The bus between Atlantic City and New York passed through Philadelphia. I just had to make a quick stop at a particular arcade while in the area. Then I got stranded overnight because the train stopped earlier than expected and didn’t run at all on Sunday. I had to call an Uber to get back to the bus route.
If my heart isn’t in this blog post, it’s because I don’t like thinking about this day of my trip.
EDIT: When going through an updating all of these posts for the new blog layout, I re-read this and realized I was in a REALLY bad mood when I wrote it. If you’d like a more fair evaluation of Round 1, I’ve since written about several others. Here, here, and here. I could have completely re-written this post, but I’d rather preserve my thoughts at the time of writing it. Instead, expect a lot of edits where I question what I was thinking. So many that I put them in a different color.
I took these pictures on the walk there, but I want to get through this post as fast as possible. The seemingly random photo of the sky is because two crows were beating up a hawk. You can see them if you look carefully at the sky shot.
So here’s Round 1, a chain of Japanese arcades that recently expanded into America. They’ve been multiplying rapidly, but this is my first time getting to visit one. I was in a rush, so I didn’t get to stay here nearly as long as I wanted, but I still missed the bus. They’ll be another Round 1 in the future, I’m sure. But for now, let’s skim through this quickly.
First, you’ve got the many candy cabs, mostly running older fighting games. They’re essential to the Japanese experience. A while back, I saw a Type-Moon “Are you a secondary” bingo image someone made. I was the only person in the thread who didn’t have to check “has never played Melty Blood at an arcade.”
EDIT: Looking back, the only really unusual thing here is Columns.
Disney’s TsumTsum. Win the game, and you might win your own Tsumtsum. Notable mainly for being the reason that Australia got an official e-amuse network before America did.
There were a lot of Yo-kai Watch toys in the UFO Catchers. That franchise never really took off in America.
The arcade version of Rhythm Heaven. You’d be surprised how many people don’t know this exists. I didn’t until a few months before this trip.
Here’s an establishing shot I took, expecting to be more excited about this blog post. If you’ve never been in Round 1, they have a similar atmosphere to Dave and Busters, but without the sports bar.
I didn’t expect the sheer amount of stupid filler games mixed in with the imported stuff. That’s not to say I was disappointed with Round 1, but from how they advertise themselves, I thought it would be entirely imported.
Theatrhythm All-Star Carnival. As you can see, it wasn’t working, so I didn’t get to play it. I wasn’t fond of the 3DS version, anyway.
I want to say this was my first time seeing Sound Voltex. Imagine it as some horrible cross between Beatmania and Guitar Hero, except playing the game distorts the music with horrible WUB WUB noises that make the music sound broken. Seriously, does anyone think the orange bars sound like anything but garbage?
The poor Pop’n Music machine. Unlike every other rhythm game here, it was running a pretty old version of the game. Round 1 doesn’t consider this game popular enough to pay for online service to run newer versions.
Crossbeat was the game I confused for that other touchscreen game before. If you’ve ever played Osu or Re-rave, this game plays identically. On the one hand, I like that God Knows from Haruhi is the song your cursor sits on by default, so it starts playing whenever you open the music select menu. On the other hand, why is The Trailer for Phoenix Wright 5 in here? I don’t mean a song from the trailer; I mean the whole trailer. It’s in here, and you can play it. It’s easily the most bizarre thing I’ve ever seen in a rhythm game.
EDIT: I originally had a link, but the video is private now. You’ll have to take my word for it.
They had this stupid mobile game port thing, too. What was it called again? I forget. I talked about it in that convention blog post, so I don’t need to go into detail about it.
EDIT: Once again, forgive me for this post.
The latest version of Gitadora is properly linked for co-op play. These machines look way, way more impressive in official renders than they do in person. They have these at nearly every Round 1, and I’m going to another sometime this year. I’ll do these machines more justice, then. That goes for most of the things in this blog post.
And here’s that giant Beatmania IIDX machine. We have one here in the Twin Cities that used to make the con circuit, but it’s long broken down.
They had three Pump It Up machines against the wall. Once in a while, the DDR players would go a round while waiting for their turn, but these remained generally unoccupied. The three machines here are Prime, Prime 2, and Infinity. Infinity is the last of the short-lived Pump It Up Pro series. There’s a long story behind that one that I’ll talk about in a later blog post.
This is my first time seeing the new DDR white cabinet in person. While not nearly as cool as I was expecting, it’s a step up from the decade-old machines I’m used to playing on.
I’m so out of practice that I couldn’t even pass Starmine.
Now’s probably a good time to mention that most of Round 1’s machines are online and connected to various networks like e-amuse (Konami), BaNa Network (Bandai Namco), Nesica (Taito), and the individual network for Initial D. Round1 is notorious for never being able to keep the cards that go with these games in stock, so I lucked out and got all of them except a BanaPass. I’m still bitter over that.
I’m not sure what this is. I was pressed for time and couldn’t play every game they had here. I’m just posting a picture of it for documentation’s sake.
EDIT: I haven’t seen this game anywhere since. This is Infinity Blade FX, an arcade port of a mobile game. It sounds like I wasn’t missing much, but I’ll make it a point to try it if I ever run into it again.
Some ticket game where they project an image onto the floor, and you stomp on it. I later discovered that this game isn’t as unusual as I thought. It’s still cool, though.
