9 ms·

The Gritty, Underground Network Bringing Japan’s Arcades to the US

88 points by zdw 5y ago

coolgeek 5y ago
https://archive.is/O4IUx https://archive.is/O4IUx
- erikbye 5y ago
Alekhine 5y ago
I'd like to build a raspberry pi based MAME machine for my college, but to get a box to actually put the machine in, its either a lot of time and effort to build one (I do not have woodworking skills, nor the desire to learn) or a lot of money to buy a shell, which I don't have. So it will likely stay a daydream. It would be nice to see people playing together in the lounge, though.
- astrange 5y ago
  > I'd like to build a raspberry pi based MAME machine for my college Has anyone ever come up with an entertainment project using a small computer that isn’t turning it into an emulation box? It seems like it’s the default dad project too.
- eropple 5y ago
  I happen to be a woodworker when I'm not a software developer and FWIW, and building an traditional-style 90's plywood cab (with some affordances; how you mount the panel is an Open Question) is pretty trivial stuff with a drill, a jigsaw (if you want rounded corners), a few pieces of sandpaper, and a circ saw (you'd need a router for traditional T edge banding but you can get flat edge banding right on Amazon). You can get the tools on Craigslist for $40 to $60 if you look hard enough. The consumables (hole saw, drill bit, screws, dowel, glue) are maybe another $20 to $25), and a couple of sheets of plywood are the most expensive at about $60 per. Not the cheapest thing in the world, but firmly in beer-money territory if you've got interested friends. (And then you've got folks like me who drop a thousand dollars on a gizmo to not have to think about the construction process nearly as hard, but shhh, we're cautionary tales.) I can't help you with the not wanting to learn part, but, having never built one, I'm pretty confident I could do it in a day. Pretty confident that it's a weekend project for a couple of college kids. And learning how to use your hands is a pretty rewarding experience, I find.
  - unwind 5y ago
    As an armchair woodworker with a tool buying/daydreaming complex, please share what gizmo(s) you refer to. Thanks. :)
    - kd5bjo 5y ago
      At a guess, it’s probably something like a Festool Domino. You dry-fit the pieces and draw a line across the joint surface wherever you want a tenon. From there, the whole process is pretty automatic.
      - JKCalhoun 5y ago
        I assumed large CNC machine, ha ha. (I'm not there, yet.)
        eropple 5y ago
        CNC is the one thing I have trouble getting my head around. It's cool, it's absolutely cool. But it doesn't fit my conception of "woodworking" very well. It's more of that "wood machining" side of things, which I respect but I'm not into. I like the Domino because it makes easier a process I know I can do through slower means. I have used a dowel jig, I have used pocket holes, I've chopped mortises. But usually I just want to put two pieces together so I can clamp them and glue them and get on with the next thing. But most uses of CNC with wood seem to be "do things a person can't really practically do in a home shop" and I don't dig that.
      - eropple 5y ago
        That's the one. The Domino is magic. And the after-market accessories are nice--the 3D printer people have gotten to work on this. I have an imperial conversion depth gauge for mine and stopped eyeballing millimeters. It also cost a thousand dollars. But it's the sort of tool that has the obvious design and affordances to make me happy to pick it up and use it, and the things are unkillable--they last twenty years at a minimum. Festool is the sort of company that recognizes that customers are for life and they do a lot to support customers, too, even with thoroughly out of warranty stuff.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  As another responded, building a cabinet is a pretty good first woodworking project, not really that hard. A cabinet can be as simple or complex as you want. Extreme example: a large cardboard box in fact is how I have often begun many of my past MAME cab builds. I make the cardboard prototype to test ergonomics, fit of the various components — surprisingly you can play on them if you go all the way to install and wire the buttons. Sheets of plywood or MDF (hate that stuff as a woodworker though) can be purchased at a big box store — maybe they can cut them down to size a bit for you to transport? A long ruler and an inexpensive circular saw will allow you to cut the sheets of plywood down to the right size. An inexpensive jigsaw as mentioned if you wanted your cabinet to have a few curves (seen plenty of functional if boxy cabs though that are just as fun to play). A drill to make holes to install the buttons, glue, drywall screws... It can be done with few tools. Honestly such a project can turn into a gateway drug to more woodworking and tools. As mentioned, you may want to build a 2nd one and add T-molding around the edges to dress it up and look for legit. So a router and slot-cutting bit are added to your growing collection of tools in the garage. Purchase a $400 track saw and after the beautiful and precise cuts you will never touch your circular saw again....
