Despite the recent troubles at SEGA and the never-ending predictions of doom via the Western games press for Japan’s arcades, at this year’s Japan Amusement Expo (or just JAEPO) things seemed rather upbeat and even buoyant.

It’s worth clarifying that Japan has still retained its arcades and there is also still a gaming community thriving around them. So if you live in Japan, their continued success isn’t at all strange. It’s merely part of the pop-cultural fabric of the nation.

This year we had all manner of new announcements and a few notable absences. The latter squarely fell in the SEGA camp, as this year is the 20th Anniversary of their much-loved Virtual On series. Rumors had been circulating that a new game would be announced but sadly it didn’t surface.

Capcom surprised show attendees with their announcement of an Attack on Titan game but didn’t show anything more than a simple teaser unfortunately.

My personal highlight was catching up with Tekkenproducer Katsuhiro Harada, who was dressed in full Pikachu attire in order to to help promote the newPokkén Tournament.

I also managed to play quite a few games, so here are some more specific hands-on impressions.

Time Crisis 5

Decent light-gun games have been somewhat of a rarity in recent years, so it’s nice to have a new Time Crisis on the way. These games used cover as a specific mechanic that allowed you to reload, rather than firing outside the screen as in Virtua Cop. This classic mechanic has now been given a twist, where the cover/reload pedal has been split into a left and right option. This then allows you to flank enemies by changing pedals. It’s a nice system and works well with the game’s new shielded enemies. They also react nicely when they see you’ve flanked them.

Tekken 7

Of all the recent beat-em-ups, Tekken 7 has been framed in all manner of nonsensical “controversy”. Thankfully, none of it has had any form of impact on the game. As you’d expect of Tekken, this latest iteration retains the series’ impact and its love of juggling enemies. I picked the newly created Shaheen (shown above) and did surprisingly well. The amusing aspect to this being that I thought I was playing against the CPU, rather than other attendees. So after the tenth victory or so, I was asked to let someone else play. The game is set to be released sometime soon in Japanese arcades.

Star Wars Battlepod

Of all the games at the show I wanted to play, it was this and it absolutely delivered. I am very much a staunch old school Star Wars fan, so to have the classic films recreated so brilliantly was a joy to behold. I picked the first Yavin mission, or the Death Star run from A New Hope. While you are on rails, you can pivot and aim within that. You also have two main controls; speed and movement. The latter stick also has a main laser and a special attack. The latter allows you to target multiple enemies at once. The laser also runs out of energy, so has to be managed carefully. On my run, I didn’t take a hit and managed to happily blow up the Death Star too. I would have liked to have played more levels but the queue was rather epic. Again, this is set to be released across Japanese arcades quite soon.

Pokkén Tournament

This turned out to be more interesting than I was expecting. Not just a plain beat-em-up, each match is broken into ranges. Starting out with ranged attacks, it then brings you in close for a more hand-to-hand affair. You can also pick support Pokémon to help during the match. The fact you use a pad is really weird but it worked well for the game. Overall the blend of Tekken and Pokemon worked out better than I thought it would. The styling, and the pad, still felt strange but it will be interesting to see how this does once it is released.

 

Overall it was a good show and it’s nice to see that Japanese games publishers are still supporting the arcade gaming market. As an aside, a lot of this year’s big arcade games were also using the Unreal Engine. I’m hoping we’ll still hear some something about a new Virtual On but there are a lot of big releases on the way regardless. It looks like 2015 will be a pretty cool year for arcade gaming in Japan.