The Gritty, Underground Network Bringing Japan’s Arcades to the US

https://www.wired.com/story/gritty-underground-network-bringing-japan-arcades-to-us/

by zdw • 5 years ago

88 71 5 years ago

coolgeek• 5 years ago

Alekhine• 5 years ago

I'd like to build a raspberry pi based MAME machine for my college, but to get a box to actually put the machine in, its either a lot of time and effort to build one (I do not have woodworking skills, nor the desire to learn) or a lot of money to buy a shell, which I don't have. So it will likely stay a daydream.

It would be nice to see people playing together in the lounge, though.

eropple5• 5 years ago

I happen to be a woodworker when I'm not a software developer and FWIW, and building an traditional-style 90's plywood cab (with some affordances; how you mount the panel is an Open Question) is pretty trivial stuff with a drill, a jigsaw (if you want rounded corners), a few pieces of sandpaper, and a circ saw (you'd need a router for traditional T edge banding but you can get flat edge banding right on Amazon). You can get the tools on Craigslist for $40 to $60 if you look hard enough. The consumables (hole saw, drill bit, screws, dowel, glue) are maybe another $20 to $25), and a couple of sheets of plywood are the most expensive at about $60 per. Not the cheapest thing in the world, but firmly in beer-money territory if you've got interested friends.

(And then you've got folks like me who drop a thousand dollars on a gizmo to not have to think about the construction process nearly as hard, but shhh, we're cautionary tales.)

I can't help you with the not wanting to learn part, but, having never built one, I'm pretty confident I could do it in a day. Pretty confident that it's a weekend project for a couple of college kids. And learning how to use your hands is a pretty rewarding experience, I find.

unwind• 5 years ago

As an armchair woodworker with a tool buying/daydreaming complex, please share what gizmo(s) you refer to. Thanks. :)

astrange• 5 years ago

I'd like to build a raspberry pi based MAME machine for my college

Has anyone ever come up with an entertainment project using a small computer that isn’t turning it into an emulation box? It seems like it’s the default dad project too.

JKCalhoun2• 5 years ago

As another responded, building a cabinet is a pretty good first woodworking project, not really that hard.

A cabinet can be as simple or complex as you want.

Extreme example: a large cardboard box in fact is how I have often begun many of my past MAME cab builds. I make the cardboard prototype to test ergonomics, fit of the various components — surprisingly you can play on them if you go all the way to install and wire the buttons.

Sheets of plywood or MDF (hate that stuff as a woodworker though) can be purchased at a big box store — maybe they can cut them down to size a bit for you to transport?

A long ruler and an inexpensive circular saw will allow you to cut the sheets of plywood down to the right size. An inexpensive jigsaw as mentioned if you wanted your cabinet to have a few curves (seen plenty of functional if boxy cabs though that are just as fun to play).

A drill to make holes to install the buttons, glue, drywall screws... It can be done with few tools.

Honestly such a project can turn into a gateway drug to more woodworking and tools. As mentioned, you may want to build a 2nd one and add T-molding around the edges to dress it up and look for legit. So a router and slot-cutting bit are added to your growing collection of tools in the garage. Purchase a $400 track saw and after the beautiful and precise cuts you will never touch your circular saw again....

eropple5• 5 years ago

Funny that you mention a track saw. Because my TSO rail square just showed up...

Also, I don't even think MDF is a necessity for this, is it? The cabinets I babysat at the arcade in college were all three-layer or graded-density particle board.

wccrawford• 5 years ago

I'm assuming you want to build a full-size machine that mostly looks like it could have really been in an arcade...

And you're right. The wood alone for such a project is very expensive right now. I know because I started it a while ago with scrap wood, and I'm rethinking how I'm going to do it with cabinet-grade plywood.

Add in all the knowledge and effort to design and build the cabinet, and it becomes quite a task if you aren't already a woodworker with those tools.

If someone is really into it, I think it's a great project and they should absolutely do it. But I don't recommend it for people who merely want the end product.

eropple5• 5 years ago

Arcade cabinets are made of low grade sheet goods, including just particleboard (not even MDF).

I'm thinking about making a furniture grade arcade cabinet personally (and mounting a CRT into it), but I'm a cautionary tale, you need not make my mistakes.

boomboomsubban2• 5 years ago

How does someone blow that wad of cash on a game and convince some editor to let them write an article about it only to not include a picture of the cabinet in the article? I guess it could be their desire to monopolize they mention, but they don't seem adverse to bragging about it.

Also I'm surprised there isn't a somewhat niche pachinko parlor market in the US already. My quick search shows one place in Virginia advertising itself as the only US parlor. Maybe the difficulty of translation and the "selling gambling to youths" aspect of the frequent anime links keeps it away.

texasbigdata• 5 years ago

Wouldn't they technically be casinos and thus regulated?

