Salarymen and schoolchildren cluster around entire areas dedicated to fighters like Tekken 7, Street Fighter IV, and Virtua Fighter 5. Cave shooters are the order of the day here, and it was overwhelming to see a niche genre attract such a devoted following.Īscend another flight, and there are beat 'em ups you know, beat 'em ups you love, and beat 'em ups you've never heard of. Sat there, steely-gazed, utterly locked in concentration, we hovered awkwardly and in awe as players racked up insane combos and scores on games like DoDonPachi, Mushihimesama, and Battle Garegga. They've forgotten things about Ikaruga you never even knew in the first place. Well-known for its community of hardcore gaming experts, this is where you come to see some of the world's best danmaku players descend into bullet hell. Rows upon rows of SEGA Astro Boys creep into view, each with a smoking, suited, seated, surgical-masked participant. Introverts, bring lots of money, and make yourselves at home. It's a place that caters for you, for me, for everyone who got picked last for football at school and for everyone who actively avoids eye contact with other human beings. You could spend hours and hours and hours here. And when you do, there are floors upon floors upon buildings upon buildings of figurines, posters, DVDs, new video games, old video games, unreleased video games, and porn ranging from the mildly disturbing to the utterly terrifying.Īkiba is a city within a city, a sprawling strip where J-Pop blares constantly, girls dressed as French maids entice you up to 5F to play GameCube games with them, and where everyone's lost and found at the same time. Colossal posters featuring imagery and characters from the world of manga, anime, and video games leer at you from the dwarfing skyscrapers, inviting you to explore every single nook and cranny. It's really crowded, very loud, garishly bright, and immeasurably exciting. When you first see the towering neon inferno of Akiba's main strip, the first you think is: holy shit. The ones on the pier and at Butlin's remain, but now home single Dance Dance Revolution cabinets, a Time Crisis 4, aisles upon aisles of conman claw machines, fruities that never pay out, and those ones where the pennies get pushed over the edge. Once we were spoiled by perfect arcade versions of Virtua Fighter 2 or Tekken 3 in our own living rooms, there was pretty much no reason to brave the smog anymore.Īnd so, the one in the airport closed down. Games for people who didn't like games were coming, and games at home were getting better, too.

Gradually, bigger-budget gimmick games like House of the Dead, Prop Cycle, and Daytona USA began to elbow out the Jamma cabinets, and the arrival of Dance Dance Revolution was pretty much the final nail in the coffin. Photo via FacebookĪt pretty much the exact same time as games like Time Crisis started appearing in the hallowed halls of the British arcades, its commercial future began a downward trajectory from which it would never recover.

An increasingly rare sight: classic arcade games in Jamma-style cabinets at Astro City in Southend.

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