Where Arcades Would Have Been..

At the Seattle Mini MakerFaire this year a company called VRCade had a booth with a Rift setup. They are out of Bellevue, Wa and have plans to open a VR Arcade. They had a short demo at the MakerFaire that lasted about 2 minutes (if that) in which you held a gun and shot at random targets that popped up in front of you.

"MangaCorps" wrote:
@Frito : I had no idea Japan still kept this mainstream over there, that's pretty cool. I kinda felt like the disappearance of Arcades was a world-wide occurrence, ill have to check it out. Thanks!

Any other countries that anyone knows still have "traditional" arcades, as well more modern units :?:

Just another jump on Japan, I went to Japan last summer for school and had a host family for a couple of days. The first place we went after they had picked me up was to this huge, huge building. Looked like a super-mall. I had asked my host-brother "What is this place?" and he had laughed, thought a bit, then replied in English "fun". While we were getting out of the car, my host-father spits out all this stuff about how this one game that costed 500 yen was the best he's ever experienced. Apparently it's a Gundam (Giant Robots for lack of a decent reference) sim that he decided he needed to show me after I told 'em I loved Gundam. He told me you can control the limbs and it was a close to 360-degree cockpit with replica controls of the mobile suits in the anime. Of course, when we turned the corner, the 10 or so Gundam sims that WERE there were replaced with photo-booths, which our host-mother made us take pictures in for a good 20 minutes :oops: It was a fun experience, but me my host-father and host-brother were all pretty disappointed, and he ended up showing me pictures once we got back to their house.

Also, when we stayed in Tokyo during the late hours we were able to go out and enjoy these streets that were blocked off, and where there was tons and tons of stores and lights and people and it was beautiful. Anyways, some friends found a store that we all checked out that had 4 floors + a basement.

B1: Plastic Models (I bought a ton of Gundam Plastic Model Kits)
1: Playstation floor (Playstation units and tons of games)
2: Microsoft Store (Xbox 360 units and tons of xbox games)
3: Nintendo Store (Wiis, games, you get it.)
4: Arcade + Capsule Machines.

The fourth floor is probably what you're interested in, it had only a few arcade units with either card games or little fighters. The card games were pretty crazy, a ton of little kids were piled around em watching each other duel (I didn't recognize the game) and the pads were sensitive to something in the cards, idk. But when they put the cards down, the monsters appeared in game, and when they attacked it was like actual animated attacks among the high-def buggers. Those were really cool. Then the capsule machines had a butt-ton of little chibi toys from various anime.

Annd, last question, do you live near Disneyland Florida? Ever been to Disney Quest? It has quite a few "VR Experiences" that didn't exactly wow me, especially with the HMD they used. But that place is FULL of arcade cabinets, really fun ones at that. Don't even get me started on how many butts I whooped at multiplayer Pac-Man :ugeek:

Edit: Found some images of the game! Now I really wish they had these there.. If I remember right, my host-father told me they had a ton of mobile suit choices AND online play.





http://shikageanime.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/senjou_cockpit_view.jpg

Last one linked because I didn't know how to resize. :oops: Also, I don't see the replica controls :c Either I misinterpreted or misunderstood...

"Pokey" wrote:
I never liked arcades

too expensive, not necessarily a good selection

I like barcades (gaming + alcohol) these days, but the most enjoyable ones have consoles set up with couches, not just arcade cabinets

Here in Seattle, where its legal for recreational use of maryjane, if the local gameworks had weed area then maybe lots of hippy types would hang out and play? Marcades?