  - eropple 5y ago
    Funny that you mention a track saw. Because my TSO rail square just showed up... Also, I don't even think MDF is a necessity for this, is it? The cabinets I babysat at the arcade in college were all three-layer or graded-density particle board.
- wccrawford 5y ago
  I'm assuming you want to build a full-size machine that mostly looks like it could have really been in an arcade... And you're right. The wood alone for such a project is very expensive right now. I know because I started it a while ago with scrap wood, and I'm rethinking how I'm going to do it with cabinet-grade plywood. Add in all the knowledge and effort to design and build the cabinet, and it becomes quite a task if you aren't already a woodworker with those tools. If someone is really into it, I think it's a great project and they should absolutely do it. But I don't recommend it for people who merely want the end product.
  - eropple 5y ago
    Arcade cabinets are made of low grade sheet goods, including just particleboard (not even MDF). I'm thinking about making a furniture grade arcade cabinet personally (and mounting a CRT into it), but I'm a cautionary tale, you need not make my mistakes.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
How does someone blow that wad of cash on a game and convince some editor to let them write an article about it only to not include a picture of the cabinet in the article? I guess it could be their desire to monopolize they mention, but they don't seem adverse to bragging about it. Also I'm surprised there isn't a somewhat niche pachinko parlor market in the US already. My quick search shows one place in Virginia advertising itself as the only US parlor. Maybe the difficulty of translation and the "selling gambling to youths" aspect of the frequent anime links keeps it away.
- texasbigdata 5y ago
  Wouldn't they technically be casinos and thus regulated? My experience with pachinko in Japan felt very much like the old strip in Las Vegas emotion and vibe wise.
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    Pachinko is a slot machine and is gambling, but they use a loophole to not be considered such - it pays out tickets that you can use to get toys and stuff like an arcade, but they will buy the toys back from you for money.
    - detaro 5y ago
      In Japan. That japanese law has a loophole doesn't really matter for places in the US, where it doesn't exist.
    - jinto36 5y ago
      Last time I was over there in 2019, one of the friends who came with me wanted to actually try Pachinko; I had never sat down at a machine in my aggregate ~1.5 years of living/visiting Japan, though I had walked through Pachinko places a few times. The one we sat down in was in Osaka I think. When you're done the machine you're at prints a ticket, the exchange desk in the same room (or building) gave us actually a small piece of gold- had the weight embossed on it- and there was an exchange business in the shop/building next door. We opted to keep the gold slivers because it was an interesting souvenir. Usually the prize desks in the pachinko area will have other small items you can exchange for as well. The external buyback business is suppossed to be independent to get around the gambling law of course.
suction 5y ago
I've visited plenty of arcades in Japan, and they were all horrible. Sure, the games were interesting, but they are sad and sometimes creepy places. Smoking is allowed in there, and with Japan's well known tobacco abuse problem, words fail to describe the stench in there. My Japanese girlfriend told me that "nobody normal would ever go in there" and was actually disappointed in me wanting to enter in that sort of place. Later I found out that like most of the entertainment sector, arcades are run by organised crime and the men who frequent them are seen as losers.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jbm 5y ago
  What arcades are you talking about, if you don't mind me asking? All the Sega ones were about as mainstream as you could get. I would walk out of Sunshine City in Ikebukuro and see it filled with normal-ish people. I even took my kids to play Taiko no Tatsujin in Nakano Broadway. The tobacco issue was a lot better in Tokyo when I left; most indoor places are non-smoking now. IMO that is the only true benefit Tokyo reaped from the 2020 Olympic preparations.
  - Klonoar 5y ago
    The non-mainstream ones can indeed feel a bit dodgy - like, night and day difference. That said I still went to them periodically since you could often find older games there that the bigger ones had moved on from.
  - suction 5y ago
    I mean if that's normal to you I guess you're not aware of the reputation they have among normal Japanese people.
- tkgally 5y ago
