Japanese Arcade Mania

Two of the biggest names in the English language Japan blogosphere, Brian Ashcraft of Kotaku and Jean Snow of JeanSnow.net, have teamed up to create a book about Japanese Arcades and gaming culture:

As you can see from the image, the book is called Arcade Mania: The Turbo-charged World of Japan’s Game Centers. It covers a wide variety of Japanese game types, such as:

• Crane Games (claw machines!)
• Sticker-Picture Machines (purikura)
• Rhythm Games (DDR & drum games)
• Shooting Games (“schumps”)
• Fighting Games (street fighter and its buddies)
• Games of Chance (mahjong & pachinko)
• Dedicated Cabinets (racing games & gun games)
• Retro Games (Donkey Kong, anyone?)
• Card-based Games (popular with the little kids these days)

Each sub section has an history of its particular type of gaming, and there are mini-interviews with game makers and notable Japan-based expert gamers. These expert gamers explain why they’re obsessed with that particular type of game, and in some cases offer advice to would-be gamers (I’ll be trying out some of the claw machine game techniques mentioned in one interview).

What makes Arcade Mania truly cool is the beautiful style in which its pages are arranged. Almost every page is in full color, with lots of appealing photographs and screen captures of games that give this book a hip arcade feel:

Arcade Mania will be hitting Japanese book stores sometime in September, and it’s currently available on Amazon Japan. It does not come out in the United States until January 2009, so American readers not willing to pay shipping from Japan will have to pre-order it on Amazon. Anyone interested in Japanese gaming culture will enjoy this book!