An Annotated Pictorial of Japanese Videogame Banks

Wired published an interesting look at the recent trend of Japanese videogame banks—essentially, a means for the thrifty gamer to save the quarters that could otherwise be lost forever to an arcade machine.

The article, by Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku fame, gives us a walkthrough of three differently themed game banks, with styles that range from RPG (you put in money to level up) to dating sim (as a modern female, you feed your dates coins to hear sweet nothings).

And while the games are useless to most of us as they are written in Japanese, the Ikemen dating sim Bank does offer one universal climax that we all can appreciate:

…you totally forget to insert money into your Ikemen Bank for a whole working week. Your greedy hunk writes you a letter that simply says, “Sayonara.” No translation needed.

The moral? Always feed your hunk. [Wired via Kotaku]