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Space Invaders: Space Invaders, arcade game created by Japanese engineer and game designer Nishikado Tomohiro in 1978 and produced by Japanese electronic game manufacturer Taito Corp. The objective of Space Invaders, which was one of the earliest video games released, is to pan across a screen and shoot descending

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Space Invaders essentially created arcades. It wasn't the first "arcade" game, as it is predated by Pong most notably which was released in 1972, but it was the first game to practically take over Japan.

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Pac-Man: In 1980 the Japanese arcade game manufacturer Namco Limited introduced the world to Pac-Man. The lead designer was Iwatani Tohru, who intended to create a game that did not emphasize violence. By paying careful attention to themes, design, and colours, Iwatani hoped that Namco could market an

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Paragraph IDK: why companies continue to push arcades forward

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Paragraph IDK: why companies continue to push arcades forward

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- capcom states that they want to "Utilize arcades
as a place where
seniors can meet" to help aid senior isolation

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Arcades aren't what they used to be, especially in the West. They're looked upon as places for retro nostalgia, not where you'll find some of the most interesting games available. But that's where Japan has an advantage as some of the arcades are being used to test cutting-edge virtual reality games.

Arcades, or "game centers" as the Japanese call them, are alive and kicking in Japan as I noticed in my whirlwind visits to Tokyo, Osaka, and Fukuoka last week. Many companies have exited the business as the market for arcades has sagged in the U.S. But in Japan, arcades still occupy a huge amount of real estate. Square Enix's Taito has more than 138 arcades throughout Japan, and it's just one of the companies in the business. Square Enix said that arcade sales were $360 million in the year ended March 2016, up 9.7 percent from a year earlier. One of the reasons? Foreign tourists like me.

Instead of being artifacts of the past, these arcades have turned into experimental labs where game companies can test their newest creations in ways that their American counterparts can't. They're located in prime real estate in places such as Akihabara, Tokyo's electronics store district, where it would be ludicrous to operate businesses that consume a huge amount of electricity and don't make money.

"Since entertainment options have increased significantly over the last two decades, especially driven by the Internet and mobile, many people in Japan predicted a quick death for arcades," said Serkan Toto, game analyst at Kantan Games. "The market has been shrinking both in terms of revenue and the number of centers over the years. But overall, arcades are still a surprisingly resilient business."

He said that game center operators have been creative, both in terms of locations and attractions. Many arcades are not standalone anymore but now integrated parts of larger entertainment or shopping complexes, especially in big cities like Tokyo. All told, there are 15,612 arcades, according to a report by the Japanese Amusement Machine and Manufacturers Association.

"Some locations host events or offer other ways to spend time and money, such as themed cafes or restaurants," Toto said. "Content-wise, arcades have been trying to expand away from single males towards families, females, and also elderly people. The stereotypical arcades with old video game cabinets still exist, but new ones being opened are usually clean, look modern and try to create a more positive atmosphere. The most recent wave are VR experiences that can be enjoyed by a group of people - something that an increasing number of arcades here in Japan are using to lure customers."

For sure, the arcade business is weaker than it used to be, particularly because PC and console games have become so popular in our homes. Street Fighter V debuted earlier this year, and it was the first major title in the series that did not get released in the arcades first.

But there's plenty of other bizarre games in the arcades and new games in development. Fans are more than ready to drop 100 yen (about 87 cents) into all the machines. The games generally fall into categories such as fighting, romance, racing, biking, shooting, music, dancing, slot machines, mahjong, horse-racing, prizes, and photo booths.

At an amusement park called Joypolis in Tokyo, Sega has a free-roaming multiplayer virtual reality game called Zero Latency VR. In this game, players occupy a warehouse-like physical space. They wear VR headsets and hold guns with light sensors on them. They have to fend off zombies that attack the space from all directions. Sega's PR folks say that the place is always packed full on weekends, even with sessions that cost $10 per visit.

Masaru Ijuin, the technical director at Capcom, told me at Canadian game event that his company is experimenting with different ways to do VR. In one location in Tokyo, Capcom has created a Kaiju, or giant monster, simulator. You act as a Kaiju and stomp through buildings in a 25 feet by 25 feet space. It's like you're Godzilla, raging through Tokyo with touch controllers in your hand. You can stomp with your feet (with touch controllers attached to them) or your hands, all the while viewing a cartoon-like city where you can tear apart buildings and pull helicopters from the sky. Your job is to save the little Kaiju.