  I agree about the horribleness of Japanese game arcades, but that actually can be an attraction if you’re in the right (or wrong?) frame of mind. I’ve dropped into “game centers” quite a few times over the years—usually just to use the restroom, though occasionally to look around. While arcades in the suburbs can be just annoying with the noise and teenagers, those in the scuzzier areas of big cities—Shimbashi and Kabukicho in Tokyo, Isezakicho in Yokohama, Nishinari in Osaka—can have an atmosphere of life-on-the-skids ennui all their own. I remember, one weekday afternoon, watching several middle-aged guys silently sitting at a horse racing game—something like the ones in [1] and [2]—in the dim basement of a run-down building in Shimbashi. It looked like they had been there all day. What a way to spend one’s life. I haven’t been in any arcades for several years, but apparently they have been no-smoking since April 2020 [3, in Japanese]. [1] https://lineblog.me/mssp/archives/5037607.html https://lineblog.me/mssp/archives/5037607.html [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrekv_ttmNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrekv_ttmNQ [3] http://bayon-game.com/?p=35375 http://bayon-game.com/?p=35375
lifthrasiir 5y ago
Reverse engineering of Japanese music video games has been a huge issue. I was grown up from the environment where the only way to enjoy those games was an illegal means for a long time, and even at that time the contention was evident. In fact the article missed important details like that Konami moved to online authentication as a direct response to a massive content leak in 2012 among others, and that Programmed World (or later, Programmed Sun) was commonly used by gamers from Japan and other Asian countries where those games are legally available---even after the invitation-only policy and geofencing to prevent them. Made essential due to the COVID-19, the end game for those arcade game publishers seems to be the de-arcade-ization; Konami has been particularly active at mobile and PC ports of their arcade games and that greatly reduced the needs for legally questionable practices.
iamevn 5y ago
Like the author, I missed my favorite game enough to buy an arcade rhythm game a few months into the pandemic. It's a shame Konami/Sega/Taito are so picky about who they sell to and therefore who gets to be on their network. I would love to pay Konami and put my Pop'n Music cab on the official eAmusement network but they will not take my money. Game Saru is wonderful and I can't recommend them highly enough. They have a youtube channel here: https://youtube.com/c/GameSaru https://youtube.com/c/GameSaru
- lifthrasiir 5y ago
  > It's a shame Konami/Sega/Taito are so picky about who they sell to and therefore who gets to be on their network. The thing is that, at least Konami isn't! It mostly depends on the domestic publisher to decide which customer to sell cabinets and network accesses. I'm particularly aware of a handful of people who own an arcade machine that is connected to the network in South Korea.
iamevn 5y ago
The terrifying video the introduction describes: https://twitter.com/ffoqboss/status/1444746707925827584 https://twitter.com/ffoqboss/status/1444746707925827584
jinto36 5y ago
If anyone has a lead on Jubeat machine, I'd be quite interested- the only rhythm game I didn't insta-fail at, so I came to appreciate it. Also not as enormous of a cabinet as Drummania XG and such.
- gaudat 5y ago
  Check out Jubeat Plus. Maybe it is real enough if you play on a large touch screen. Or perhaps you can find some replacement parts for the real machine and cobble together a DIY input controller. I remember seeing a bootleg Jubeat (that isn't called one) in my local arcade. Perhaps it is from some Chinese or Taiwanese vendors. The input devices are very similar but it does not run Jubeat though.
  - jinto36 5y ago
    Hm haven't seen any machines that have the similar form factor, but the only arcades I go to are in Japan. Would be interested what music they have in the clone machines. I had a sideloaded APK that was a Jubeat approximation called Yubiosu for a while, before the official Android Jubeat Plus came out, but for whatever reason they only ever supported Jubeat Plus on a few devices. Since I don't otherwise have any iDevices, I'd rather just import a cabinet than get an iPad just for that.
gaudat 5y ago
Oh I never thought this topic would go on HN. Playing music arcade games is my guilty pleasure. These arcade games always have creatively designed input devices that blows PC and smartphone games out of the water. Check Dancerush (DDR but you step on a touch screen), Wacca (With a round display area and round input panels) and Ongeki (Gacha and some light bullet hell mixed in) out. Apart from Museca mentioned in the article, there is also Beatstream from Konami that got shelved after only one update. That game's form factor is ideal for touch screens but it's a shame it never gets released on smartphones. Maybe the cost of making custom background videos is too high to bo justified. And kudos for Sega for at least exporting Chunithm and Maimai DX even though the former is a old version and both got a lot of pop songs removed due to licensing. I'm lucky to live in one of the countries these are exported officially. Otherwise I will need to go to Japan every fow months to get my fix. There is a community that managed to make those Sega music games run on a Windows PC and they have built those custom input devices out of acrylic or MDF, complete with custom PCBA, firmware and reverse engineered drivers. It's pretty ironic that the best players of DDR include Americans and Koreans that presumably started their career on those smuggled machines.

