Adventures in Japan

Even More Talk About Videogames

Today was pretty rainy, and fairly "meh" so we didn't get up to much today. Looked through papers and magazines to find a more permanent residence and studied up on our Japanese. And watched TV. There was a bunch of 70's samurai shows on. Groovy music baby. One was about this cool samurai detective. He was like Columbo, only really skilled with a sword, and he threw these little metal disks to disarm and paralyze people. Okay, maybe he wasn't that much like Columbo. More like TJ Hooker.

We are not very good at finding our way around. We set out tonight for a place we have passed on a nigh-daily basis. We didn't find it on our first try. Nor our second. Then I took charge and we found it. What did we find? Gyoza Stadium. There were many different stands, all selling slightly different kinds of gyoza. Gyoza are kinda like Asian perogies. We didn't understand the menu, or the map very well. So the experience wasn't all that it could have been.

We also stopped in to a few arcades. Very Lost in Translation-y. Dis-interested Japanese youths playing various music based videogames. But there was other neat stuff too. There was a videogame card game. Like Magic or Pokemon. You play against the computer, scanning your cards into the machine. Plus the game was wrestling based. As we watched, a business man scanned in a couple of cards and his on screen avatar whipped his opponent into the ropes and deliver a devastating brainbuster for the win.

Another neat game was called Quest of D. It was a multiplayer dungeon crawl game, much like Diablo, but fully in 3-D, and with arcade style controls for all the hacking and the slashing. Plus, and this is the really neat part(if you're a geek like me, if not you've already stopped reading), the monitor was a touch screen, so all item management and menu selections were handled in real time, no pausing. You just touch the bottom of the screen and sort various things out. Plus the magic was touch based. Different motions cast different spells. It was all quite surreal to watch. And really cool. Plus it was developed by Sega, so there might be a chance it will be ported to the DS.

Speaking of collaborations between Nintendo and Sega, I saw a sit down F Zero arcade unit. Very snazzy. I want, nay, NEED a job so I can have some disposable income.

Arcades over here are so much better than the ones back home. I haven't even mentioned the Pachinko machines. They are every where. I bet there are thousands of machines within a few block radius of our hotel. And pachinko parlours are always busy. And the people in the parlours always have crazy lots of pachinko balls to play. Hundreds of them. Buckets of them. I just don't understand the appeal.