My experience with pachinko in Japan felt very much like the old strip in Las Vegas emotion and vibe wise.

Cthulhu_2• 5 years ago

Pachinko is a slot machine and is gambling, but they use a loophole to not be considered such - it pays out tickets that you can use to get toys and stuff like an arcade, but they will buy the toys back from you for money.

boomboomsubban2• 5 years ago

Yeah, I was picturing them as openly being casinos. You'd think at least Las Vegas would have some, a sort of international slots section. Hijacking culture is already their specialty after all.

namelessoracle• 5 years ago

Pachinko would be legally gambling in the United States and the loophole they use in Japan doesnt exist here.

There are elements of Pachinko that make it unattractive for casino's to mess with. All the machines would be licensed tech from Japan (cost), managing the balls (if you actually distribute them out) has costs associated that they dont get as many scaling advantages that Japan would get, the machines go through more wear and tear than slot machines do. Also its my understanding you redeem the balls to get your prizes (though some just print out tickets now?), so you would have to create some kind of redemption mechanism for the balls (and also create anti cheating measures agains this).

It's just a bunch of work for what doesnt appear to be much gain. The main appeal to the game is that it has more illusion of skill than slots do. And the gambling authorities would have to figure out what the acceptable win/loss rations are on the machines.

suction13• 5 years ago

I've visited plenty of arcades in Japan, and they were all horrible. Sure, the games were interesting, but they are sad and sometimes creepy places. Smoking is allowed in there, and with Japan's well known tobacco abuse problem, words fail to describe the stench in there. My Japanese girlfriend told me that "nobody normal would ever go in there" and was actually disappointed in me wanting to enter in that sort of place. Later I found out that like most of the entertainment sector, arcades are run by organised crime and the men who frequent them are seen as losers.

jbm• 5 years ago

What arcades are you talking about, if you don't mind me asking? All the Sega ones were about as mainstream as you could get. I would walk out of Sunshine City in Ikebukuro and see it filled with normal-ish people. I even took my kids to play Taiko no Tatsujin in Nakano Broadway.

The tobacco issue was a lot better in Tokyo when I left; most indoor places are non-smoking now. IMO that is the only true benefit Tokyo reaped from the 2020 Olympic preparations.

Klonoar• 5 years ago

The non-mainstream ones can indeed feel a bit dodgy - like, night and day difference.

That said I still went to them periodically since you could often find older games there that the bigger ones had moved on from.

suction13• 5 years ago

I mean if that's normal to you I guess you're not aware of the reputation they have among normal Japanese people.

tkgally2• 5 years ago

I agree about the horribleness of Japanese game arcades, but that actually can be an attraction if you’re in the right (or wrong?) frame of mind. I’ve dropped into “game centers” quite a few times over the years—usually just to use the restroom, though occasionally to look around. While arcades in the suburbs can be just annoying with the noise and teenagers, those in the scuzzier areas of big cities—Shimbashi and Kabukicho in Tokyo, Isezakicho in Yokohama, Nishinari in Osaka—can have an atmosphere of life-on-the-skids ennui all their own. I remember, one weekday afternoon, watching several middle-aged guys silently sitting at a horse racing game—something like the ones in [1] and [2]—in the dim basement of a run-down building in Shimbashi. It looked like they had been there all day. What a way to spend one’s life.

I haven’t been in any arcades for several years, but apparently they have been no-smoking since April 2020 [3, in Japanese].

[1] https://lineblog.me/mssp/archives/5037607.html

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrekv_ttmNQ

[3] http://bayon-game.com/?p=35375

tkgally2• 5 years ago

In case anyone’s interested, below are some Google views of Japanese game centers that don’t look very enticing, at least to me. The first three are in Osaka; the fourth is in Shimbashi, Tokyo.

https://www.google.co.jp/maps/@34.6454389,135.5009173,3a,75y...

https://www.google.co.jp/maps/@34.6455462,135.4997983,3a,75y...

https://www.google.co.jp/maps/@34.6981048,135.533943,3a,75y,...

https://www.google.co.jp/maps/place/Diana+Amusement+Space/@3...

suction13• 5 years ago

So the non-smoking laws in Japan are in effect now (I left Japan in 2019), but I wouldn't count on them being enforced.

Anyway that'd remove one barrier of stepping into an Arcade in Japan.

drzaiusapelord3• 5 years ago

The arcades I went to in Akihabara was pretty family friendly, but I did go to a smaller one on the 3rd floor of an anonymous looking business building in a different neighborhood and it was a bit seedy, but it was just nerdy guys playing classic games and classic consoles and not dangerous seeming at all. I wonder if your gf's perceptions are colored by how conformist and competitive Japanese culture is. Of course those men are "losers," they are spending all their time playing children's games. My understanding is that men and women over 25 who aren't married there are seen as "losers" as well, and not being married and being video game obsessed must be a kiss of death in that culture.

