{"id":16650,"date":"2017-07-14T00:01:14","date_gmt":"2017-07-14T00:01:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=16650"},"modified":"2017-07-03T23:38:45","modified_gmt":"2017-07-03T23:38:45","slug":"taito-wins-this-round-at-round-1-arcade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2017\/07\/14\/taito-wins-this-round-at-round-1-arcade\/","title":{"rendered":"Taito Wins This Round at Round 1 Arcade!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>At the beginning of the year, my brothers were telling me about a really cool arcade near where they live.\u00a0 And just a couple of months ago, I finally got a chance to go to it and take pictures.\u00a0 And now I finally got a chance to post them here!\u00a0 Anyway, it\u2019s called Round 1, and it has a bowling alley, karaoke, darts, pool tables, and a big kiddie play area.\u00a0 But who cares about any of those things?\u00a0 (joking)\u00a0 It also has a really big arcade with lots of ways to separate itself from other typical arcades.<\/p>\n

The arcade has a lot of the same stuff that Dave & Busters has.\u00a0 I wrote about games I saw at Dave & Busters last year, so I recommend that you check that article out as well because I didn\u2019t take pictures of those things again here<\/strong><\/a>.\u00a0 But it had a lot of neat games like Luigi\u2019s Mansion Arcade, a new Crusin\u2019 game called Crusin\u2019 Blast, a whole bunch of fighting games all in one area (including the new Tekken 7), and much more!<\/p>\n

One trend I\u2019ve noticed in arcades lately are cell phone games reworked to be arcade games.\u00a0 But I don\u2019t mind most of these because they change them enough so that you play them in a new way, or in a way that can\u2019t be recreated on a phone.\u00a0 For instance, the Angry Birds arcade game has you firing the slingshot from a first person perspective.\u00a0 The four player Bejeweled game had the screens on a giant lit up jewel.\u00a0 The Jetpack Joyride game has you sit in a chair with the buttons on the side and it vibrates a lot like you really have a jetpack on your back.\u00a0 And in the Plants vs. Zombie arcade game, you aim a giant pea pod shooter as you shoot down ever approaching zombies in a first person perspective.<\/p>\n

Another staple in many arcades are air hockey tables.\u00a0 At this arcade, they had a Pac-Man themed air hockey table called Pac-Man Smash, so you know I had to play it.\u00a0 It\u2019s cool because at certain points, the table would shoot out dozens of mini-pucks!\u00a0 It was crazy!<\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s a closer shot of the actual table part of Pac-Man Smash.<\/p>\n

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Speaking of Pac-Man, another Pac game I wanted to play was Pac-Man Chomp Mania (also known as Ticket Mania).\u00a0 You play a round of Pac-Man on a big screen to earn tickets.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the joystick wasn\u2019t working properly and it was hard to go down.\u00a0 Right next to it was a similar game called Galaga Assault, but I already played it at Dave & Busters so I didn\u2019t take a picture of it here.<\/p>\n

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But what really set Round 1 arcade apart was its large selection of Japanese arcade games, most of which I\u2019ve never even played or seen before!\u00a0 One that I had played before was Taiko no Tatsujin, or known as Taiko Drum Master in the US.\u00a0 It\u2019s a music game where you beat a Taiko drum to the rhythm of the songs.\u00a0 It got one US release on the PS2, but most may remember its sister game in the US, Donkey Konga (which is pretty much the same game, and both were made by Namco).<\/p>\n

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I\u2019m a big fan of the Theatrhythm Final Fantasy music games on the 3DS, so I was surprised to see an arcade version of it called Theatrhythm Final Fantasy All-Star Carnival.\u00a0 It plays a lot like the 3DS game but you control it with these weird joystick button things.\u00a0 Which is strange because the game had a touch screen, too.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t tell you much more about the game because it was all in Japanese, so there was a bit of a language barrier.\u00a0 One cool thing about these Japanese arcade music games is they have a spot where you can put in headphones!\u00a0 So bring some if you go to this arcade!<\/p>\n

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Another thing a lot of Japanese arcade games have are crane games called UFO Catchers.\u00a0 They had a lot of those at Round 1 as well.\u00a0 The one with all the Kirby plush was TAUNTING me!<\/p>\n

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Another crane game that struck me as funny is this one pictured below.\u00a0 I kept wanting to sing the Sesame Street song, \u201cOne of these things is not like the other, Three of these things are kinda the same\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

