The story so far: After a week of running up the East Coast taking pictures of mostly underwhelming arcades, I got stuck in Philadelphia for a night before finally catching a train to New York City. However, there was no air conditioning, and the city was in the middle of a 100 degree heat wave that didn’t let up, even at night.
Still exhausted, sunburnt, and sleep deprived, I head out to see what I can find in New York.
There was a huge mall a few blocks from where I was staying. This would be my go-place to buy everything for the next five days. I mainly lived off lemonade during this heat wave.
Stopping in for breakfast at a random Burger King, I notice that the cashiers are already being replaced with machines here. This is some 1984-type nonsense or something.
Sensing my discontent, one of the machines randomly printed this out as I walked by. I think it’s a threat.
Walking a bit further, I find 1984 spray painted on an underpass, further confirming my suspicions about New York. It’s not a pleasant place to be.
Thankfully, a New York subway system entrance was just a few blocks away, making it easy to get to and from the city. Let’s see what the legendary New York subway system looks like. I bet it’s filthy.
Well, it’s kind of filthy, I guess. I ran into a few that were grungy throughout my stay. It felt more like a musty basement than how they’re usually portrayed on TV. I’m disappointed.
Here we are, in New York City. It’s the first time I’ve ever been here, so I didn’t know what I was expecting. The buildings are so tall and packed together that it always feels like you’re inside, even when you’re not. It’s pretty different than the Twin Cities, where even the densest city areas are pretty spacey.
I was on my last legs at this point because of the heat wave, so I wasn’t sure where I was going today. I made a quick stop by the Nintendo World Store, which I’ll talk about later, then mostly roamed through the city wondering what I could do with the hour I had before collapsing.
Without even looking for it, I stumbled upon Times Square Dave and Busters. I’m not a big fan of these places since they almost all have identical games, but I’ll take what I can get. I swear I’ll start visiting some actual arcades tomorrow.
Times Square D&B is up on the second floor of this building. I’d love to say that being in such a significant location meant it was vast and full of weird games, but I’m afraid that wasn’t the case. It was similar to every other Dave and Busters I’ve ever been to. Meh.
Isn’t it amazing that a game with “Sega 1994” on the title screen can still be a mainstay in Dave and Busters? After all, it was one of the first games ever to use texture mapping and a real lighting engine, so it looks fantastic for its time.
Oh, here’s a game I’m glad I got a photo of since it’s probably not going to be around for very long, assuming it’s not already gone. This is a sorta-kinda arcade port of the mobile Spider-man Unlimited game, released to promote Spider-man Homecoming. The game is nothing special, just a one-button quicktime game. I think they intend to convert this machine to other, more relevant promotions in the future.
Okay.
This is a baseball ticket game I’d never seen before. At first, it reminded me of that other baseball game I wouldn’t shut up about a few posts ago, but this game has a fraction of the buttons and is probably rigged.
What do you get when you cross Mad Wave Motion Theater with an arcade rail shooter? Sega’s Dream Raiders! Much like the motion theater “games,” the main draw of this one is that it’s more of a seated ride than a game. Except you have to shoot things during it. Maybe it’s more accurate to describe it as something like Jurassic Park Arcade with seat movement.
Remember when I mentioned Let’s Go Island had a bunch of different versions released? Released just a year ago was Let’s Go Island: Dream Edition, a port of the 7-year-old game to this particular hardware. Unfortunately, it’s too recent for me to have seen it in person, so I’ll mention it here. Tomorrow we’ll run into the game’s last and most bizarre release.
Last but not least is the thing I came in here for. After how poorly distributed the post-Supernova DDR games were, Konami pulled the plug on any more after X2. People assumed DDR was dead and buried in America until Dave and Busters suddenly announced that they were running a location test for the latest version in 2015. Around the same time, Round 1 announced they were getting it, too. It seemed like DDR was finally making a comeback in America.
Then we got the news that the machines were only produced in batches of 50. R1 and D&B placed their order together, R1 getting 15 of the machines while D&B got the other 35. The huge number of machines that need to be ordered at once makes it too impractical for any more to be ordered, so only the chosen 35 locations will likely ever have this game. (supposedly, R1 found a chain in South-East Asia that also only wanted 35-ish machines, so they were able to snag a few extras)
When I walked up to the machine, I noticed that someone had put seven credits on it by mistake, then walked away in the middle of the first song. Once I ensured they weren’t coming back, I took advantage of the free games. My body was sore and tired, so I had to take it easy and stick to easy songs.
Then the cutest Japanese girl sat down on the bench behind me and started watching. My poor self-control got the better of me, and I chose Starmine, the song that you may remember me failing horribly on yesterday. It’s almost universally agreed to be the easy level 15 song in the game, to the point that most people don’t even consider it a real 15. I’m so out of practice that it was the only level 15 song I had any hope of clearing.
My body was on the brink of collapse, but my endurance doesn’t waver when I’m showing off. I cleared Starmine for the first time that day. Barely.
That turned out to be a terrible idea. I could hardly stand afterward and needed to get home quickly before I passed out. I hopped on the first subway I could find and got out of there. On the ride back, I got enough energy back to stop at Target to grab some lemonade, so I didn’t dehydrate and quickly down a pizza from the attached Pizza Hut. In New York, they have these weird-ass personal pan pizzas instead of the normal ones.
When I posted a picture on Twitter, some asshat from New York was all, “why the hell are you getting pizza from Pizza Hut when you’re in New York??”. Because screw that, I didn’t have the energy to run around in 100-degree weather looking for a real pizza place.
Trust me; I’ll have a LOT to say about New York’s pizzas when the time comes.