Ijuin said that the experimentation, such as one horror VR demo called Kitchen, has proven useful. In that game, you are tied to a spot in a kitchen, and you have to listen to 3D audio cues to figure out the direction that creatures are coming at you. It's not a full game by itself, but will prove to be a useful part of an upcoming VR experience.

These kinds of games are going to be in high demand in places such as South Korea's PC Bang cafes and China's internet cafes. Many of those cafes are being retrofitted for location-based VR entertainment. HTC plans to open 10,000 such VR arcades in China alone.

I was struck by the variety of games in the huge arcades that I visited. At a giant Namco arcade in Fukuoka's main train station, I played Taiko Drum Master (Taiko no Tatsujin in Japanese) with Akiko Onozuka, a Canadian diplomat who was my guide in Japan. We had to pound on the drums with wooden sticks and hit the sides. It was like Guitar Hero, except you had to pound the drum at exactly the right time. The title was more than a decade old, but I've never seen anything like it in the arcades I've frequented.

I did OK, winning the first round. But Onozuka came back and beat me in the second. Our arms were tired after banging the drums. We didn't score particularly high, but some of the people who play these games are truly masterful.

The game centers are usually multiple stories high. In the Taito Station game center that I visited in Tokyo, the main floor was a bunch of family friendly games where you use a crane to fish for plush toys. On the floor below were shooter and hardcore games. There were all sorts of games on the upper floors, and at the very top were high-end photo booths such as Katy 2 and the oddly named Cyunt.

Onozuka and her Canadian government colleagues got me to do the Cyunt photo booth. I thought it was one of those weird girlfriend simulators.

At first, we had to look at a mirror to see if we looked presentable. Then all four of us went into a photo booth and snapped pictures with funny poses. Then the computer took our image and gave everyone funny faces, making us all 20 or 30 years younger. We all now had colorful lipstick and rosy cheeks. The computer also made our eyes bigger, like with anime characters. Then we could add a bunch of writings and stickers to the images before we printed them out.

Some of the contrasts with Western arcades are comical. The classic Jurassic Park arcade game is a bloody affair in the U.S. But in Japan, you shoot the dinosaurs with tranquilizer guns and cart them off to a safe place. The phrase "Rescue the dinosaurs" is on the back of the cabinet.

It seemed a little sad to see some of the adult players in the arcades during the day, perhaps playing hooky from work and spending a bunch of money in the arcades. But it was also amazing to see how masterful some of them were.

Here's a video of a couple of players moving their hands around quickly in a session during the middle of a work day.

And here's a video of a super-fast arcade player. I hope to be as good one day.

And below is our photo gallery of Japanese arcade games.
Disclosure: The Canadian government paid my way to Japan. Our coverage remains objective. Image Credit: Dean Takahashi

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Why Japan's arcades are its game industry's cutting-edge labs

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Arcades aren't what they used to be, especially in the West. They're looked upon as places for retro nostalgia, not where you'll find some of the most interesting games available. But that's where Japan has an advantage as some of the arcades are being used to test cutting-edge virtual reality games.

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Every business has a starting point. For Japanese arcades, one of them was on department store rooftops. Yes, Japanese arcades have their roots in the

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Paragraph 4: Arcade attendees and use in sociey

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Paragraph 4: Arcade attendees and use in sociey

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Paragraph 3:  How they were kept running in Japan and why they died off over seas

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Paragraph 3:  How they were kept running in Japan and why they died off over seas

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100 Yen: The Japanese Arcade Experience (Video Game Documentary)

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Japan's arcade phenomenon has lasted through the decades due to the fact that they are large centers of activity that have something for everyone. With the variety of each arcade, let alone the thousands of arcades across the county you have to choose from, they allow for massive spans across demographics to convene over video games.

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Before Taito created Space Invaders, arcades as they are now in the modern age were no where in sight. In the early 1960's it was quite popular for large department stores in big cities such as Tokyo or Osaka to put small amusement park attractions on the top of their buildings. These were mostly small rides but they eventually developed into having arcade-esc sections that had small interactive games.

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Kotaku East East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

In many places, arcades seem to have nearly, if not completely, vanished. Yet, in Japan, they continue to hang on.

As The Financial Times reports in a recent piece on Japanese arcades, there were 44,000 of them during their mid-1980s heyday. Today, the Japan Amusement Industry Association says there are 4,856 registered arcades across the country. There also another estimated 9,000 locales, each having under fifty machines.