88 points by zdw 5y ago

coolgeek 5y ago

https://archive.is/O4IUx https://archive.is/O4IUx

erikbye 5y ago

Alekhine 5y ago

I'd like to build a raspberry pi based MAME machine for my college, but to get a box to actually put the machine in, its either a lot of time and effort to build one (I do not have woodworking skills, nor the desire to learn) or a lot of money to buy a shell, which I don't have. So it will likely stay a daydream. It would be nice to see people playing together in the lounge, though.

astrange 5y ago
> I'd like to build a raspberry pi based MAME machine for my college Has anyone ever come up with an entertainment project using a small computer that isn’t turning it into an emulation box? It seems like it’s the default dad project too.
eropple 5y ago
I happen to be a woodworker when I'm not a software developer and FWIW, and building an traditional-style 90's plywood cab (with some affordances; how you mount the panel is an Open Question) is pretty trivial stuff with a drill, a jigsaw (if you want rounded corners), a few pieces of sandpaper, and a circ saw (you'd need a router for traditional T edge banding but you can get flat edge banding right on Amazon). You can get the tools on Craigslist for $40 to $60 if you look hard enough. The consumables (hole saw, drill bit, screws, dowel, glue) are maybe another $20 to $25), and a couple of sheets of plywood are the most expensive at about $60 per. Not the cheapest thing in the world, but firmly in beer-money territory if you've got interested friends. (And then you've got folks like me who drop a thousand dollars on a gizmo to not have to think about the construction process nearly as hard, but shhh, we're cautionary tales.) I can't help you with the not wanting to learn part, but, having never built one, I'm pretty confident I could do it in a day. Pretty confident that it's a weekend project for a couple of college kids. And learning how to use your hands is a pretty rewarding experience, I find.
- unwind 5y ago
  As an armchair woodworker with a tool buying/daydreaming complex, please share what gizmo(s) you refer to. Thanks. :)
  - kd5bjo 5y ago
    At a guess, it’s probably something like a Festool Domino. You dry-fit the pieces and draw a line across the joint surface wherever you want a tenon. From there, the whole process is pretty automatic.
    - JKCalhoun 5y ago
      I assumed large CNC machine, ha ha. (I'm not there, yet.)
      - eropple 5y ago
        CNC is the one thing I have trouble getting my head around. It's cool, it's absolutely cool. But it doesn't fit my conception of "woodworking" very well. It's more of that "wood machining" side of things, which I respect but I'm not into. I like the Domino because it makes easier a process I know I can do through slower means. I have used a dowel jig, I have used pocket holes, I've chopped mortises. But usually I just want to put two pieces together so I can clamp them and glue them and get on with the next thing. But most uses of CNC with wood seem to be "do things a person can't really practically do in a home shop" and I don't dig that.
    - eropple 5y ago
      That's the one. The Domino is magic. And the after-market accessories are nice--the 3D printer people have gotten to work on this. I have an imperial conversion depth gauge for mine and stopped eyeballing millimeters. It also cost a thousand dollars. But it's the sort of tool that has the obvious design and affordances to make me happy to pick it up and use it, and the things are unkillable--they last twenty years at a minimum. Festool is the sort of company that recognizes that customers are for life and they do a lot to support customers, too, even with thoroughly out of warranty stuff.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
As another responded, building a cabinet is a pretty good first woodworking project, not really that hard. A cabinet can be as simple or complex as you want. Extreme example: a large cardboard box in fact is how I have often begun many of my past MAME cab builds. I make the cardboard prototype to test ergonomics, fit of the various components — surprisingly you can play on them if you go all the way to install and wire the buttons. Sheets of plywood or MDF (hate that stuff as a woodworker though) can be purchased at a big box store — maybe they can cut them down to size a bit for you to transport? A long ruler and an inexpensive circular saw will allow you to cut the sheets of plywood down to the right size. An inexpensive jigsaw as mentioned if you wanted your cabinet to have a few curves (seen plenty of functional if boxy cabs though that are just as fun to play). A drill to make holes to install the buttons, glue, drywall screws... It can be done with few tools. Honestly such a project can turn into a gateway drug to more woodworking and tools. As mentioned, you may want to build a 2nd one and add T-molding around the edges to dress it up and look for legit. So a router and slot-cutting bit are added to your growing collection of tools in the garage. Purchase a $400 track saw and after the beautiful and precise cuts you will never touch your circular saw again....
- eropple 5y ago
  Funny that you mention a track saw. Because my TSO rail square just showed up... Also, I don't even think MDF is a necessity for this, is it? The cabinets I babysat at the arcade in college were all three-layer or graded-density particle board.
wccrawford 5y ago
I'm assuming you want to build a full-size machine that mostly looks like it could have really been in an arcade... And you're right. The wood alone for such a project is very expensive right now. I know because I started it a while ago with scrap wood, and I'm rethinking how I'm going to do it with cabinet-grade plywood. Add in all the knowledge and effort to design and build the cabinet, and it becomes quite a task if you aren't already a woodworker with those tools. If someone is really into it, I think it's a great project and they should absolutely do it. But I don't recommend it for people who merely want the end product.
- eropple 5y ago
  Arcade cabinets are made of low grade sheet goods, including just particleboard (not even MDF). I'm thinking about making a furniture grade arcade cabinet personally (and mounting a CRT into it), but I'm a cautionary tale, you need not make my mistakes.

