Just to clarify: this place was LOUD. The cabinets and pachinko machines were blasting at full volume but the camera really did a good job only picking up my voice making it look like im yelling in this seemingly quiet arcade lmao. Nobody even looked up since you could barely hear me over all the noise.
This place is so far removed from time that it's super charming. It probably should be dead, but you can clearly tell locals still come there to enjoy the games. What a find.
@@ironhell813 I think it's more likely that it would just end up burning out the machines faster or make the electric bill higher then who ever owns the place would care to pay and he's just shut it down instead. This place is probably ran by someone who probably middle class at best.
Something like this would NEVER happen in UK. All the machines would be stolen and or smashed and the place would be burnt down. Such different amount of respect.
It is really sad here in switzerland we had a station where you could pump bysicle tire.. even that one got regualrly trashed and now I have to buy my own stuff to pump.. I would imagine a place like this would last 2 month here near citys..
Nah, something like this is actually could happen in Europe or US or Australia. If this place is on Asia except Japan, it would be stolen within a few days.😂
Self-service arcade, what a cool concept. This is something very unique, and I like that people are respectful to the arcade as no one is there to watch over it.
I think the idea is that Japan can have busted labor cost, to a point that risking having something broken or stolen can still cost less than having labor. Japan also has the culture of not bringing trouble to others, but I personally would doubt how well that works (since many Japanese companies seems to think that apologizing alone can mitigate all the damaged). It might, but the risk is still there.
@@FlameRat_YehLon Experiments were done about honesty. It's one of the rare country where you can leave your laptop in a coffee, unattended, for 8 hours and find it when you come back. Also, if you lose your wallet, you will find it in a kōban (交番). Even for petty theft, you can do jail and some tourist did up to months of jail time. Especially since they do jail very easily. On top of that, corporal punishment is also a thing. And their jail is not an hostel and you don't eat the finest meals. Police is very present though having a lot of kōban. All of this keep people very honest.
The people who watch over it are eachother. It's based on the honnor system so if someone is acting up which is rare, others in the arcade hold them responsible.
Seen too many people I knew die slow deaths from smoking over the years. My hair dresser died just 6 months into retirement from it a little while ago. Don’t end up like that, man.
The Honor system still works in Japan because the whole culture revolves around personal honor and integrity. Something we here in the US lost many decades ago
I googled a bit, and apparently from a Japanese perspective, this place is remarkable not for the arcades and pachinkos, but for the retro vending machines. It's basically a Showa-era self-service truck stop/travel restaurant that *also* turns out to be a game centre. Which explains a lot (for instance, the dusty arcades, the messy spare parts everywhere and the impecable vintage vending machines). According to a review, the place opens at 7AM, and according to Google, it closes at 4AM. EVERY-SINGLE-DAY.
That's what I found as well. The Japanese videos on this place (look up オートパラ上尾) are mostly focused on the vending machines. If you look at the very first video on this channel I find a vending machine park with a ton of these old machines, still maintained and stocked to this day.
The timing seems suspiciously like someone comes to close the place at 4 and has 3 hours to reset , restock and setup everything for the next day. But not enough time for non-essential cleaning lol
There is an attendant, but you dont see them often, who is likely maintaining the machines and collecting the coins/tokens. They replaced the Cashier with a machine replacing bills into coins/tokens.
I don't know maybe one guy runs several of these arcades and maybe other unattended businesses like vending machines, and comes by once in a while to fix things up, collect, refill and whatnot. There might not be anyone at the premises most of the time.
Oh I was about to say. SOMEONE has to be keeping maintenance in that place. Granted it's not like America or anywhere in the West where places that are left unattended for an amount of time turn to s*** but even in Japan, a place left alone with no supervision for awhile will fall into disrepair. For a place with no staff most of the time, this is beautiful and a testament to the trust and honor the Japanese have towards their citizens.
@@9mmtrilla it's not East vs. West. it's homogeneity vs. multiculturalism. If you have a nice ethnically-homogenous population, it's going to wind up being far higher-trust society than any mixing bowl ever could be.
@@budgetcoinhunter homogeneity does help, but more in so is Japan is crazy on following the rules because #1 they are ingrained from time at school. Japanese children are taught at a young age to ostracize other children that don't follow the rules. You can't be friends with them, you can't even talk with them. The children that are ostracize either quickly fall into line and start following the rules or pretty much ignored. #2 is that most Japanese are taught about the cruelty of the Japanese jail and prison system. It is not a place you want to end up.
If it was in Brazil the machines would be vandalized and robbed within minutes. How orderly and civilized the Japanese people are, no Wonder it's the safest place in the world to live.
In the country side of Germany too, lived there for 3 years. The Germans are quite the rule abiding folks, very orderly, Japanese come to live and work there too
@@TheyCallMeSledge there's certain areas in the U.S. where these businesses would last a while, move out of the U.S. if you keep making this a 'East vs. west' thing, Sludge Water.
wow! what a time capsule. I can't wait to game hunt in and around Tokyo in a couple weeks for the first time. Your videos have been a big help in planning where to go.
Brother, this was a joy to watch from beginning to end. Thanks for the tour. In an ideal world, arcades would never shut down and just run on this neighbourhood honour model for life. The craziest part is the cute little seating/cafeteria area in the back! Trying to find a nice place to sit down in most arcades? Forget about it haha. I just pray to God all those Versus cabs find a good home some day. Can't let those beautiful machines just go to waste like that!
that's the kind of stuff you can have when most of the people in a place respect others people properties, sadly there's only really few places that's a thing outside Japan
That demand is already being filled, half is special upscaling cables, but then people needed CTRs to play duck hunt and House if the dead cause Light Guns don't work on modern monitors.