Even though there are fewer arcades now than in decades past, new games and cabinets continue continue to hit game centers, such as Dissidia Final Fantasy, , and KanColle, a title so popular that it drew lines upon release.

Japanese arcades not only hang on, but keep getting new games. Here's why.

Some of the biggest corporate arcades in Japan are from Sega, Namco, Taito, and Capcom. All of those companies are also game developers, so they're able to churn out titles for their arcades, whether that's Namcoland, Taito Station, Plaza Capcom, or Club Sega. Since they've already invested in the arcade locations as a business, they need content to keep attracting customers. This integrated system is instrumental for Japanese arcades' survival.

Since many Japanese game makers got their start in arcades, that connection remains strong. It's part of their corporate culture and identity, unlike in the U.S., where many game makers either got their start on consoles or on computers, and where famous arcade game makers of the past, like Midway and Atari, no longer exist.

Infrastructure can make or break a business. In Japan, arcades are proof of that.

In Osaka and Tokyo, arcades are often located near major train stations. Thus, visiting an arcade is something you can do on the way to doing something else. You can pop in, play a few games, and go on your merry way. No wonder arcades are a way to blow off steam after work.

It's not only in big cities that you find arcades, but also in suburban shopping malls and rural areas. For standalone arcades, it's important to be close enough to bicycle there to make up for foot traffic (that is, if they want to survive). In Japan, shopping mall arcades tend to be different from their American counterparts of the 1980s: the modern Japanese versions are bright and airy and aimed more at families with small children. The American arcades of my youth were not.

Realize that depending on whether the arcade is located, the line-up of games might change. For example, if kids and parents mostly visit, then the games will most likely be dedicated cabinets like racing games, drumming games, or small indoor train rides-basically, amusements that are easy for anyone to enjoy. If most customers are young adults, you will probably see games that require more skill. If the customers are older, there might be more retro titles or medal games. Which brings us to...

These aren't only the trends regarding what types of games are popular, but also, trends among patrons. Since 2010, there have been reports of game centers being increasingly frequented by elderly customers. Some arcades offer their older customers blankets should they get cold, and Tokyo Gulliver, the Financial Times reports, has even lowered the sound for certain games and raised on other ones, specifically for these elderly gamers. The FT adds that the arcade has also rolled out softer chairs. This is just one example of Japanese arcades' continuing responsiveness.

What has remained constant is that Japanese arcades have always aimed to offer experiences that players could not get at home. This is a constant throughout Japanese arcade history.

Take crane games, for example. They're a carry-over from analog arcades, and yet another longstanding example of a unique arcade experience that is difficult, if not impossible, to replicate at home.

The desire experience partly explains the rise of card-based arcade games in which players using (and collecting) IR-chipped cards and playing them on specially designed cabinets for an interactive experience they cannot get elsewhere.

Arcades are not static. In Japan, they have changed over the years from department store rooftops of the 1960s to the game centers of today. The games have changed, too, with developers responding to the trends, decade by decade, whether that's the shooting game craze, the fighting game craze, or the music game one.

During the 1960s and 1970s, that meant carnival type games and electromagnetic arcade games. During the 1980s and 1990s, that meant better graphics and increasingly large, ride-like arcade cabinets. During the mid-00s, that meant hi-def monitors and collectible IR card games. If this year's Japan Amusement Expo is any indication, what's next is VR.

Even as business becomes tougher and tougher, the Japanese arcade makers aren't complacent, coming up with new and different ideas to not only stay relevant, but most importantly, to stay in business.

Late last month, the annual Japan Amusement Expo got underway at Chiba's Makuhari Messe, where the Tokyo Game Show is held. Taito showed off its latest deluxe train game cabinet, while Konami announced a new spin on Bomberman called Bombergirl. Even Koei Tecmo, which is better known for its console games, announced it was releasing a new VR system designed for arcades. It was exciting to see Japanese game makers continuing to back arcades.

Yet, Japanese arcades won't last forever. At one point, the last one will shut down. But today, there are thousands still remaining, and until that happens, players will keep playing and playing and playing.

For more, check out The Financial Times.
Kotaku East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am.

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Kotaku East East is your slice of Asian internet culture, bringing you the latest talking points from Japan, Korea, China and beyond. Tune in every morning from 4am to 8am. In many places, arcades seem to have nearly, if not completely, vanished. Yet, in Japan, they continue to hang on.

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Japans arcade scene truly started to take off when the game Space Invaders was introduced to the world in 1976.

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