Visiting a Taito Station arcade in Osaka, Japan, gave me a deeper appreciation of how arcades inspired retro game design.
Save State This story is part of Save State , a bi-weekly column focused on the evolving nature of retro gaming. Updated less than 37 seconds ago Table of Contents It took me visiting a Taito Station arcade in Japan to truly understand what makes arcades special.
Prize games The arcade I visited in Japan was Taito Station Osaka-nipponbashi. While Taito is an arcade brand that feels dead in the United States nowadays, several arcades bearing the Space Invaders creator’s name can be found around Japan. Like many buildings in Osaka, this Taito Game Station built into a space with more verticality than width. It squeezed right between two other storefronts but still stood out thanks to the arcade’s massive logo and many claw machines on the first floor.
Unfortunately, the claw gaming gods were not on my side and dropped the plushies I was trying to get every time, even when I thought I had a good grasp on them. It was time to move on and start playing some video games, although I’d go on to find that they felt just as intentionally designed to be experienced in an arcade setting as these prize games.
Nowadays, it’s unwieldy for a developer to release a video game with a proprietary controller for home consoles. The Guitar Hero craze dying out and the short lifespan of the toys-to-life fad proves this. There’s a lesson to be learned from games like Taiko no Tatsujin: Game developers should think about the “how” of the gaming experience just as much as the “what.
A few cabinets down, another game piqued my interest: VS. Super Mario Bros. This is an arcade take on the Nintendo classic. The scoring system in Super Mario Bros. games never meant much to me, but seeing how it was utilized here to turn this single-player platformer into a communal arcade experience allowed me to view this classic from a new angle.
Arcade Arcade Games Donkey Kong Galaga Marvel Vs Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Class Save State Space Invaders Suika Game Taiko No Tatsujin Taito Taito Station VS. Super Mario Bros.
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