Otakon 2024: it doesn't matter how many cabs are in the game room if half of them are broken

At the start of the convention proper… I slept a little more. I always think I'm gonna be up at 9 to check out fan panels and stuff, and I have been in the past. But y'know lately I have a couple drinks and watch videos about Boat Race, and that stuff will put you out.

I caught an early morning fan panel about the historical progression from early shoujo (girls’) to the early forays into josei (women’s) manga as the authors aged, the audience grew up, and Japanese society slowly changed. This was fun and educational with a wide view on the material. But there was also a lot of “unfortunately authors also made genre X, which is gross” as the material aged up into josei manga, which I hate from presenters. Either bring it up or leave it out; don’t bring up porn (or other Problematic material) and then be judgy or cowardly about the fact that women enjoy it.

I hear y'all talking about getting locked in cages and stuff.

The Gamesoft Robo Fun Club is a solo labor of love that depends entirely on paid subscriptions from readers to exist. If you enjoyed this piece and you'd like to see more, I'd love to see you become a regular or paid subscriber. Paid subscribers get exclusive posts. Thanks for reading the pitch and hope to see you subscribe!

Game room: too many machines, not enough maintenance

Anyway, around that time the game room opens up, so I’ll make my complaints about that here. Overall, the game room at Ota has a pretty high standard of quality, but it has been getting steadily worse every year. I said the exact same thing last year, but with an increase in quantity— arcade cabinets and console setups in the hundreds via many different providers— has come a decrease in quality.

The main attraction is the music games— there’s something about anime otaku and music games— which I didn’t really look at because I can play most of them at my Round 1. Still, they’re definitely doing their job, and remained packed all weekend with long waits to play at all times.

But overall, there’s too much stuff on the floor and not enough people on the floor to maintain it. Some of the providers are just bringing low-quality stuff, like bootleg Viewlix cabs with Steam Decks in them that constantly error out of their games, or the PC cabinet setup playing Street Fighter 6 on the lowest possible settings (just put on another game!). Some of the stuff is in disrepair, like the double row of pinball games with flippers too weak to shoot properly. Some of it’s just neglected: a poor Virtua Fighter 3tb wasn’t flipped to “free play” until the last day of the con!

What’s starting to happen at Otakon is that half the time I see a game I’d like to try, I sit down and realize I can’t play it. It’s getting annoying, honestly! The game room is usually where I take a break to get a fighting game in and generally run into a FG player I already know: I spent a lot less time there this year, and I only played two or three fighting game sets.

Here’s a review of rare 2000 Sega arcade game Flash Beats

For me the most notable game was actually Flash Beats, a very rare and odd 2000 Sega arcade game that fuses the casual competition of an air hockey table with the pounding beats of a rhythm game. Most notably, this game doesn’t have a video screen: just small LED displays on either side and long tubes that represent the play field. “Notes” shoot back and forth across the table with the beat, and you have to slap them back at your opponent before they “hit” you and score a point for the opponent.

A couple of things are wrong with Flash Beats on first glance. For one thing, the cabinet needs to be louder. I don’t know if it was just the environment, but it was very difficult to make out the music (loud, bassy techno featuring artists like Junkie XL), and if you can’t make out the music you can’t feel the beat, and you need that to really get into it. The other issue is that it wasn’t quite clear when to slap the beats back. It felt like hitting a note seconds early was as good as, or better than, actually being on beat. What exactly “wins” the game was not clear. This is a very rare game and I’ve always heard it didn’t get a lot of distribution, and it’s probably the first time I’ve ever seen it in person. As such, I’m quite grateful to whichever group brought it with them.

Here’s a review of the arcade-only remake of Touhou 7: Perfect Cherry Blossom

I saved 7 grand on an arcade setup by sitting down, playing three levels, and saying to you “it’s fine”. Perfect Cherry Blossom is a GOD GAME, as they say, and this is an HD reskin with arranged music by Keishi Yonao, all of which is good. But you’ll never play it unless you pay 7 grand for an arcade setup. A conundrum for oil barons and Touhou fans whose day job is to maintain some kind of obscure code they wrote that quietly and singlehandedly keeps American society from collapse. (If you're that fan, love your work, and consider subscribing to this blog!)

Shout outs to my dudes running mahjong

It's not my local group, but it's close enough that I know everyone there. Bunch of good guys. I kept promising them I was gonna play a hanchan, but really I knew I wasn't going to keep my friends waiting an hour and a half for me playing a game I play at home for like, 16 matches a week. Mahjong just takes a lot of time, and I've got the world in front of me over here.