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<\/p>\nI visited many game centers since my arrival to Tokyo, but there is one in particular that deserves\u00a0a dedicated post on this blog. That game center is Mikado, home to a thriving fighting game community as well as some unusual\u00a0arcade games.<\/p>\n
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Hiroyasu Kat\u00f4, whom I featured in another blog post<\/a>, was kind enough to introduce me to this unique venue along with a few other interesting game centers in the Nakado area of Tokyo. We both wrote notes and took many photographs to document\u00a0these spaces as much as possible for future current and future projects. When we arrived at\u00a0Mikado, we were fortunate enough to make full use of\u00a0Prof. Kat\u00f4’s personal network of\u00a0fighting game experts; he had many acquaintances on-site that were in a position to introduce us to the overall social fabric of the place.<\/p>\n Mikado is a retro-style game center specializing in titles that emerged during the 1990s fighting game boom. Top players from all over Tokyo gather here to learn, exchange and participate in the daily tournaments held in the venue, all commentated\u00a0by the owner himself. The sense of community is strong; fans schedule weekly meeting around the machines to share techniques for specific fighting games (events called taisenkai<\/em>), and fan-produced strategy guides for obscure games can be found amongst the various piles of flyers lying around. The staff is constantly working on the machines wether it is to change the setting of a cabinet or to fix a\u00a0circuit board with soldering iron. All of that is being done at arm’s length of players and the tournament show-floor; while customers are usually kept at bay from all maintenance activities in most of the large-scale game centers, here, repairs are conducted in plain view.\u00a0Tournaments matches are projected onto giant screens facing the main staircase to facilitate spectatorship as the venue becomes more crowded and walking around turns into\u00a0a challenge in itself.<\/p>\n But Mikado is more than just a hub for fighting game aficionados, it also curates a collection of unusual games that, despite their debatable ludic qualities, somehow carved a new place for themselves into this venue. Prof. Kat\u00f4 introduced me to an arcade version of the dating simulator Tokimeki Memorial<\/em> in which players go on dates with various characters of the series. Interaction is limited; in key moments of the game, the user must quickly answer a tricky question from his date partner. The game features a pulse sensor\u00a0onto which the player’s left hand need to rest. The\u00a0\u00ab\u00a0right\u00a0\u00bb answers to all questions in the game change\u00a0based on the correlation between the sensor’s reading and the \u00ab\u00a0tone\u00a0\u00bb of the reply’s line. Try to cover up a nervous state of mind with a detached reply, and its game over. Apparently, Mikado hosted tournaments of this game in the past; I can imagine very well how a game that is so perfectly unsuited to public performance could generate hilarious\u00a0situations\u00a0when the crowd gets involved.<\/p>\n The other game that one again demonstrates the specific culture shared by\u00a0Mikado gamers is a strange 1988 baseball game titled Moero!! Puro yaky\u00fb h\u00f4muran kyosen<\/em>. Everything about that game screams kusoge<\/em> (shitty game). It is basically a home run competition game that looks like something \u00a0straight out of the Atari 2600 era. The player must\u00a0hit continuous home run in order to continue. Fail twice in a row, and it’s game over. The game has acquired a reputation for being the fastest arcade game to give users a Game Over screen. A typical game session lasts about 30 seconds, but, as I experienced, that system never fails to provide a\u00a0big laugh. Mine lasted almost as long as the time I spent playing. Insert 100 yen, and then, sugu owaru<\/em> (immediately over). Mikado gamers certainly have a great\u00a0sense of humour and somewhat seem to enjoy being the\u00a0laughingstock of that joke of a video game. I doubt that gamers in 1988 took the joke that well though. In a way,\u00a0that game was salvaged from the great library of the forgotten video games of the 1980s\u00a0to be\u00a0repurposed as one of the multiple\u00a0pillards of Mikado’s local\u00a0gaming culture. According to a conversation with another of Prof. Kat\u00f4 acquaintances, Moero!!<\/em>\u00a0stands as that\u00a0infamous \u00ab\u00a0ridiculously unforgiving game\u00a0\u00bb that everybody familiar with the venue needs to\u00a0try at\u00a0least once. There are even special buttons awarded to players who\u00a0hit twenty home runs.<\/p>\n These are\u00a0just a few of the elements that set\u00a0Mikado apart\u00a0from other game centers. It\u00a0reminds us\u00a0that the experience of playing\u00a0video game leans on so much more than on simply what appears on screen. Playing in public, specifically, exposes that experience to the influence of local factors that are sometimes very unique.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I visited many game centers since my arrival to Tokyo, but there is one in particular that deserves\u00a0a dedicated post on this blog. That game center is Mikado, home to a thriving fighting game community as well as some unusual\u00a0arcade … Continue la lecture ![\"IMG_2204\"](\"https:\/\/www.jeremiepgagnon.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/04\/img_2204.jpg?w=1024\")
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