boomboomsubban 5y ago

How does someone blow that wad of cash on a game and convince some editor to let them write an article about it only to not include a picture of the cabinet in the article? I guess it could be their desire to monopolize they mention, but they don't seem adverse to bragging about it. Also I'm surprised there isn't a somewhat niche pachinko parlor market in the US already. My quick search shows one place in Virginia advertising itself as the only US parlor. Maybe the difficulty of translation and the "selling gambling to youths" aspect of the frequent anime links keeps it away.

texasbigdata 5y ago
Wouldn't they technically be casinos and thus regulated? My experience with pachinko in Japan felt very much like the old strip in Las Vegas emotion and vibe wise.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  Pachinko is a slot machine and is gambling, but they use a loophole to not be considered such - it pays out tickets that you can use to get toys and stuff like an arcade, but they will buy the toys back from you for money.
  - detaro 5y ago
    In Japan. That japanese law has a loophole doesn't really matter for places in the US, where it doesn't exist.
  - jinto36 5y ago
    Last time I was over there in 2019, one of the friends who came with me wanted to actually try Pachinko; I had never sat down at a machine in my aggregate ~1.5 years of living/visiting Japan, though I had walked through Pachinko places a few times. The one we sat down in was in Osaka I think. When you're done the machine you're at prints a ticket, the exchange desk in the same room (or building) gave us actually a small piece of gold- had the weight embossed on it- and there was an exchange business in the shop/building next door. We opted to keep the gold slivers because it was an interesting souvenir. Usually the prize desks in the pachinko area will have other small items you can exchange for as well. The external buyback business is suppossed to be independent to get around the gambling law of course.

suction 5y ago

I've visited plenty of arcades in Japan, and they were all horrible. Sure, the games were interesting, but they are sad and sometimes creepy places. Smoking is allowed in there, and with Japan's well known tobacco abuse problem, words fail to describe the stench in there. My Japanese girlfriend told me that "nobody normal would ever go in there" and was actually disappointed in me wanting to enter in that sort of place. Later I found out that like most of the entertainment sector, arcades are run by organised crime and the men who frequent them are seen as losers.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jbm 5y ago
What arcades are you talking about, if you don't mind me asking? All the Sega ones were about as mainstream as you could get. I would walk out of Sunshine City in Ikebukuro and see it filled with normal-ish people. I even took my kids to play Taiko no Tatsujin in Nakano Broadway. The tobacco issue was a lot better in Tokyo when I left; most indoor places are non-smoking now. IMO that is the only true benefit Tokyo reaped from the 2020 Olympic preparations.
- Klonoar 5y ago
  The non-mainstream ones can indeed feel a bit dodgy - like, night and day difference. That said I still went to them periodically since you could often find older games there that the bigger ones had moved on from.
- suction 5y ago
  I mean if that's normal to you I guess you're not aware of the reputation they have among normal Japanese people.
tkgally 5y ago
I agree about the horribleness of Japanese game arcades, but that actually can be an attraction if you’re in the right (or wrong?) frame of mind. I’ve dropped into “game centers” quite a few times over the years—usually just to use the restroom, though occasionally to look around. While arcades in the suburbs can be just annoying with the noise and teenagers, those in the scuzzier areas of big cities—Shimbashi and Kabukicho in Tokyo, Isezakicho in Yokohama, Nishinari in Osaka—can have an atmosphere of life-on-the-skids ennui all their own. I remember, one weekday afternoon, watching several middle-aged guys silently sitting at a horse racing game—something like the ones in [1] and [2]—in the dim basement of a run-down building in Shimbashi. It looked like they had been there all day. What a way to spend one’s life. I haven’t been in any arcades for several years, but apparently they have been no-smoking since April 2020 [3, in Japanese]. [1] https://lineblog.me/mssp/archives/5037607.html https://lineblog.me/mssp/archives/5037607.html [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrekv_ttmNQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrekv_ttmNQ [3] http://bayon-game.com/?p=35375 http://bayon-game.com/?p=35375