I doubt it's possible. Monochrome CRTs can be manufactured at small scale, but colour ones, the production is so precise so expensive to set up that the factory would need to be pumping out hundreds thousands of them a year, and there just isn't demand for that sort of amount. More likely to get OLEDs or LCDs commissioned at a few necessary custom sizes, but with existing pixel pitch. Can get curved lens cast maybe. As for lightguns someone could develop a retrofit kit. Could go in the front do spatial tracking and then just trigger them electronically in sync with the original video signal. I could do that but it's not in the plans right now.
@@Mr.TrUnrBrigs-oo4yzupscalers don’t really fix the issue of needing a CRT. They have unique properties (zero latency is one, the unique look is another) that causes people to want the real thing. Some games (I think one of the sonic games did this?) actually take advantage of those properties and look… wrong on any other monitor type.
The last remaining crt manufacture - dotronix closed about a year ago. The tvs were mostly sold to institutions to display video art made on standard def cameras. The likelyhood of that to happen is slim to none. If all the collectors came together to start an arcade conservatory maybe that would be possible. Otherwise, it’s everyone for themselves at this point 🤷♂️ Enjoy while it lasts, long live public games !
Looks like the perfect cover facade for a secret entrance to a sketchy government building. Everyone just thinks it's a strange old arcade and thay keeps most away then the "patrons" are the guards hahaha
I wonder how maintenance on the machines work here. Honestly most of the machines look in playable condition despite pushing 30 years old! It certainly helps that people take care of the machines out of personal responsibility, though. More dust than machine abuse.
I would have loved a place like this in the 90's (minus the cigarettes). But nowadays, many arcade games are available on Steam or consoles, or very ell emulated.
the best monitors of today are much better than crt monitors. I own 5 crts atm, and they are good for nostalgia purposes when connecting proper equipment of the era, and they also have advantages, but the disadvantages are even more prominent today. It is totally inefficient to consume everyday content on mass produced CRT TV/monitors. CRTs are just for nostalgia purposes, only for collectors that sacrifice their living space to live together with old tech and it must stay like this in the future. Hope they never come back, we already got huge amounts of e-waste from all those old crt tv/monitors.
@@miniDV60 totally disagree. CRT has been my main means of consuming content these days and easy to set up. If I need the picture cropped, Windows Magnifying Glass and boom. All resolutions look better on it, it does light guns and retro games on it look perfect. Still an unrivalled refresh rates with great blacks long before OLEDs.
@@SharifSourour People who watch 4:3 content or play old games on anything other than CRT are cheating themselves. I hauled a 32" trinitron out of my neighbors trash a few years ago just for a laugh, but watching some of my favorite old shows on it was a revelation. There's a depth and glow to CRT that you can't really seem to replicate with other displays. In terms of manufacturing, people are still chucking out high quality CRTs every trashday though, so we're probably far away from having real demand for new CRTs.
@@jimmyjakes1823 the good news is projectors are still awesome too and display low res content great at different aspect ratios so if CRTs become unreachable I’m going that route. Hopefully they have a comeback though.
Dust isn’t that bad considering they are smoking. They’ve probably been wiped down at least a year ago. My mom smokes inside her house and dust gets like that very quick
5:27 that panel is for hanafuda games. Similar style to those nsfw mahjong games, those hanafuda games are nsfw as well haha Also I managed to find the arcade from the end of the video, but that is hella far from where I'll be visiting this year lmao
@5:31 this is not mahjong, this is Hanafuda, a very popular card game in Japan. Nintendo even manufactures them for more than a century now. @17:05; this is not a mahjong game, this kind of memory match 2 tiles is called Shanghai : )
Hey! I heard if you hit the button behind one of the posters, it opens a secret door to a hidden basement complex. 8:15 Candy cabs are basically gaming furniture. The arcade operator would put whatever machine they wanted to run into the machine and swap out some overlays to change games. There's a standard for how to wire up a cabinet to an arcade board called JAMMA which is used by basically everything except rhythm games with custom controllers. The actual arcade boards themselves aren't standardized, you can think of them like industrial versions of home consoles or PCs. Really old games would have custom boards for EVERYTHING (which Konami loved doing), but arcade game manufacturers realized it made a lot more sense to just have one board that took interchangeable games. Most of the time these boards would actually be based off a home console or PC with extra bits. e.g. Capcom CPS2 was an X68000 with double the sprites. A lot of consoles got arcade boards built using their architecture - e.g. Namco Triforce is a Gamecube, Sega Chihiro is an Xbox, Dreamcast was a consoleized Sega Naomi, and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom's arcade port was an arcade Wii. Hell, half the selling point of the NeoGeo was that the home console was just the arcade hardware with the coin mech removed. (the funniest example of this is the Konami Python2 board, which ran DDR Supernova. It's literally a PS2. No, I don't mean "they used PS2 chips with extra hardware in an industrial chassis", it literally has a custom firmware modded PS2 in there with a hard drive. The cabinet even blanks out the video on startup so you don't see the PS2 logo.) With standardized system boards, game swaps at arcades become even easier. Instead of taking out a whole board and putting in a new one, you just swap out a cartridge with the game on it. In fact, some system boards could run multiple games and give users a button to switch. This was the OTHER half of the selling point of the NeoGeo - and one of the few candy cab advantages that actually made its way to the US. And there's still arcade boards today that support multiple games per cabinet. Taito's TypeX boards even offer an online service (NESYS/NESiCA) for arcade operators to install new games and put them out on the floor without staff having to do anything. There's even an indie arcade board called exA-Arcadia that's oddly internationally friendly for an arcade company. 10:32 Pachinko: not even once 10:48 Sega ALL.Net is an online service. Yes, arcades have online services now - in fact, most Japanese arcade games don't actually work unless they're plugged into a special VPN box and the cabinet owner has agreed to a revenue sharing agreement. I suspect the particular arcade you're in probably took their ALL.Net games off the floor because they couldn't get revshare to work out financially. (Yes, this is the reason why DDR disappeared from US arcades for a while. And yes, the reason why exA-Arcadia is internationally friendly is specifically because they don't have an online service.) 15:44 I mean, technically speaking all arcades are self-service (at least until American ones moved to card swipers, then you had to buy a game card first), they just usually keep the machines on. The staff are there if something breaks or a machine eats a coin.