As a child of the 80s I'm very familiar with the seedy arcade in the USA. I remember every machine having an ashtray wedged between controller and screen and that awful stink. I doubt the men there were regarded as anything but "losers" by the mainstream of the time as well. Being a capitalist culture, gamers weren't respectable until streaming and tournaments in which they could become wealthy. Money makes right in our culture. So our current perception of gamers is very far from what people thought back then who couldn't get rich playing games.

toyg2• 5 years ago

There is also a very real problem with shut-in otaku/hikikomori culture. A lot of otakus are real losers by the standard of any western society, their level of social isolation is massive and there is no redemption for them. Otaku and gaming subcultures often overlap, inevitably there is some association.

digisign• 5 years ago

Went to many arcades in the early eighties, smoking was never allowed. However, it was in California which was a pioneer in that area.

fomine35• 5 years ago

Nowadays 25 is too young to be seen "loser". Anyway now 47% of men at 30-35yo in Japan are never got married, we "lose".

lifthrasiir6• 5 years ago

It greatly depends; the notorious slot machine (pachinko) industry is mostly run by organized crime [1] and pachinko lovers are not well received in general, but arcade game centers described in this article are not necessarily pachinko parlors. And if a single arcade does have both pachinkos and other ordinary games, they are typically sectioned so that if you only want to play ordinary games you don't ever need to cross the pachinko area (in the other words, pachinkos are pervasive but also well hidden from the public sight).

[1] Many of them are also run by Korean Japaneses and this is a consequence of the discrimination of Koreans in Japan.

suction13• 5 years ago

Wrong. Game centers, aka arcades, are run by organised crime as well.

Cthulhu_2• 5 years ago

Sounds a bit like the more sleazy casino's in europe and the US to be honest, or random slot machines in the corners of restaurants and bars.

smukherjee19• 5 years ago

From my experience, there are two "types" of arcades in Japan: one called "game centers" (ゲーセン, pronounced gay-sen), and another "pachinko" or "slot", also called パチスロ(pachisuro).

The former is actually really nice. FYI, if the place you went to is a SEGA or a Taito Station, then it's very likely a game center. It does have some machines that use "medals", which I assume is some sort of gambling thing, but it's just a small subset. The main focus is on fighting games, arcade games (well duh), rhythm games(like Ongeki, maimai Deluxe which I love), Densha de Go! (a realistic train driving simulator with the inside looking like a cockpit of a commuter railway train), some robot games, Dance Dance Revolution, Kantai Collection, Fate/Grand Order, zombie shooters and many more. I will admit that atleast one Taito Station in the Tokyo suburbs has the smoking smell in it, but otherwise they are pretty nice places.

The other type is well, the pachinko and slot machines shops/arcades. They are the gambling machines, and almost everyone I know has a negative impression of them. If someone tells me they go to pachisuro for fun, I will just be polite on the surface, but internally I would avoid associating with them any further than required. The way to tell these apart is that they will very likely be in front of, or within 2 minutes walk of a station, will have smoking allowed in it, will have something like "new machines!" or "renewed machines!" in their advertisements, won't allow anyone below 18 or 20 to enter, and will have slot machines and many old people spending away their life savings inside. I avoid those like the plague.

All in all, I love the game centers though. If you get a chance, do try one of the games I mentioned above in the 2nd paragraph. Maybe you will find something you will like. :)

seanmcdirmid2• 5 years ago

Aren’t the pachinko places almost completely run by North Koreans? I’ve heard this is one of Kim Jong Un’s biggest sources of income, but that could have been exaggerated or made up.

yummypaint• 5 years ago

I couldn't believe how loud pachinko parlors were. I tried to set foot in a few and could feel my hearing being damaged by the second. The closest noise i've heard elsewhere is the ball mills used for grinding coal in power plants.

fomine35• 5 years ago

True. Most arcades are enough clean. Most pachinko shops are dirty. Don't confuse them.

suction13• 5 years ago

I was talking about "Gehmu Sentah", aka Game Centers being horrible.

Pachinko is Pachinko, not an arcade. I'd appreciate a less patronising tonality, especially because you are wrong in saying that in Japan, Pachinko and Arcades are seen as even closely related.

May I ask what is your alleged expertise on Japan based on? I lived in the country for several years.