lifthrasiir 5y ago

Reverse engineering of Japanese music video games has been a huge issue. I was grown up from the environment where the only way to enjoy those games was an illegal means for a long time, and even at that time the contention was evident. In fact the article missed important details like that Konami moved to online authentication as a direct response to a massive content leak in 2012 among others, and that Programmed World (or later, Programmed Sun) was commonly used by gamers from Japan and other Asian countries where those games are legally available---even after the invitation-only policy and geofencing to prevent them. Made essential due to the COVID-19, the end game for those arcade game publishers seems to be the de-arcade-ization; Konami has been particularly active at mobile and PC ports of their arcade games and that greatly reduced the needs for legally questionable practices.

iamevn 5y ago

Like the author, I missed my favorite game enough to buy an arcade rhythm game a few months into the pandemic. It's a shame Konami/Sega/Taito are so picky about who they sell to and therefore who gets to be on their network. I would love to pay Konami and put my Pop'n Music cab on the official eAmusement network but they will not take my money. Game Saru is wonderful and I can't recommend them highly enough. They have a youtube channel here: https://youtube.com/c/GameSaru https://youtube.com/c/GameSaru

lifthrasiir 5y ago
> It's a shame Konami/Sega/Taito are so picky about who they sell to and therefore who gets to be on their network. The thing is that, at least Konami isn't! It mostly depends on the domestic publisher to decide which customer to sell cabinets and network accesses. I'm particularly aware of a handful of people who own an arcade machine that is connected to the network in South Korea.

iamevn 5y ago

The terrifying video the introduction describes: https://twitter.com/ffoqboss/status/1444746707925827584 https://twitter.com/ffoqboss/status/1444746707925827584

jinto36 5y ago

If anyone has a lead on Jubeat machine, I'd be quite interested- the only rhythm game I didn't insta-fail at, so I came to appreciate it. Also not as enormous of a cabinet as Drummania XG and such.

gaudat 5y ago
Check out Jubeat Plus. Maybe it is real enough if you play on a large touch screen. Or perhaps you can find some replacement parts for the real machine and cobble together a DIY input controller. I remember seeing a bootleg Jubeat (that isn't called one) in my local arcade. Perhaps it is from some Chinese or Taiwanese vendors. The input devices are very similar but it does not run Jubeat though.
- jinto36 5y ago
  Hm haven't seen any machines that have the similar form factor, but the only arcades I go to are in Japan. Would be interested what music they have in the clone machines. I had a sideloaded APK that was a Jubeat approximation called Yubiosu for a while, before the official Android Jubeat Plus came out, but for whatever reason they only ever supported Jubeat Plus on a few devices. Since I don't otherwise have any iDevices, I'd rather just import a cabinet than get an iPad just for that.

gaudat 5y ago

Oh I never thought this topic would go on HN. Playing music arcade games is my guilty pleasure. These arcade games always have creatively designed input devices that blows PC and smartphone games out of the water. Check Dancerush (DDR but you step on a touch screen), Wacca (With a round display area and round input panels) and Ongeki (Gacha and some light bullet hell mixed in) out. Apart from Museca mentioned in the article, there is also Beatstream from Konami that got shelved after only one update. That game's form factor is ideal for touch screens but it's a shame it never gets released on smartphones. Maybe the cost of making custom background videos is too high to bo justified. And kudos for Sega for at least exporting Chunithm and Maimai DX even though the former is a old version and both got a lot of pop songs removed due to licensing. I'm lucky to live in one of the countries these are exported officially. Otherwise I will need to go to Japan every fow months to get my fix. There is a community that managed to make those Sega music games run on a Windows PC and they have built those custom input devices out of acrylic or MDF, complete with custom PCBA, firmware and reverse engineered drivers. It's pretty ironic that the best players of DDR include Americans and Koreans that presumably started their career on those smuggled machines.