Haha thanks so much for your insight! I love learning new things like this it's my favorite part of being a TH-camr. I know the Initial D machines are literally custom PS3's so it makes a lot of sense that the Konami Python2 is also just literally a PS2 lol As an (ex) network engineer, the Sega All.net now seems more interesting. I've talked to Arcade clerks before so I know all modern arcade machines are basically a subscription service, mostly to keep the high schoor data nationwide but I didn't know how far back that went.
@@4amLaundry If I remember correctly, network services were a thing since the 2000s, but operators weren't required to connect the machines online. The switch to revshare licensing happened a decade later. There's a bunch of inside baseball type drama that kept the US from getting these services until way, WAY later. We were supposed to get eAmusement with DDR Supernova 2 (Supernova 1 was the first DDR with eAmuse support in Japan) but arcade operators balked at the connection fees to keep cabs running on eAmuse. I suspect this was because they already had to pay out the nose for new cabs because Betson wouldn't sell upgrade kits for old machines. There's a bunch of pre-release stuff that indicates DDR X was supposed to launch US eAmuse as well but nothing appeared from that (and I suspect Betson would have screwed it up almost as much as they screwed up the US black cabs). I don't know about other manufacturers but Konami (or at least Bemani games) in particular moved to revshare licensing in 2012 with Sound Voltex's launch, then IIDX Tricoro and DDR (2013). That plus Betson's awful cost-cutting on the US black cabs is why DDR disappeared from the states for a while (between X3 vs. 2nd Mix up to A). Konami instead negotiated directly with Dave & Busters and Round1 for US region DDR white cabs in 2015, but, funnily enough, Dave & Busters insisted on no revshare, so the US region of DDR ran on upgrade kits and both arcades had to buy them. Which screwed over Round1 when D&B stopped buying new DDR upgrades, so Round1 had to negotiate a new deal (along with, oddly enough, Fun Factory in Hawaii) to move their cabs over to revshare just to upgrade away from DDR A20 Plus. So now Dave & Busters has a bunch of DDR cabs in their stores that are two versions behind, and they probably aren't getting Konami to make a perpetually licensed version of DDR World. This is also why imports disappeared from arcades after the 2010s. It's always been illegal to import arcade games from other countries (first sale rights don't apply to public performance of a game in an arcade) but in practice this was rarely enforced. But if your games need a network connection to enforce a revenue sharing agreement, well, you're not getting the special VPN box to connect to that online service, and the game manufacturers aren't going to take revshare payments from a US arcade operator because that'd be illegal on their end. Import arcades now have to hack the games to connect to shadow networks, which is hilariously illegal *and* a single point of failure that game manufacturers can just take out with a DMCA. (e.g. what happened to Programmed World.) The only exception to this is Round1, a Japanese chain which somehow browbeat Konami into letting the Japanese branch just ship cabs and eAmuse VPN boxes over to the states. I have no idea how that works legally (presumably Round1 USA pays lots of ASCAP fees) but it worked long enough for them to get big enough to justify proper US region support for IIDX and SDVX, and they're still running Japanese DDR gold cabs (which is how we played A3 while the white cabs were stuck in A20 Plus limbo).
There used to be one here nearby. I think it closed down in early 2010s. It had only machines from the 80s to mid 90s including some very large and spectacular machines, and you'd pay a one time entry fee of 10€ and then you stay there however long you like, all machines are on freeplay. Except vending machines for snacks and drinks, there you have to pay :D
I always try and imagine places like this when they first open and are brand new, place would have been pumping back in the day. great benefit of being on foot to find hidden gems like this. great video.
I love arcades and this is a great find, but it's just heart breaking and such a great shame that most of them arcades are not in working order and are just left there to rot and collect dust and the casings getting yellowed from peoples cigarette smoke... just breaks your heart. 😢💔
The business owner probably doesnt give so much of a crap other than collecting coins and paying the power bills. The customers respect the place and don't trash it
Do that in my country, machines would be broken or stolen on the 1st week. Would look like a post apocalyptic last of us style building complete with plants growing before the month ends 😂
Olá, tudo bem? Na próxima, deixei um dinheiro pra ajudar a empresa que está fraca. Você fez seu conteúdo, mas é sempre bom deixar um dinheiro de agradecimento. Abraço
This looks amazing! The general respect for places in Japan is one of the positive aspects of the culture. Every country has its good and bad, but less theft imo is very telling. Because it's such an easy decision/easy crime to do in many cases, to see an area where people don't even consider stealing and instead value the experience of a dedicated shop like this is nice.
I found sonething similar in central Osaka, near the Tsūtenkaku last year (2023) Lots of Astro City and other old Machines in a somewhat run down looking building and no staff in sight. Did not notice any power switches, though.
Yeah I've seen similar places before too but didn't have a camera handy. I'll definitely make it a point to seek these places out in the future, truly hidden gems.
No tagging, etching in glass, or theft. Basically nothing that doesn't make sense. It would never work in most parts of the world. Good on Japan for still having some class and respect.
Even if you don't post the address or location on the Google maps all somebody has to do is screenshot the image you took of the front of the building and put it into Google reverse image search and it will give you the exact address. I'm pretty sure the people that own and enjoy that place do not appreciate all of the extra attention and hullabaloo!
I have a few pachinko and pachislo slot machines from Japan (Space Invaders, Savanna Chance, Gundam SD Pachinko). They are commonly on the market, and picked up by often Americans looking for classic Japanese games. The candy cabs and Sega Astro cabs are basically Jamma Harnessed to be able to swap game boards and game units like Sega Naomi, Capcom Arcade and others. They are just a shell, monitor, and controllers. Also they can be imported to America. I modeled my arcade at home after a Japanese Arcade as they have the best "vibe" so to speak. They are just amazing places where you can just sit and enjoy a game (assuming it's not crowded). If crowded, there a usually a polite "time limit" that people know when to get off of a machine. Also, most Japanese Arcades do not embrace pinball. I have 4 pinball machines and 3 are in my game room. But they are just awesome places!! It's nice you cover this aspect of Japanese culture as they value relaxation time and this is but one way to truly appreciate where you are.