At first, I mistook this for BishiBashi and got excited, but it turned out to be a ticket game. Meh.
These are the two new Sonic ticket games I mentioned a few blog posts ago. Or, I think I mentioned them anyway. It was like half a year ago.
Initial D Infinity is the eighth game in the series. I only got to play one round, so I can’t go in-depth about this game. I also hadn’t played 6 or 7, so I have no idea how different it is compared to those games. I’m very sorry about this whole blog post.
Here’s where I’d have bought my BanaPass if I had one. The machine that dispenses them is sitting right next to the Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 5 machines, which I forgot to take a photo of. I was really off my game that day.
This is some weird car game where you can play things like car soccer with tiny cars. The name of it was in Japanese, so I have no idea what it is.
EDIT: No, it wasn’t. The marquee is just unreadable. It’s GTI Club.
This is another game I haven’t seen before. Don’t know what it is, either. I hope this isn’t the first blog post someone sees.
EDIT: Even when I was writing this, I could tell this blog post was terrible. Remember, I’d just finished writing about 35 boardwalk arcades and just wanted to get these posts done with.
Musical GunGun2. Half shooting game. Half rhythm game. All “a game I didn’t have time to try.”
I don’t know. Are you tired of me whining about how I want to finish this blog post already?
EDIT: Stupid me, that’s Lethal Enforcers 3! Say something about it!
This is Storm Racer G. I don’t THINK it’s an import, but I’ve never seen it before. Since it’s from Sega, I assume it’s one of those games you usually only find at Gameworks. There are a lot of those.
An imported motorcycle game.
EDIT: In many of these photos, the marquee is too bright for me to make out the game’s name. This was always a massive problem for me. Later in the blog’s life, I found a solution: Whenever I run into a game whose title I might forget, I always take a close-up photo of the marquee. Those photos never appear on the blog, but they’re readable enough that I never risk being unable to determine what a game is.
Print Club booths. Our local Tomodachi used to have one of these. Luckily, I used to have a female friend who was really into it, so I got to try it once. The filter they use to make girls look prettier doesn’t workon guys.
I should put all of these games I don’t recognize together, but I don’t care about this blog post.
EDIT: Come on, that’s Tank! Tank! Tank!. Of course I recognize it.
This is Lost Land Adventure, a game that reminds me of Let’s Go Island without the self-aware humor. The gimmick is that there’s a big screen that… You know what, just watch the trailer. It explains it far better than I could.
EDIT: The trailer’s gone. I do talk more about this machine in a later post.
Giant Tetris. I recently discovered that this game has an English release, believe it or not. I’ve never seen it, but there’s a bowling alley in Denver that has it.
EDIT: Which bowling alley was I talking about? Was it this one again? They must have gotten rid of it before I got there.
They had a Japanese version of Silent Scope EX for some reason.
Oh, this 3D racing game. Instead of using head tracking, it gives you 3D goggles that pull down. I think this game ran on the e-Amuse network. The most interesting thing about it is that I recognized a couple of the BGMs from various Bemani games, like Beatmania. It must be made by the BishiBashi guys.
EDIT: Road Fighters 3D
This is Gunslinger Stratos, the shooting game that Gen Urobuchi came up with. I’d tell you more about it, but as you can see, they weren’t exactly working. I think there’s an anime adaptation, so go watch that if you’re curious.
EDIT: Or read about it here.
???
EDIT: Although I regret not playing a few of these games, I did play this one at a later Round 1. It’s pretty terrible, regardless of my mood.
I didn’t even know there was a Silent Hill arcade game, but there it is. I assume it plays like House of the Dead, but with Pyramid Head as a boss or something.
EDIT: Of all the games, this is one I’m really kicking myself for not trying. I was in a HUGE rush to catch my train.
What was this, again? I swear that someday I’m gonna look back at this point and kick myself for not playing all of these machines that I never find again. I was really, really pressed for time and still missed my train.
EDIT: I wrote the previous note before reading this paragraph. I know myself so well. Also, it’s Thrill Drive 3.
Here’s the prize room I forgot to take a picture of, so I came back before leaving the next day to take one. I swear I’ll go to another Round 1 someday and be more thorough. I just popped into this one because I wanted to see what they were like.
…and it turns out they had a front entrance all along. Meh.
After this awful day, I needed a Slurpee. It’s tradition that I always get a Slurpee and Dunkin Donuts whenever I travel, because we have neither in the Twin Cities.
So after waiting a night here in Philadelphia, I had to call Uber to take me to a train station that wasn’t closed. You see, THIS one closed on Sunday, but the one right before didn’t. I ended up getting to New York a day later than expected. The Uber guy did have a Mercedes Benz, so that was cool.
And so, I finally made it to the Big Apple after some delays. I rolled into town very late. My AirBnB family, this time, was a poor Chinese family living in an apartment in Queens. Rent was only like 10 dollars a night, but as I found out when I got there, there was no air conditioning nor a fan. This was RIGHT in the middle of an extreme heat wave. I once lived an entire summer on a porch and another in the back of an ice cream truck. This wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to. I was half-dead the entire time I was in New York, though. Ugh.
Thank you to anyone who made it to the end of this post. This stop in Philadelphia isn’t one I had fond memories of, but I did enjoy what little of the Round 1 I got to experience. Hopefully, none of my other posts are quite as bad as this one.
