Yep. We’re doing this again.
I’ve added a Round1 tag to a bunch of old posts if you’d like to see the other four I’ve been to.
But before we get into that, there was another reason I needed to visit this specific Round1. One of the last three remaining Suncoasts in the country were right here in Dayton, Ohio! I, personally, never had a local Suncoast, but I’d always see people talking about it online and was always curious about them. I finally got my wish when I moved to Omaha (that location was one of the final four, but ultimately closed down a few years back). Really, it’s not THAT different than FYE, but since I was in the area, I had to check it out.
For those who don’t know, Suncoast was a chain of physical media stores. They, along with FYE, were best known for being one of the few places you could buy anime DVDs in the very early 00s.
Speaking of FYE, this Suncoast was attached to one.
They’re not just right next to each other, there’s a door in the wall where you can walk between them. I have no idea how this arrangement happened, but it’s a big reason that this Suncoast managed to weather the storm all these years. With only only three locations remaining in the world, this place is a real treasure.
Speaking of anime, this mall also had a dedicated anime store. I know they’re common now, but they weren’t two decades ago. My younger teenage anime-obsessed self would have killed for one of these.
…Also, it’s right next to the Suncoast/FYE, above a Pokemon store, and sandwiched between a Spencer’s, while the Round1 is just to the left of this photo. The edgy weeaboo teenagers here in Dayton sure have it easy.
Alright, let’s put aside the Japanese culture specialty stores and get back to the Japanese culture arcade.
Here’s the usual lineup of rhythm games. IIDX, GitaDora, DDR. This was the first time I’ve seen Chunithm or MaiMai at one these. You’ll also notice GitaDora have finally gotten new cabs to replace the old white model. Long overdue.
Two new rhythm games I didn’t get a chance to play. The one on the left is Tetote x Connect and the one on the right is Chrono Circle.
And this is Dance Around. It’s pretty much just a cross between Just Dance and Dance Evolution. This one I did get to play, but with a 40 pound backpack. I really wasn’t in the mood to take the whole thing off, then get it all the way back on.
If it feels like I’m rushing through this arcade, it’s because I am! I may or may not have lost track of time at Clarkcade, putting me way behind schedule. Normally it wouldn’t have been an issue, but it was October and I was camping out tonight, so I absolutely had to get set up before night fell. AND I still had a bunch of barcades to visit downtown before that. I didn’t have time to mill around in this Round1. I only had around 40 minutes and had to choose my priorities wisely.
There was something very special in this particular Round1 that consumed most of my time…
My favorite part of Round1! The sit-down cabs!
If you’ve read my previous posts on the subject, you’d know these machines have some of wildest, most random games possible. They’re almost always a treasure trove of games you’ll never, ever see anywhere else in the west.
And this location had over 30 of them.
Let’s take this one, for example. Salamander 2, a Japan-exclusive sequel to the original Salamander/Life Force from 1996!
You see, Round 1 is a Japanese chain of arcades who have been making the rounds in North America. They’ve got an entire storehouse of random games that they rotated out of the Japanese locations and don’t have anything better to do with. Those games get shipped to the US locations to pad out the game lineup and make it more exotic. These are always, hands-down, my favorite part of visiting Round1s. If Gaming Adventures and Clarkcade hadn’t already sealed my trip to Dayton, the sheer number of older machines Round1 had sure did.
Here’s another oddity I never expected to see in person: Dynamite Deka EX.
I’m a big fan of Dynamite Cop, so this is a game I’ve always wanted to run into. It’s best described as an “official Romhack” of Dynamite Cop made by Sega’s Chinese branch. No longer are you pushing through the cabin of a giant cruise ship; every room in the game has been reskinned to take place on the streets of China.