You should watch the streams! I play pachinko sometimes when they have it at older game centers. The literal only reason I don't have any is the physical space, you can buy like any pachislot machine for less than $100 lol. It would be dope if you could post your collection on the Discord!
All that can be said, any Japanese person with enough money, they could potentially save these arcade machines, in the meaning use them for their personal use, or potentially for their own arcade shop. I say that seeing how little at the time the number of machines in use currently. So yes, in this case if someone finds this arcade shop and offers to buy the excess arcades, it be possible easy buy with how minimal use and care taken for those machines.
lol I was wondering what Ageo meant. There was this one Japanese Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 player. His name was Kusoru but he is also known as Ageo Joe and he was one of the best in the mid 2010's
Damn, I miss this!!! They even have KOF XI! Now the arcades here in my place are all claw machines that scam kiddies.. I know my age is showing with saying this but we really had it better back in the day.
Just to clarify: this place was LOUD.
The cabinets and pachinko machines were blasting at full volume but the camera really did a good job only picking up my voice making it look like im yelling in this seemingly quiet arcade lmao.
Nobody even looked up since you could barely hear me over all the noise.
I would never power them off, you can employ a person just leaving the units on.
Why indulge in anti humanist behaviour and take a job from someone?
This place is so far removed from time that it's super charming.
It probably should be dead, but you can clearly tell locals still come there to enjoy the games. What a find.
Never been in an arcade that wasn't loud as hell.
@@ironhell813 I think it's more likely that it would just end up burning out the machines faster or make the electric bill higher then who ever owns the place would care to pay and he's just shut it down instead. This place is probably ran by someone who probably middle class at best.
Something like this would NEVER happen in UK. All the machines would be stolen and or smashed and the place would be burnt down. Such different amount of respect.
it sucks that people in pretty much every other country have to break everything just because they can...
Same in the US brother. Sad but true. Pathetic.
It is really sad here in switzerland we had a station where you could pump bysicle tire.. even that one got regualrly trashed and now I have to buy my own stuff to pump..
I would imagine a place like this would last 2 month here near citys..
Nah, something like this is actually could happen in Europe or US or Australia. If this place is on Asia except Japan, it would be stolen within a few days.😂
I agree, I'm just glad your not the ambassador of our country, seen as you speak the truth
Self-service arcade, what a cool concept. This is something very unique, and I like that people are respectful to the arcade as no one is there to watch over it.
I think the idea is that Japan can have busted labor cost, to a point that risking having something broken or stolen can still cost less than having labor.
Japan also has the culture of not bringing trouble to others, but I personally would doubt how well that works (since many Japanese companies seems to think that apologizing alone can mitigate all the damaged). It might, but the risk is still there.
@@FlameRat_YehLon Experiments were done about honesty. It's one of the rare country where you can leave your laptop in a coffee, unattended, for 8 hours and find it when you come back.
Also, if you lose your wallet, you will find it in a kōban (交番).
Even for petty theft, you can do jail and some tourist did up to months of jail time. Especially since they do jail very easily.
On top of that, corporal punishment is also a thing.
And their jail is not an hostel and you don't eat the finest meals.
Police is very present though having a lot of kōban.
All of this keep people very honest.
Just a spy camera connected to the police station :v
This wouldn't work anywhere but japan
The people who watch over it are eachother. It's based on the honnor system so if someone is acting up which is rare, others in the arcade hold them responsible.
Life goals: retire to Japan, take up smoking again and go to the arcade every night after dark.
Took the words oit of my mouth
What a nice goals 😊
Seen too many people I knew die slow deaths from smoking over the years. My hair dresser died just 6 months into retirement from it a little while ago. Don’t end up like that, man.
We get to drink too right? See you there we can start a club
Sounds like heaven.
That is what is called a hidden gem that only locals know about. Outsiders might stumble upon it with dumb luck.
That's a great place.
Japan just filled with honorary citizenship cause if that was in USA that arcade probably would’ve been stripped down to its wire frames.😂
Yup, in about 2 days that place would be trashed.
If it was LA they'd strip it to the core. Can't have anything good down here.
@@Cristobal_300ZX realize that japan doesn't have 350 million people ; with 50 million illegals .
yup.
The Honor system still works in Japan because the whole culture revolves around personal honor and integrity. Something we here in the US lost many decades ago
I googled a bit, and apparently from a Japanese perspective, this place is remarkable not for the arcades and pachinkos, but for the retro vending machines. It's basically a Showa-era self-service truck stop/travel restaurant that *also* turns out to be a game centre. Which explains a lot (for instance, the dusty arcades, the messy spare parts everywhere and the impecable vintage vending machines). According to a review, the place opens at 7AM, and according to Google, it closes at 4AM. EVERY-SINGLE-DAY.
That's what I found as well. The Japanese videos on this place (look up オートパラ上尾) are mostly focused on the vending machines.
If you look at the very first video on this channel I find a vending machine park with a ton of these old machines, still maintained and stocked to this day.
The timing seems suspiciously like someone comes to close the place at 4 and has 3 hours to reset , restock and setup everything for the next day. But not enough time for non-essential cleaning lol
There is an attendant, but you dont see them often, who is likely maintaining the machines and collecting the coins/tokens. They replaced the Cashier with a machine replacing bills into coins/tokens.
I don't know maybe one guy runs several of these arcades and maybe other unattended businesses like vending machines, and comes by once in a while to fix things up, collect, refill and whatnot. There might not be anyone at the premises most of the time.