TulliusCicero• 5 years ago

I haven't visited them in Japan, but the two Round1's I've been to in the states have been great. They have standard US arcade games, but also a good selection of Japanese rhythm and fighting games. And when I say Japanese, I'm talking very obviously direct imports, same cabinets and everything. And yes, some of those games are only in Japanese.

jinto364• 5 years ago

It depends on the location. There are (maybe now, were) plenty of smaller arcades in standalone buildings that were under-ventilated, dimly lit, and always ridiculously loud. But many others are in shopping malls (like Aeon) and have some of the same games (and many more UFO catchers) without the smoking etc. Everytime I'm back in Japan I notice more restrictions on smoking, it's obviously still highly prevalent, but most larger/newer arcades have some floors or areas where smoking is restricted.

Just a tip, if you ever want to check out pachinko places, bring earplugs. To find out why, just walk in front of the automatic door, and you'll discover very quickly how much was invested in a multi-pane sound-insulating door. It's an experience.

lifthrasiir6• 5 years ago

Reverse engineering of Japanese music video games has been a huge issue. I was grown up from the environment where the only way to enjoy those games was an illegal means for a long time, and even at that time the contention was evident. In fact the article missed important details like that Konami moved to online authentication as a direct response to a massive content leak in 2012 among others, and that Programmed World (or later, Programmed Sun) was commonly used by gamers from Japan and other Asian countries where those games are legally available---even after the invitation-only policy and geofencing to prevent them. Made essential due to the COVID-19, the end game for those arcade game publishers seems to be the de-arcade-ization; Konami has been particularly active at mobile and PC ports of their arcade games and that greatly reduced the needs for legally questionable practices.

iamevn2• 5 years ago

Like the author, I missed my favorite game enough to buy an arcade rhythm game a few months into the pandemic. It's a shame Konami/Sega/Taito are so picky about who they sell to and therefore who gets to be on their network. I would love to pay Konami and put my Pop'n Music cab on the official eAmusement network but they will not take my money.

Game Saru is wonderful and I can't recommend them highly enough. They have a youtube channel here: https://youtube.com/c/GameSaru

lifthrasiir6• 5 years ago

It's a shame Konami/Sega/Taito are so picky about who they sell to and therefore who gets to be on their network.

The thing is that, at least Konami isn't! It mostly depends on the domestic publisher to decide which customer to sell cabinets and network accesses. I'm particularly aware of a handful of people who own an arcade machine that is connected to the network in South Korea.

iamevn2• 5 years ago

The terrifying video the introduction describes: https://twitter.com/ffoqboss/status/1444746707925827584

jinto364• 5 years ago

If anyone has a lead on Jubeat machine, I'd be quite interested- the only rhythm game I didn't insta-fail at, so I came to appreciate it. Also not as enormous of a cabinet as Drummania XG and such.

gaudat2• 5 years ago

Check out Jubeat Plus. Maybe it is real enough if you play on a large touch screen. Or perhaps you can find some replacement parts for the real machine and cobble together a DIY input controller.

I remember seeing a bootleg Jubeat (that isn't called one) in my local arcade. Perhaps it is from some Chinese or Taiwanese vendors. The input devices are very similar but it does not run Jubeat though.

jinto364• 5 years ago

Hm haven't seen any machines that have the similar form factor, but the only arcades I go to are in Japan. Would be interested what music they have in the clone machines. I had a sideloaded APK that was a Jubeat approximation called Yubiosu for a while, before the official Android Jubeat Plus came out, but for whatever reason they only ever supported Jubeat Plus on a few devices. Since I don't otherwise have any iDevices, I'd rather just import a cabinet than get an iPad just for that.

gaudat2• 5 years ago

Oh I never thought this topic would go on HN. Playing music arcade games is my guilty pleasure. These arcade games always have creatively designed input devices that blows PC and smartphone games out of the water. Check Dancerush (DDR but you step on a touch screen), Wacca (With a round display area and round input panels) and Ongeki (Gacha and some light bullet hell mixed in) out.

Apart from Museca mentioned in the article, there is also Beatstream from Konami that got shelved after only one update. That game's form factor is ideal for touch screens but it's a shame it never gets released on smartphones. Maybe the cost of making custom background videos is too high to bo justified.

And kudos for Sega for at least exporting Chunithm and Maimai DX even though the former is a old version and both got a lot of pop songs removed due to licensing. I'm lucky to live in one of the countries these are exported officially. Otherwise I will need to go to Japan every fow months to get my fix.

There is a community that managed to make those Sega music games run on a Windows PC and they have built those custom input devices out of acrylic or MDF, complete with custom PCBA, firmware and reverse engineered drivers.

It's pretty ironic that the best players of DDR include Americans and Koreans that presumably started their career on those smuggled machines.

The Gritty, Underground Network Bringing Japan’s Arcades to the US

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