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Aussie IT Pricing Inquiry Now Taking Submissions This week, the 22nd Prize Fair was held in Japan. The event showcases goodies that players can win in Japanese arcades while playing crane games and their ilk. The 22nd Prize Fair? These companies must know what they’re doing. They do. Let’s have a look!
The Tablecloth Hour is an arcade game in Tokyo’s Taito station. It’s a game in which you try to pull a tablecloth off a table without disturbing the dishes. Yep.
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The iPad, the future of computing, touchscreen this, touchscreen that, yadda yadda, blahblahblah. BLAH. What about connecting it to a joystick to get an instant mini-arcade machine? That’s what Hideyoshi Moriya did, using Arduino circuitry and cardboard. Imagine the possibilities:
Behold, my ultimate wet dream: Pac-Man, Ms Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, Galaxian, Galaga, Zaxxon, Pengo, Frogger, 1942, 1943, Phoenix, Time Pilot, Bomb Jack, Arkanoid and even Burger Time – 48 classic games inside a beautiful Lego arcade cabinet.
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Sure, you could just give in to your overwhelming nostalgia for 1980s arcade game action and buy an authentic machine. But if you don’t have the funds, or the space, there’s another way: distilling them to their button-mashing essence.
Only in Japan would you find an arcade with the theme of playing in China’s “backstreets”. Called Your Warehouse, the whole complex is basically eight stories of rusted scum… that actually provides amenities like towels to sweaty DDR players.
Meet the Texminator. It’s an arcade cabinet that tests your texting speed. It was also inevitable.
Gaming is all about escape. You know, to a distant planet or to the Super Bowl. Or, in this Japanese arcade game’s case, to a world where you have the balls to flip a table when people piss you off.