Oh I was about to say. SOMEONE has to be keeping maintenance in that place. Granted it's not like America or anywhere in the West where places that are left unattended for an amount of time turn to s*** but even in Japan, a place left alone with no supervision for awhile will fall into disrepair. For a place with no staff most of the time, this is beautiful and a testament to the trust and honor the Japanese have towards their citizens.
@@TheyCallMeSledge good old 'East vs. west' schtick you got there, Sledge.
@@9mmtrilla it's not East vs. West. it's homogeneity vs. multiculturalism. If you have a nice ethnically-homogenous population, it's going to wind up being far higher-trust society than any mixing bowl ever could be.
@@budgetcoinhunter homogeneity does help, but more in so is Japan is crazy on following the rules because #1 they are ingrained from time at school. Japanese children are taught at a young age to ostracize other children that don't follow the rules. You can't be friends with them, you can't even talk with them. The children that are ostracize either quickly fall into line and start following the rules or pretty much ignored. #2 is that most Japanese are taught about the cruelty of the Japanese jail and prison system. It is not a place you want to end up.
3:36 the ashtray sitting on the Astro City is classic Japan.
If it was in Brazil the machines would be vandalized and robbed within minutes. How orderly and civilized the Japanese people are, no Wonder it's the safest place in the world to live.
Same as the western countries. And they'll lead you to believe how civilized and progressive they are😅
In the us the joy stick is always broken 😂😂
In the country side of Germany too, lived there for 3 years. The Germans are quite the rule abiding folks, very orderly, Japanese come to live and work there too
In agreement there, I live in the US and we ALL know a place like this wouldn't last A DAY in AMERICA! 😂
@@TheyCallMeSledge there's certain areas in the U.S. where these businesses would last a while, move out of the U.S. if you keep making this a 'East vs. west' thing, Sludge Water.
This place is crazy... Seems like the kind of arcade that would be the start of either a Fantasy movie or a Horror movie
That is pretty cool how there's a no-staff self service arcade center.
This is... an algorithm blessing. A niche, encompassing look at a subculture within subcultures. Subscribed and belled mate
♥️🙏🏼
That place is such a vibe. Idk what it is but 80s 90s era places that are basically time capsules are amazing to me
Because everything in the 80s was original.
Dude if I ever hit the Lottery I just want to take a year and explore Japan.
Tourist visa is 90 days before you have to leave the country and not come back for a while. It is a cool dream though
You probably don't need a fortune to travel.
Amen
Why do you think I put all my chips on this TH-cam channel lmao
same here its soo different ..
They're just saving on electricity because there's only like 3 people there. Come back on a weekend evening.
wow! what a time capsule. I can't wait to game hunt in and around Tokyo in a couple weeks for the first time. Your videos have been a big help in planning where to go.
Some Kaiju collector would pay a fortune for that vintage Ultraman pachinko.
I'm sure this whole back room is a dream for many collectors but they're not selling lol
Amazing Pim thanks for taking us back to the 1980-2000 feel of arcades the best times appreciate all your work as always enjoy life
Just happy to share my findings bro :)
Brother, this was a joy to watch from beginning to end. Thanks for the tour. In an ideal world, arcades would never shut down and just run on this neighbourhood honour model for life. The craziest part is the cute little seating/cafeteria area in the back! Trying to find a nice place to sit down in most arcades? Forget about it haha. I just pray to God all those Versus cabs find a good home some day. Can't let those beautiful machines just go to waste like that!
That seating area is for the retro vending machines, it's actually the places biggest attraction believe it or not lol
Appreciate the kind words!
@@4amLaundry Oh by the way, I found an interview with the owner, this place has been running since 1990! Crazy stuff.
We watched this live, Pim's excitement was palpable and was such a treat to see and share such a gem. This guy's truly living the life.
Somewhat the iconic "Separate Ways" scene from Tron: Legacy came to my mind.
that's the kind of stuff you can have when most of the people in a place respect others people properties, sadly there's only really few places that's a thing outside Japan
At one point, some company should consider setting up a CRT factory to supply the accumulated demand for arcade games, vintage Tv's etc.
That demand is already being filled, half is special upscaling cables, but then people needed CTRs to play duck hunt and House if the dead cause Light Guns don't work on modern monitors.
Already a company in China working on it.
I doubt it's possible. Monochrome CRTs can be manufactured at small scale, but colour ones, the production is so precise so expensive to set up that the factory would need to be pumping out hundreds thousands of them a year, and there just isn't demand for that sort of amount. More likely to get OLEDs or LCDs commissioned at a few necessary custom sizes, but with existing pixel pitch. Can get curved lens cast maybe.
As for lightguns someone could develop a retrofit kit. Could go in the front do spatial tracking and then just trigger them electronically in sync with the original video signal. I could do that but it's not in the plans right now.
@@Mr.TrUnrBrigs-oo4yzupscalers don’t really fix the issue of needing a CRT. They have unique properties (zero latency is one, the unique look is another) that causes people to want the real thing. Some games (I think one of the sonic games did this?) actually take advantage of those properties and look… wrong on any other monitor type.
The last remaining crt manufacture - dotronix closed about a year ago. The tvs were mostly sold to institutions to display video art made on standard def cameras.
The likelyhood of that to happen is slim to none. If all the collectors came together to start an arcade conservatory maybe that would be possible. Otherwise, it’s everyone for themselves at this point 🤷♂️
Enjoy while it lasts, long live public games !
Looks like the perfect cover facade for a secret entrance to a sketchy government building. Everyone just thinks it's a strange old arcade and thay keeps most away then the "patrons" are the guards hahaha
This is a place where I can definitely see myself wasting an hour or so kicking back and enjoying some old school arcade fighters
I wonder how maintenance on the machines work here. Honestly most of the machines look in playable condition despite pushing 30 years old! It certainly helps that people take care of the machines out of personal responsibility, though. More dust than machine abuse.
