked for years. Most of the serious players now just buy custom controllers and if they really want fit them in custom cabs.
I don't think Konami cares so long as you aren't posting videos on YouTube or setting the games up for profit. They don't sell the games to consumers anymore.
They were already less cool as of late. Gone were a lot of the “one game per machine” things and instead they just had a bunch of crane games and these “multi-title” machines with standardized controls. So, you could sit anywhere and play the same thing unless it had unique controls/displays or could still justify its own cabinet.
Those already was only one machines or two, if at all. Also a big issue with arcade games is it's quite expensive (100 to 300 yens per game), especially in comparison to buying occasions.
I certainly miss 90’s arcades but what made them special was limited access (my parents would only take me every now and then) and the gap between arcade and consumer hardware. There was a little bit of socializing but it was mostly with the friends that came along. I wish location-based VR experiences like The Void would become a modern substitute but the economics don’t seem to work.
There's a massive gap between arcade and consumer hardware today, too. The arcades are filled with machines from a good 20 years ago, pushing less polygons than a PS2. Why would I pay good money to play with extremely outdated hardware?
I live in Detroit and within the past few years 3 arcade bars have opened within walking distance of my apartment and another is about to open. These are the places I tend to frequent (actually about to go to one to after writing this and went to another last night). The thing that separates them from console or PC games for me is pinball. I cannot justify buying a machine, but I’m loving the resurgence.
We have lots of arcade bars in Chicago, too. I'm glad they exist, but sometimes you just want to play a game without having to interact with or smell drunk people.
I see where you’re coming from, but compared to a space filled with children it’s better for me. The best arcade I’ve ever been to, and I’m biased, it’s marvelous Marvin’s museum of mechanical wonders in Farmington hills Michigan but the crowd (children) ruins it
The biggest problem with the arcade bars in Chicago is that if you go more than a handful of times they become very boring if you go with the intent of playing games while drinking versus drinking while playing games. The games are almost all universally old and most are simply less fun as soon as the nostalgia wears off. Some are better than others but they all become old quick.
Replay is the biggest offender of this, they spend thousands of dollars every few weeks to theme the bar but pretty much every game came out before 99 with tons being from the 80s. And they barely maintain them. Also the theme drinks are pretty much all the same and overpriced, just with a different name.
What was the biggest game ever in the arcade scene? I remember in Akihabara in the 90s they were screening Virtua Vighter matches outside because the crowds were too big to fit into the arcade centers. The loser had to make place for the next guy in line and there seemed to be no limit of new contestants. I tried my luck (not skill) a few times and IIRC even won once.
Lived in Tokyo in the 80's as a teenager. Game centers where the place to be after school and meet kids from other schools. Loud places, usually close to train/subway stations. Games where between 50¥-100¥. Some game centers offered free melon soda. My game center was managed by a young and friendly Chinpira(low ranked Yakuza).
That's a significant factor in how those places survived. You could easily drop by there on your extended way home from school/work/whatever. Nowadays people have smartphones, internet, etc. for casual entertainment.
Or use the "article view" mode of your browser if it has one; it works with Safari's implementation. Japan Times' "paywalling" is pretty naïvely implemented.
Sad story but a good side effect of that is you can now buy one of these arcade machine for a good price.
I bought a vewlix diamond a few months ago for $2k. Something I never thought possible a few years ago.
Game center are closing but if you are motivated, and not afraid to spend countless hours of research, cleaning, figuring out manual guide in japanese,… now is a good time to own one of those aracde machine before they completely disappear!
Quick appreciation, I'm very thankful of Round 1 for bringing a variety of rhythm arcades to the US (Wacca, SDVX, IIDX, Project Diva, DDR, more arcades that I don't remember the names)
Round 1 seems to be doing alright. Their facilities are more diverse in offerings, with bowling, badminton, and other sports along with food and drinks. They are not focused on arcade games only.
I knew a guy who had arcade machines he used to place in public places. A few years after gaming arrived on smartphones he had to wind up his business as the machines weren’t generating enough profit.
>Over the decades, gaming arcades in Japan have faced a series of challenges. Typically, they’ve been in the realm of technology — namely high-tech video game consoles that first promised arcade machine-level graphics and then, eventually, surpassed them. Now, Japanese arcades are facing a new menace, one that the entire world has been combating: COVID-19.
>Even pre-pandemic, arcades in Japan were on a downward trend. According to a police white paper, there were only 4,022 arcades across Japan in 2019, down from 26,573 in 1986. Things have changed even since the late 2000s, when I published a book on Japanese game centers called “Arcade Mania!.” Back then there were over 9,000 arcades — significantly less than their mid-1980s peak, but double that of today.
>For years, bowling alleys and the rooftops of department stores functioned as amusement spaces. Namco, for example, got its start in the amusement business in the mid-1950s, building two wooden hobby horses for the roof of a Matsuya department store in Yokohama. By the early 1970s, it expanded to electromechanical games, forerunners of the modern arcade games.
