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| Gamer in Japan Article 4 | // article |
| Well, I'm sure all five of you were shocked and appalled to find that my last article was so short, I'm not actually sure why, there was a graph and everything! Guess the 5 pages about the state of pornography in Japan were too much for the editor! I'm afraid things have been somewhat hectic this last week, as I have spent all my free time involved in a Snow/Ice Sculpting competition in the City Centre. As such there's not much for me to write about, other than my second trip to the Sega Centre (the first having been mentioned in the last article which half-vanished somewhat mysteriously!). So here goes! Last weekend a friend and I decided to check out the nightlife in Sapporo. Having an area of the city devoted to clubbing and drinking that is billed as the largest north of Tokyo, I was expecting a lot less gaming than I actually got. With my friend suffering from overly exposed toes in a minus eight degrees Celsius environment, we were looking for somewhere to quickly access for long enough to warm her feet, without having to spend excessive amounts on food or drink. That's about when we both saw the second Sega Centre. Though it possessed a slightly less interesting facade than its bigger sibling, we entered to find an arcade to make any I have seen back home look like a slightly interesting collection of broken Play Stations. As if the miles of "fun" photo-booths weren't enough, this oasis of gaming glory was sporting no fewer than 4 of your standard House of the Deads. That's right, House of the Dead 4, though it may be available outside of Japan, I haven't yet seen it and after my misadventures with the previous instalments shotgun, the paper-light Uzi was a stick of bullet spraying joy. It was pretty standard HotD fare, zombie, shoot, zombie, shoot, get leg bitten off, scream, enter 100Yen (50 pence), zombie, shoot. But as with the previous incarnations, it was indeed a lot of fun. I then proceeded to partake of some "DragonBall Z", always a humorous anime this, I was interested to find such a modern arcade machine playing it, and with such startlingly appropriate and attractive graphics. The gameplay was beyond me, as I cannot read Japanese just yet, but I managed to beat my first few computer opponents with a combination of blocking and shooting. Unlike our machines though, this one didn't stop if you lost a fight and demand more money, it just keeps going, that is, until you're beaten by a human… It was roughly my 7th battle, this time with the illustrious "Cell", when my computer-controlled adversary became somewhat more animated. In short order he had defeated me 5 times, with 3 of those involving some kind of beam that removed my face. As I walked away, smiling and the very picture of the good loser, I realised that the other side of my machine sported a second unit, on which another person was playing. Closer inspection showed this player to have been my adversary. Clearly the Japanese know no bounds to their trickery, had I known I was facing a human I would have adjusted my style accordingly and thusly won… Ahem. After my defeat, we proceeded to an adjoining section to find a cavern of what looked like Submarine control boards, all linked into what can only be described as a 50 Inch or greater TV screen, displaying the unfolding fracas. At each console was seated a young player, with a deck of Gundam cards, which they would feed into their machines and then move across their boards, activating certain attacks and instance cards. Though I was captivated by such interesting and unique gameplay (to me at least) my companion was less impressed, I quote; "It seems a bit sad." This was enough to encourage us onto a nearby air-hockey table, which looked like someone had taken a standard air-hockey table, added a second table to the sides, and attached some kind of giant foam disc gun/refrigerator ice dispenser to one side. The game went fairly smoothly at first, my opponent wilting under a blistering array of "YAH! HWA! HIYA!" as puck after puck sailed into her goal. That's when the multi-ball kicked in. Quite suddenly we found ourselves battling to fend off and attack with no less than 8 pucks, not 3 pucks, 8 of the damned things, needless to say it was extremely fun, but not so good for either of our scores. The machine invoked multi-puck around 4 times in this first game, with the final score seeing me the winner by quite a way. We decided that my final 100 yen would have to be used for one last game. One last game I promptly lost with a combination of poor-handling of multi-pucks and a great deal of own-goals. With our coins depleted, we headed out of gaming nirvana, into the cold night, before finding a pleasantly expensive Salsa bar… Well, that about wraps up this issue, tune in next week when I'll be discussing everything from Manga to Final Fantasy XII. (Note: I will likely not discuss either of these as I am extremely forgetful.) Yoroshiku Onegai Shimas! | |
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