❤ that one Mahjong controller look like old school 808 but that's just where my music brain goes
I would have loved a place like this in the 90's (minus the cigarettes). But nowadays, many arcade games are available on Steam or consoles, or very ell emulated.
NOT the same lol
Buh. I lived in Japan in the early '00. This really took me back. Got dang. I could smell it. And hearing those chunky sanwa buttons. WOW
I hope one day CRT TV manufacturing makes a comeback.
CRT's are being re-produced again by Chinese company as well as mainboards to drive them.
the best monitors of today are much better than crt monitors. I own 5 crts atm, and they are good for nostalgia purposes when connecting proper equipment of the era, and they also have advantages, but the disadvantages are even more prominent today. It is totally inefficient to consume everyday content on mass produced CRT TV/monitors. CRTs are just for nostalgia purposes, only for collectors that sacrifice their living space to live together with old tech and it must stay like this in the future. Hope they never come back, we already got huge amounts of e-waste from all those old crt tv/monitors.
@@miniDV60 totally disagree. CRT has been my main means of consuming content these days and easy to set up. If I need the picture cropped, Windows Magnifying Glass and boom. All resolutions look better on it, it does light guns and retro games on it look perfect. Still an unrivalled refresh rates with great blacks long before OLEDs.
@@SharifSourour People who watch 4:3 content or play old games on anything other than CRT are cheating themselves. I hauled a 32" trinitron out of my neighbors trash a few years ago just for a laugh, but watching some of my favorite old shows on it was a revelation. There's a depth and glow to CRT that you can't really seem to replicate with other displays. In terms of manufacturing, people are still chucking out high quality CRTs every trashday though, so we're probably far away from having real demand for new CRTs.
@@jimmyjakes1823 the good news is projectors are still awesome too and display low res content great at different aspect ratios so if CRTs become unreachable I’m going that route. Hopefully they have a comeback though.
Dust isn’t that bad considering they are smoking. They’ve probably been wiped down at least a year ago. My mom smokes inside her house and dust gets like that very quick
5:27 that panel is for hanafuda games. Similar style to those nsfw mahjong games, those hanafuda games are nsfw as well haha
Also I managed to find the arcade from the end of the video, but that is hella far from where I'll be visiting this year lmao
Good catch! I was wondering why it stopped at 六, never played Hanafuda so that makes sense.
@5:31 this is not mahjong, this is Hanafuda, a very popular card game in Japan. Nintendo even manufactures them for more than a century now.
@17:05; this is not a mahjong game, this kind of memory match 2 tiles is called Shanghai : )
Cant have a place like that in the US without been robbed and destroyed.
Such a cool place. This is the og Arcade feel right here!
Love finding these authentic old Arcades. I found a few in Nagoya as well.
Yeah I was so happy to have found it too! I'll try and document these as much as possible when I come across them from now on.
by a strange coincidence I'm visiting Japan and heading to Nagoya for a few days in mid July, could you drop the details where to find them?
Adam/Retro Moments thanks for all your work appreciate you enjoy life my man keep making great content
Adam needs to come back to Japan so we can make more videos 😤
Imagine being that old guy, having a decent game going and seeing that foreigner euphorically flipping all kinds of power switches around him. 💀
He was locked in it's cool lmao
I would love to live in a high trust society.
Hey! I heard if you hit the button behind one of the posters, it opens a secret door to a hidden basement complex.
8:15 Candy cabs are basically gaming furniture. The arcade operator would put whatever machine they wanted to run into the machine and swap out some overlays to change games. There's a standard for how to wire up a cabinet to an arcade board called JAMMA which is used by basically everything except rhythm games with custom controllers.
The actual arcade boards themselves aren't standardized, you can think of them like industrial versions of home consoles or PCs. Really old games would have custom boards for EVERYTHING (which Konami loved doing), but arcade game manufacturers realized it made a lot more sense to just have one board that took interchangeable games. Most of the time these boards would actually be based off a home console or PC with extra bits. e.g. Capcom CPS2 was an X68000 with double the sprites. A lot of consoles got arcade boards built using their architecture - e.g. Namco Triforce is a Gamecube, Sega Chihiro is an Xbox, Dreamcast was a consoleized Sega Naomi, and Tatsunoko vs. Capcom's arcade port was an arcade Wii. Hell, half the selling point of the NeoGeo was that the home console was just the arcade hardware with the coin mech removed.
(the funniest example of this is the Konami Python2 board, which ran DDR Supernova. It's literally a PS2. No, I don't mean "they used PS2 chips with extra hardware in an industrial chassis", it literally has a custom firmware modded PS2 in there with a hard drive. The cabinet even blanks out the video on startup so you don't see the PS2 logo.)
With standardized system boards, game swaps at arcades become even easier. Instead of taking out a whole board and putting in a new one, you just swap out a cartridge with the game on it. In fact, some system boards could run multiple games and give users a button to switch. This was the OTHER half of the selling point of the NeoGeo - and one of the few candy cab advantages that actually made its way to the US. And there's still arcade boards today that support multiple games per cabinet. Taito's TypeX boards even offer an online service (NESYS/NESiCA) for arcade operators to install new games and put them out on the floor without staff having to do anything. There's even an indie arcade board called exA-Arcadia that's oddly internationally friendly for an arcade company.
10:32 Pachinko: not even once
10:48 Sega ALL.Net is an online service. Yes, arcades have online services now - in fact, most Japanese arcade games don't actually work unless they're plugged into a special VPN box and the cabinet owner has agreed to a revenue sharing agreement. I suspect the particular arcade you're in probably took their ALL.Net games off the floor because they couldn't get revshare to work out financially.
(Yes, this is the reason why DDR disappeared from US arcades for a while. And yes, the reason why exA-Arcadia is internationally friendly is specifically because they don't have an online service.)
15:44 I mean, technically speaking all arcades are self-service (at least until American ones moved to card swipers, then you had to buy a game card first), they just usually keep the machines on. The staff are there if something breaks or a machine eats a coin.
