On August 21st I returned to Japan from my trip to Arizona. I stayed a night in Tokyo before proceeding home. I looked up how to find the Mikado game center in Ikebukuro. This was my first time visiting there.
I didn’t take a whole lot of photos, actually. By then I was getting very hungry, so I went to Ueno and went to an Irish pub called The World’s End where I had fish & chips with two pints of Guinness. It was great.
That night I also went to Taito’s HEY game center in Akihabara and took these photos there.
One of the places I visited with friends in the Phoenix area is a new Daiso in Chandler! It provides an identical experience to a typical Daiso in Japan. Items just cost more than 100 yen, of course. When we used to live in Arizona, these types of items were available at Asiana Market and other Asian stores, but now Daiso officially exists in Arizona. Wow.
Walking into the store, it looks so much like a typical Daiso store.
Lots of neat crap for kids, of course. I wasn’t expecting to find Touhou merchandise!
Gudetama and Cinamarroll stuff too.
Yep, this is typical Daiso goods! Straight from Japan.
Price conversion charts are posted about the store to let people know how much the items cost in US dollars.
Coffee Boss is doing a retro Dragon Quest campaign where entries to the contest can win limited edition prizes, as seen in the top picture. I love the pixel art on the cans. I didn’t buy the Black ones since I just cannot drink coffee black. I did buy the Cafe au Lait and Premium ones. I’ll feature this in my next Japanese Snacks video at the end of the year.
My friends and i visited the brand new Outpost Arcade on August 16th. It’s small, but cozy. No booze at the time of the recording, which was a shame because I could’ve gone for a beer if one had been available. I settled for an IBC Root Beer instead. Lots of great pinball games and video game cabinets too: Tempest, Star Wars, Tron, Marble Madness, Joust, Afterburner II, and a couple of games I’d never seen before! https://www.theoutpostarcade.com/
From left to right, here are Star Wars, Tac/Scan, Robotron 2084, Joust, After Burner II, and Centipede. I’d never seen Tac/Scan before and it was a very cool vector graphic game by Sega! I also didn’t know that there was an Atari 2600 port of this game which uses the paddle controller. Neat!
Here I am, playing Tron. It’s one of my favorite movies, but I admit that the game is only so-so. As a kid, I really enjoyed the successor, Discs of Tron, far more. That said, this game cabinet is an exquisite work of art, with all the glowing detail which matches the movie, and the blacklights that create that fantastic glow. These two aspects really capture the ambience to the movie so well.
This really matches the Syd Mead/Moebius design work of the Tron movie so well.
Star Wars. Oh, heck yeah!
Somehow, the arcades when I was a kid only had Asteroids and not Asteroids Deluxe. The 3D look to Asteroids Deluxe is quite exquisite, with the background and the vector graphics projected onto it. Fantastic.
And of course, plenty of pinball goodness. I really liked the Doctor Who Daleks.
My friend Lou knows this Star Trek: TNG pinball game well. How appropriate, since he’s the biggest Trek fan I know.
So while I got to spend time with friends on my recent trip to Arizona, on the day which I visited Andy’s Hobby HQ and Book Off, we also went to AZ Mills Mall in Tempe. TiltStudio is there, and this is where I found the Pac-Man Capsule Factory I posted about earlier. Tilt is what used to be Gameworks which opened in the ’90s when I was in college, and I took videos of Gameworks back in 2010 in the early years of my YouTube channel. Here is the playlist for those videos. At the time, the guy who ran that arcade was focused on bringing in many arcade cabinets from Japan, including an incredibly awesome air hockey table I’ve yet to even come across in Japan even.
Tilt now focuses on a great selection of pinball games, thus the name.
This is cool! It’s a Beatles pinball game. My friend Kevin is a huge Beatles fan, and so is my wife.
An OT Star Wars pinball game! Righteous.
Ghostbusters pinball!
This is a JIBUNGOUS UFO catcher! Holy crap. I had to have my picture taken with it.
Tilt also has a nice collection of some great classic arcade games. The rest of these photos are a collection of pictures of those games.
So a couple of weekends ago, I had the opportunity to visit the Mandai in Takasaki and look at the neat stuff there. I first checked out the plastic model section. Here’s an Imai kit of the Big Mighty from Mighty Jack. Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans will know about Mighty Jack. I believe I saw the toolings for these models when I worked at Aoshima 9 years ago in one of the company’s storage warehouses.
Imai made a classic Batmobile in 1:42 scale. Weird scale. I don’t think I’ve ever seen this kit before.
There were many vintage Arii and Imai Macross kits too. I was tempted to get this one, but decided not to.
Here are vintage kits of Macross, Ideon, Harlock, and Yamato.
Vintage Mospeada, Ideon, Dunbine, and L-Gaim kits.
They have new kits too, of course. Evangelion, Xabungle, Layzner, Dunbine, Sakura Taisen, and Super Robot Taisen. I’ve watched YT videos of that Asuka kit and she looks great, even unpainted.
Plenty of scale aviation kits too! I don’t see those 1:100 scale Platz jet fighter kits very often.
I saw this Street Fighter II bath towel and Chun-Li doll. I was tempted to get the towel, but I couldn’t resist the doll. “Ha ha ha ha! Yatta!”
Lots of Famicom and Super Famicom games, of course.
All the expensive games are kept in the display cases, of course. I didn’t know that Clock Tower was ported to the Wonderswan.
I played a few rounds of Shanghai on a Blast city cabinet in the Gunma Leisure Land game center downstairs.
King of Fighters was playing on a Nesica cabinet.
There was this nice sculpture of Rei on an Evangelion pachinko machine. I don’t ever remember seeing Rei with long hair. Maybe it’s from one of the new movies I never bothered watching.
Here are the signs for the restrooms: Jojo for male and Hatsune Miku for female.
On my trip to my hometown of Phoenix, AZ during my summer vacation, I was able to visit a Book Off on Bell Road! It opened within recent years. There have been Book Off stores all along in California. When Mayu and I used to live in America, we would visit the Book Off locations in Torrance, Garden Grove, Los Angeles and other areas. But now both Book Off and Daiso stores have opened in the Phoenix area.
Here are the signs outside.
Look at all the books! The books are in English, of course. Otherwise, the experience is just like a Book Off in Japan. This makes Book Off a direct competitor with the long-standing Bookmans store locations in Arizona.
The store clerk says that so much of this stuff is imported from the Book Off locations in Japan. I guess they buy so much stuff that they just export it to the USA for sale there.
So many anime figures for sale in the display case.
So many pin buttons, keychains, and small figures. Just like a Book Off in Japan.
They have import Famicom games from Japan! Star Wars, Red Arima, Parodius, Galaga… neat stuff!
Import Famicom and Super Famicom games too.
Domestically-released modern games are sold used there as well, of course.
This is the Grave of the Fireflies movie soundtrack on vinyl record. I was surprised to find this.
Huge selection of used, English-language manga. I bought several used volumes of Spy Family.
Gunpla! There were also other model kits there too. I even saw an Eggplane Girl resin figure by Hasegawa there, and for a good price. This is so cool.
Dollar books. Very neat. I didn’t have time to look at the SF book selection there. It would’ve been nice if I had more time to spend, but I had quite a busy itinerary with my friends Kevin and Brian. (Our next destination was Andy’s Hobby HQ which I featured in my previous blog post.)