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In the 80\u2019s, one classic arcade game was called Elevator Action.\u00a0 You were a spy and would go through buildings with elevators while shooting bad guys.\u00a0 So I was surprised to see a new Elevator Action game called Elevator Action: Death Parade.\u00a0 It was released in Japan in the late 2000\u2019s, so it\u2019s not quite so graphically impressive.\u00a0 It looks like a typical Time Crisis gun game, but with one key difference.\u00a0 Elevators play a key role in this game because in the front of the screen is an actual elevator door that opens and closes at points during the game!\u00a0 You even get to push buttons to close the door to provide cover, and the up and down buttons select your difficulty.\u00a0 It was really fun and I was surprised the first time I saw the actual elevator doors close!<\/p>\n

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Another Japanese music game I enjoyed was Groove Coaster.\u00a0 It was actually originally a mobile game, and I have the first one on my iPad.\u00a0 It\u2019s pretty fun, and even better in the arcade.\u00a0 The best part is the HUGE amount of songs you could play.\u00a0 Plenty of video game songs, too.\u00a0 I tried some from Arkanoid DS, Bubble Bobble, and even Lufia 2!\u00a0 The bad thing was that the second time I went to Round 1, the Groove Coaster machine was out of order!\u00a0 NOOO!\u00a0 I hope they fix it.\u00a0 Another Japanese music game I saw there was one based on Hatsune Miku, but I didn\u2019t play it.\u00a0 And speaking of Out of Order games, both times I went to the arcade, the Disney Tsum Tsum game was not working!<\/p>\n

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I don\u2019t know the name of the next Japanese arcade game, but it\u2019s a weird one.\u00a0 You have a table and you must flip it over and try to knock as much stuff down on the screen as possible for points.\u00a0 The 3-D graphics were rather primitive, so I think it must be an older game.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

But my favorite game at Round 1 was Space Invaders Frenzy.\u00a0 Two players aim guns at a HUGE screen to shoot down Space Invaders before they reach the bottom of the screen.\u00a0 The invaders come in different sizes and speeds, you can shoot UFOs for bonus points, and there are even power-ups.\u00a0 And the screen really isn\u2019t a screen at all, but a bunch of LED lights, like a football scoreboard.\u00a0 It made the game very bright and colorful and gave it a more retro feel.\u00a0 Best of all, as you can see in this picture, if you could get a high score you could win 500 tickets! \u00a0By playing it a few times, I was able to get enough tickets to get all the Pac-Man Pop Vinyl figures at the ticket redemption store (which had some pretty good prizes actually).\u00a0 I may show off the Pac-Man Pop Vinyl figures in a future blog.\u00a0 The second time I went, my brother was calculating how much money we\u2019d have to spend to get the Xbox One at the ticket store.\u00a0 If we had all perfect runs in Space Invaders Frenzy, he said we\u2019d only have to spend about 100 bucks!\u00a0 One last interesting thing about Space Invaders Frenzy is that I saw the credits and Eugene Jarvis worked on it!\u00a0 He also worked on other arcade titles like Defender, Robotron 2084, and Smash TV!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The last four arcade titles I talked about were my favorites at this arcade, and one cool thing about that is they were all made by Taito (makers of Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, Arkanoid, etc.).\u00a0 Well, Space Invaders Frenzy was licensed from Taito.\u00a0 But Taito has been around for a long time making arcade games, and they have as much history behind them as Namco and Nintendo!\u00a0 So it seems like they\u2019ve still got it when it comes to making arcade games!<\/p>\n

Many people say arcades are dying, and they may be right.\u00a0 But as long as arcades find ways to provide different kinds of experiences than what home consoles would provide, like this one, arcades will never truly die.\u00a0 After looking at Round 1\u2019s website, it looks like they\u2019re a chain, and may have the same arcade machines in each location.\u00a0 So if you want to play any of these games, I recommend checking out their web site and seeing if they have an arcade in your area!\u00a0 That\u2019s all for now.\u00a0 Later!\u00a0 –Cary<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the beginning of the year, my brothers were telling me about a really cool arcade near where they live.\u00a0 And just a couple of months ago, I finally got a chance to go to it and take pictures.\u00a0 And now I finally got a chance to post them here!\u00a0 Anyway, it\u2019s called Round 1, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16646,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-miscellaneous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16650"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16650\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16652,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16650\/revisions\/16652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16646"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}