But this game isn’t just a graphical switch-up. It includes a handful of new mechanics exclusive to this version. Throughout the levels are power-up briefcases that, when collected, transform your character into a super form and give them an entirely new moveset. Each character has multiple unique, and very silly, transformations, spanning everything from gun kata to over the top wresting moves. These new fighting styles mix up the gameplay so much that I really wanted to play more just to see whatever weird transformations I could find. But alas, lots of games and not very much time.
Here’s Akatsuki Blitzkamf Achse and Fate/Unlimited Codes. Both games I’ve run into at convetions before, but not ones I ever expected to see “in the wild”.
While we’re on the subject of anime fighting games, look what was one of the machines! The game had been swapped out at some point, but there was a Yu Yu Hakusho Dark Tournament in here at some point! Shame, shame. I’d love to have been able to say I got to play it in an arcade.
They sure had a lot of fighting games, didn’t they? These are two lesser-known Arc System Works fighters, Sengoku Basara X on the left and Battle Fantasia on the right.
Sengoku Basara X was… Hang on, let me check wiki real quick… A fighting game spin-off of a series of Capcom hack-and-slash games called Sengoku Basara? Sorry, I’m not all that versed in console games, so I’ve never heard of it.
Battle Fantasia I am vaguely familiar with, though. Arc System Works is known for their expressive 2D spritework, but Battle Fantasia was one of their first attempts at a 3D fighter. The game’s central gimmick is that the characters fighting are all RPG characters, so they’re much more fantasy-inspired than ASW’s usual modern stylish designs. It also has a bunch of silly visual RPG gimmicks like the characters having an HP value displayed below their health bar or old-timey art on the character select screen.
Now that we’ve gotten all of those out of the way, let’s get to the big one.
Kinnikuman Muscle Grand Prix 2! I finally found it!
The last time I went to Round1, I’d just missed this game being rotated out. I honestly didn’t even expect to find it here because of what a niche title this is! I don’t think there’s a single other person in the United States who would be more excited to find this game than I was!
I talked about it in the previous post, but the short version is that I was on the scanlation team for the original Kinnikuman manga. I’m a big, big, BIG fan of the franchise.
Look at this roster! All of the Seven Devils! All six Devil Knights! All Five of the Pretenders for the Trone! Benkiman, the living urinal is here!
What other franchise do you know of where an alligator who turns into a dinosaur foot, a living orrery (look it up), and a toilet are important enough characters to make the roster of a fighting game? There are no others! Kinnikuman is the best series ever made!
But I absolutely had to go with my boy Stecasse King, the wresting tape cassette player! He records enemy wrestlers’ movesets onto tape cassettes and can gain their techniques but stuffing the tape in his body an playing it! His most powerful attack is the Devil’s Symphony, where he uses his feet (which are a pair of headphones) to attach to his opponent’s ears and knock them out by assaulting their ears with music! His one weakness is that he’s an FM radio, so Devil’s Symphony can fail if the radio station he’s tuned into happens to be playing a talk show instead of music.
Kinnikuman is the greatest thing ever!
And here are some random other games I don’t have much to say about. Just for the record, I did find O-Matusri Quest at a second Round 1, so they’re probably not as a rare as I thought.
But now for the punchline: Shortly after this trip, Round1 locations across the country began severely downsizing their assortment of sit-down machines due to how little profit they were making. This location got rid of nearly all of these old games a few months later.
At the end of the day, that’s why I write this blog. I don’t care if people read it or not. I just want the things I’ve seen to be archived. I want people to know there was once a Round1 in Dayton, Ohio that had a treasure trove of weird, niche arcade machines and too many fighting games.
I feel I made a mistake last year when I tried to promote this blog. I write it for myself, as well as anyone interested who happens to stumble upon it. I even ran into a guy who has a large following on Twitter who offered to promote it for me, but… Well, I haven’t written a post in over a year. I don’t want to worry about the blog being professional or entertaining or anything else. I just want to share the things I’ve seen and what I thought.
Next time, whenever it comes, let’s see what Dayton’s barcade scene is like. It’s… different, if nothing else.
