These are pictures I took a few months ago in the Taito Game Station arcade in Lirica Mall. From left to right: the sign in front, a vending machine, and Space Invaders Frenzy.
Taito Game Station in Lirica Mall, Maebashi
New buttons I got at the Mikado Game Center
Mikado had these pin badge buttons in their gachapon capsule toy dispensers, so I got three. One big one that says “PUSH START” (I’m not sure why it says “2006” because according to the Japanese Wikipedia, it started in 2009), and a set of buttons for the Mikado location in Ikebukuro (top) and the original in Takadanobaba (bottom). As I mentioned in the previous post, Mikado is a legendary spot for retrogaming.
It’s the ’80s, and you have only one quarter. Which game will you play?
Pac-Man is my all-time favorite game. In fact, I’m wearing Pac-Man boxer shorts underwear as I post this. I’m nuts for anything Pac-Man. That said, Star Wars was my #1 go-to game every time, as I mentioned in my post about the old arcade Bag-A-Tel as a kid.
I didn’t really play Defenders or Space Invaders in the arcade that much. I’d play them on my Atari at home. I preferred Galaxian over Space Invaders and I found the controls of Defender in the arcade to be too complicated with all those buttons.
And Tempest… wow. Star Wars and Tempest are the two I’d most want to play today. Playing games on an emulator and my Sega Saturn Virtua Stick is a great way to go at home, but the flight yoke of Star Wars and the analog knob of Tempest are two experiences that emulators can’t truly capture. For that matter, Centipede’s trackball is worth mentioning too, although while I liked that game, it didn’t come close.
Perhaps my least favorite of all of these games was Donkey Kong. I actually liked Popeye better, and Kangaroo even more so.
MOAR ’80s game arcade memes
So, here is Pac-Man, Frogger, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Asteroids, Defender, and the last two on the right are kind of small and I can’t recognize them.
For me, when my family would go to Valley West Mall in Glendale, Arizona, there was a game arcade there called Bag-A-Tel. My first go-to game was Atari’s Star Wars sit-down cabinet! If someone was there already, I’d go to Atari/Namco’s Pole Position II sit-down cabinet. I have so many great memories of that arcade. Valley West Mall died, was reborn as Manistee Town Center and died again. It was eventually demolished for the movie “Eight-Legged Freaks.”
Related: A couple of clever ’80s game arcade memes
A couple of clever ’80s game arcade memes
The first time I visited Japan was in 1998, and at that time all I saw were sit-down cabinets like the Sega Astro City, Taito Egret, Namco Cyberlead, etc. So, I was unaware that game centers here in Japan once had standing cabinets like America did until talking with my Japanese friend. He said that he would play Atari’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in the ’80s. Atari had some successes in Japan back in the ’80s, especially Gauntlet and Marble Madness. And going back further, Breakout obviously made quite an impression in Japan, giving birth to the “block kuzushi” genre with Arkanoid being the most exemplary title. Dang, if only I could travel back in time, or at least Quantum Leap into my childhood self and relive those memories…