>Gaming arcades as we know them first exploded in Japan in the late 1970s, when the game Space Invaders captured the nation’s imagination. Game centers — often coffee shops converted into arcades — were called “Invader House,” as the association with the classic space shooter was so strong.
>From the late ’70s through the early 1990s, arcades thrived, thanks to youth with disposable money and arcade cabinets that often offered better graphics than home consoles. But as home consoles — from makers like Nintendo and Sega — got more powerful, and as the internet made online play possible, Japan’s arcades lost some of their home-field advantage.
>Although time and technology marched on, arcades always had a certain charm that couldn’t be replaced by better graphics or central processing units. They were places you could go out of nostalgia, time machines to another era, and, most importantly, where you could interact with like-minded people. This appeal wasn’t limited to traditional gamers; in 2010 Nikkei reported that arcades were increasingly becoming social hubs for the elderly. One 65-year-old said going to the arcade and making loads of friends was “like being in a dream.”
>Much of what makes arcades so appealing — human interaction — is now severely limited. When states of emergency were declared in Tokyo and Osaka, arcade titans Taito and Sega temporarily shuttered their game centers. Those that are open do take precautions, such as disinfecting the cabinets, buttons and joysticks, but the vibe is simply not the same.
>When explaining Taito’s operating loss in the amusement business and sharp drop in net sales, parent company Square Enix explained in a recent financial statement that these closures were designed to help fight the spread of COVID-19.
>“The amusement market continues to face a harsh operating environment given the direct impact it sustains from the COVID-19 pandemic,” Square Enix added in its most recent financial results. Capcom also notes that it’s not just the foot traffic into arcades that has been impacted, but also the demand for manufacturing amusement machines. The whole industry has been hit.
>Knock-on effects compound. For example, with the ongoing border closure, arcades that relied on international tourists are feeling the crunch more than ever. Since last year, a spate of notable arcades in Tokyo have closed, including Sega Akihabara Building 2, an area landmark formerly known as Akihabara Gigo, and the 48-year-old Shinjuku Playland Carnival.
>“Business was tough, but I had thought we could get out of this someday,” Shinjuku Playland Carnival manager Noriyuki Shimoda told The Asahi Shimbun about the closure. “I can’t find the words to describe my feelings.”
>There appears to be little help or interest from the Japanese government in boosting arcades during the pandemic. With each arcade closure, a part of the country’s gaming history and culture is lost.
>“The government is doing nothing to help us out of this hopeless situation,” Yasushi Fukamachi, manager at Tokyo arcade Mikado, told Agence France-Presse earlier this year. “The income has gone down by more than half. This is horrible.”
>Mikado owner Minoru Ikeda was forced to launch a plea on crowdfunding site Campfire last year. Thankfully, over 3,800 fans chipped in, raising ¥37,328,892 (about $343,000). Not every arcade has been so lucky.
>But don’t count out Japanese arcades just yet.
>Game companies are showing slight signs of optimism. “Although amusement center operations, which had slumped due to the impact of COVID-19, have entered a recovery trend, it is expected to take some time for the recovery of purchasing motivation of customers,” wrote Sega Sammy in its most recent financial statement. The gaming giant sold an 85.1% stake in Sega Entertainment Co., a subsidiary that operates amusement facilities, to Genda Inc. in December 2020. Likewise, Square Enix stated that its amusement centers have been on the rebound, particularly in the suburbs and shopping malls.
>
>This may be the greatest challenge Japanese arcades have ever faced, but it isn’t quite game over.
I'm so sad I'll never get to experience this. I don't think with covid, arcades will ever be economically viable again. Even with a vaccine it's a high risk low reward activity to have so many people gathered around in such a small space.
However there are tons of arcade bars in the US. Hopefully this will become a thing in Japan
"high risk low reward activity to have so many people gathered around in such a small space"
So is going to a restaurant or a pub. Once Covid is endemic and handled well by vaccines, other factors will have a bigger influence on the fate of Japanese arcades.
They are already mostly gone except in a few places in tokyo and the obvious geek dens like Akihabara. And they are all smoking which means you get cigarette smell amd feel dirty after no time. No thanks.
Smoking was common in Tokyo arcades up until mid 2020. Tokyo introduced a new, stricter set of regulations that banned smoking in most businesses unless they have a dedicated smoking room/section. Most arcades didn't build those facilities, so they are legally obligated to be smoke free[1]. Arcades outside of Tokyo have to comply with the looser national regulations.
As a non-smoker who regularly frequented arcades, I welcome this change. Sadly since COVID I've avoided going out entirely, and am not surprised that the industry is dying. I agree with trzy in a separate thread: experiences like The Void[2] which are impossible to have at home are the only thing I can see driving people back to arcades.
"None" is definitely not true. The smoking section is often separated, or on another floor but they definitely exist. Often with the Dart machines and/or with the more gambling style machines (not specifically pachinko).
