Arcades

As a child of the 80's, I can remember the golden age of video games and their holy palaces - the arcade. It was a glorious time, when young kids would gather around their favorite games in the gloomy, barely lit dungeons located on just about every street corner in Anytown, USA.

Unfortunately, during the late 80's and early 90's, one by one, these glittering cathedrals to quarters began to close up shop. Sure, you can still go into a Dave & Busters in the US and play some vintage 30 year old games, but other than that, the arcade became extinct - in America, that is.

Here in Japan the arcade is alive and well, in fact, it never went away. It's a bit different from the cave-like atmosphere that was present in just about every arcade in America, but you don't here me complaining. Imagine my awe when I stepped inside my first video game arcade in Japan and found myself surrounded by all-new video games!

Some games are a bit different from what we, in America, were used to, but hey, it's been over 20 years so of course, the technology has improved. I've seen many games that use actual cards to play, sort of like Yu-Gi-Oh or Magic: the Gathering. How does that work? Well, you have to buy a small starter deck and you get a profile card that stores your game data on it - wins, loses, stuff like that. You place the profile card in the machine and place your cards on the playing field and battle. How do you get new cards? Well, you can trade with your friends, like in any card game, but also at the end of every game, the machine ejects a random card for you to keep.

They even have Pokemon arcade machines. Imagine playing Pokemon on the big screen and having all of your game data saved on one of those profile cards! When you capture a Pokemon in the game, a hard plastic chip is ejected from the machine for you to keep; plus you can have three-on-three battles against characters in the game.

There are also your standard type video games, like Mario Kart DX, a video game where you sit in an actual Mario Kart and race, plus it has characters not available in the home games like Pac Man. Why didn't arcades in Japan ever die out like they did in America? No one really knows, but there is a lot of speculation that since houses and apartments are smaller in Japan, kids don't have a lot of room to entertain their friends and play video games together, so they would meet at the local arcade instead just like we used to in the US way back when.

All that's missing is the cheezy Foreigner or Duran Duran music playing in the background.