Haha thanks so much for your insight! I love learning new things like this it's my favorite part of being a TH-camr.
I know the Initial D machines are literally custom PS3's so it makes a lot of sense that the Konami Python2 is also just literally a PS2 lol
As an (ex) network engineer, the Sega All.net now seems more interesting. I've talked to Arcade clerks before so I know all modern arcade machines are basically a subscription service, mostly to keep the high schoor data nationwide but I didn't know how far back that went.
@@4amLaundry If I remember correctly, network services were a thing since the 2000s, but operators weren't required to connect the machines online. The switch to revshare licensing happened a decade later.
There's a bunch of inside baseball type drama that kept the US from getting these services until way, WAY later. We were supposed to get eAmusement with DDR Supernova 2 (Supernova 1 was the first DDR with eAmuse support in Japan) but arcade operators balked at the connection fees to keep cabs running on eAmuse. I suspect this was because they already had to pay out the nose for new cabs because Betson wouldn't sell upgrade kits for old machines. There's a bunch of pre-release stuff that indicates DDR X was supposed to launch US eAmuse as well but nothing appeared from that (and I suspect Betson would have screwed it up almost as much as they screwed up the US black cabs).
I don't know about other manufacturers but Konami (or at least Bemani games) in particular moved to revshare licensing in 2012 with Sound Voltex's launch, then IIDX Tricoro and DDR (2013). That plus Betson's awful cost-cutting on the US black cabs is why DDR disappeared from the states for a while (between X3 vs. 2nd Mix up to A). Konami instead negotiated directly with Dave & Busters and Round1 for US region DDR white cabs in 2015, but, funnily enough, Dave & Busters insisted on no revshare, so the US region of DDR ran on upgrade kits and both arcades had to buy them. Which screwed over Round1 when D&B stopped buying new DDR upgrades, so Round1 had to negotiate a new deal (along with, oddly enough, Fun Factory in Hawaii) to move their cabs over to revshare just to upgrade away from DDR A20 Plus. So now Dave & Busters has a bunch of DDR cabs in their stores that are two versions behind, and they probably aren't getting Konami to make a perpetually licensed version of DDR World.
This is also why imports disappeared from arcades after the 2010s. It's always been illegal to import arcade games from other countries (first sale rights don't apply to public performance of a game in an arcade) but in practice this was rarely enforced. But if your games need a network connection to enforce a revenue sharing agreement, well, you're not getting the special VPN box to connect to that online service, and the game manufacturers aren't going to take revshare payments from a US arcade operator because that'd be illegal on their end. Import arcades now have to hack the games to connect to shadow networks, which is hilariously illegal *and* a single point of failure that game manufacturers can just take out with a DMCA. (e.g. what happened to Programmed World.) The only exception to this is Round1, a Japanese chain which somehow browbeat Konami into letting the Japanese branch just ship cabs and eAmuse VPN boxes over to the states. I have no idea how that works legally (presumably Round1 USA pays lots of ASCAP fees) but it worked long enough for them to get big enough to justify proper US region support for IIDX and SDVX, and they're still running Japanese DDR gold cabs (which is how we played A3 while the white cabs were stuck in A20 Plus limbo).
Watched some of this footage when you were live. What a find! Great work on the editing! 😊
I would chill at this place for the rest of my life......with more arcade machines. So cool to see this. Keep up the good work bro. 100%
Lol the capsule crane game had panties in them xD
Bro I swear if I noticed this would have been such a different video 💀
Thank you ever so much for sharing this vlog. A great insite into a part of gaming history that i doubt i will ever get to see.
Now way, I've wathced your channel since forever man thank you for commenting! 🙏🏼
@@4amLaundry hahaha no worries dude. really enjoyed this :)
NGE theme in the background from the arcade game really ads to the 90s/2000s vibes.
If i ever retire i would love to open a time capsule arcade like this.
There used to be one here nearby. I think it closed down in early 2010s. It had only machines from the 80s to mid 90s including some very large and spectacular machines, and you'd pay a one time entry fee of 10€ and then you stay there however long you like, all machines are on freeplay. Except vending machines for snacks and drinks, there you have to pay :D
People just relaxing then these foreign person enters the room yelling in his camera xD
Nice arcade though and thanks for sharing :d
Hahaha yeah it really does look like that lmao
I always try and imagine places like this when they first open and are brand new, place would have been pumping back in the day. great benefit of being on foot to find hidden gems like this. great video.
That's what's always going through my head when I find these places tbh, like a time capsule
I love arcades and this is a great find, but it's just heart breaking and such a great shame that most of them arcades are not in working order and are just left there to rot and collect dust and the casings getting yellowed from peoples cigarette smoke... just breaks your heart. 😢💔
Yeah it was bittersweet, luckily there's tons of retro arcades out there with really well kept machines. Watch out for the next couple of videos :)
Absoloutely awesome reminds me of the smoke shop that is my local "japanese" arcade
crazy that you just stumbled across this mid stream. should have drank that ancient fanta tho
Yeah I was too excited and kind of literally forgot lol
That's the 80's 90's experience, even for Mexicans, but rather the Soba with Tacos or some chips.
The business owner probably doesnt give so much of a crap other than collecting coins and paying the power bills. The customers respect the place and don't trash it
Plot twist, the arcade is actually abandoned because it's haunted and the only reason things are on is because the spirits turn them on.
A lot of weird Japan gate keepers from people that don’t live in Japan, classic 😂
Do that in my country, machines would be broken or stolen on the 1st week. Would look like a post apocalyptic last of us style building complete with plants growing before the month ends 😂
Not possible on America. Especially in 2024.
Pretty sure I've been to that area. Cigarettes? Definitely Japan.
Olá, tudo bem? Na próxima, deixei um dinheiro pra ajudar a empresa que está fraca. Você fez seu conteúdo, mas é sempre bom deixar um dinheiro de agradecimento. Abraço
could be early 2000s. what is this a community center or something 😅😅
11:05 Knockout Trial Special was a game mode added to Virtua Fighter 5, so that was a marquee explaining the new game mode.
Makes sense bc I never really got into Virtua Fighter good to know thanks
Pretty awesome find! I didn't catch the stream, hope you managed to play some of those games.
i miss when america felt this safe... saddly the new school are fool
i could only imagine how cool this place was when it first opened up..
The staff members are playing all day and making money. 5HEAD. Best job ever.
Japan always looks so clean.
This looks amazing! The general respect for places in Japan is one of the positive aspects of the culture. Every country has its good and bad, but less theft imo is very telling. Because it's such an easy decision/easy crime to do in many cases, to see an area where people don't even consider stealing and instead value the experience of a dedicated shop like this is nice.
what happened to 3 am laundry heard that guys legit well.. maybe not as legit as that guy named 4 am laundry
Always cool to see those "run down" parts of japan that give a glimpse into the old showa era.
This is super Sick!! thanks for sharing this (I missed the stream lol )
Yeah I'm so happy I hit record and got to capture the initial rection! Hoping to share more stuff from stream like this!
I found sonething similar in central Osaka, near the Tsūtenkaku last year (2023)
Lots of Astro City and other old Machines in a somewhat run down looking building and no staff in sight.
Did not notice any power switches, though.
Yeah I've seen similar places before too but didn't have a camera handy. I'll definitely make it a point to seek these places out in the future, truly hidden gems.
No tagging, etching in glass, or theft. Basically nothing that doesn't make sense.
It would never work in most parts of the world. Good on Japan for still having some class and respect.
Imagine this unattended in the UK. Spoiler alert, graffiti and theft :[
:(
Dam that columns music was loud
Such an awesome place dude. So cool when you came across it on stream.
I'm just happy I got to share it
Even if you don't post the address or location on the Google maps all somebody has to do is screenshot the image you took of the front of the building and put it into Google reverse image search and it will give you the exact address. I'm pretty sure the people that own and enjoy that place do not appreciate all of the extra attention and hullabaloo!
You mean the same people that had articles written about this place and have shown it on Japanese TV?
That is a Neo Geo MVS 1b and with Neo turf Masters depending upon the region that cartridge is imight be a fortune
Why does the crane machine at 3 minutes have underwear inside it
Bc that's what it was selling 💀
@@4amLaundry oh no
so amazing!! time capsule!!
Maybe easier to leave the machines off and just there.
hearing colums on the background...
Couldn’t have this in western society.
So jealous, just random arcade hardware chilling. I really want a astro city cab now lol. Cool video btw.
Abandoned arcade bar but still open but no employees
I have a few pachinko and pachislo slot machines from Japan (Space Invaders, Savanna Chance, Gundam SD Pachinko). They are commonly on the market, and picked up by often Americans looking for classic Japanese games. The candy cabs and Sega Astro cabs are basically Jamma Harnessed to be able to swap game boards and game units like Sega Naomi, Capcom Arcade and others. They are just a shell, monitor, and controllers. Also they can be imported to America.
I modeled my arcade at home after a Japanese Arcade as they have the best "vibe" so to speak. They are just amazing places where you can just sit and enjoy a game (assuming it's not crowded). If crowded, there a usually a polite "time limit" that people know when to get off of a machine. Also, most Japanese Arcades do not embrace pinball. I have 4 pinball machines and 3 are in my game room. But they are just awesome places!! It's nice you cover this aspect of Japanese culture as they value relaxation time and this is but one way to truly appreciate where you are.
You should watch the streams! I play pachinko sometimes when they have it at older game centers.
The literal only reason I don't have any is the physical space, you can buy like any pachislot machine for less than $100 lol.
It would be dope if you could post your collection on the Discord!
This is a good reason to Play the Yakuza Series games you can get a taste of this on there
what an amazing discovery! it has a combination of nostalgic and liminal vibes.
Wow next time I go to Tokyo maybe I should also check Saitama…
Makes want to own an astro city cabinet
All that can be said, any Japanese person with enough money, they could potentially save these arcade machines, in the meaning use them for their personal use, or potentially for their own arcade shop. I say that seeing how little at the time the number of machines in use currently. So yes, in this case if someone finds this arcade shop and offers to buy the excess arcades, it be possible easy buy with how minimal use and care taken for those machines.
you dream too much, there are numerous places in japan where it'll finish in ashes.
More Japanese RETRO ARCADE action!
th-cam.com/video/rBcLCQWjOb4/w-d-xo.html
Most VLT Machines cost around 50k.
Smoking? I thought only 0,0001% smoke in japan. Or do they only smoke when noone looks like sneezing?
nah a ton of people smoke
this is SICK! this is what i like in my IRL ^_^
Live every Sunday baby 🔥
Man stuff like this puts a smile on my face
lol I was wondering what Ageo meant. There was this one Japanese Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3 player. His name was Kusoru but he is also known as Ageo Joe and he was one of the best in the mid 2010's
This was just located in Ageo, Saitama that's all lol
Damn, I miss this!!! They even have KOF XI! Now the arcades here in my place are all claw machines that scam kiddies.. I know my age is showing with saying this but we really had it better back in the day.
Claw machines, either in physical form or digital form, that machine vibing off as a legitimate scam machine..
omg 😲 😱 😲 😱 😲
what a super great ideas 💡 🎮
That is really awesome bro thank you for sharing ❤❤
Be sure to check out the live streams every Sunday we run into this stuff all the time :)
LOL'd at the pantsu crane machine @ 3:06 ... Now, for the real question: new or used? XD
They have many places like this in the old malls around Minnesota, USA. Not as big and no smoking, but self service all the same.
That's pretty dope I thought most arcades in the US were gone
If you come across this, please send your prayers for my physical and mental healing. Thank you for your support.