Okay, this is the arcade everyone insists to me is the biggest and most retroiest in the area. This is my best bet to satisfy my desire to play some original Gradius series cabinets. If I find nothing interesting in here, this will be the last post in this thread.
*Walks in the door, first thing I see* WHAT!!!
Oh god. Oh god this was a mistake. I'm going to lose so much money here

Is that good

(It's not very good, I can do better at home gradewise if nothing else. In my defense I was adjusting to a new control surface?)

All of my respect to Sex
They have the money exchanger game! (It's really good, it's Magical Drop but better.)
Is this… did they… is this a fucking Tokemeki Memorial tie-up block drop puzzle game??!

They had everything I was looking for here! Gradius II, Salamander/Lifeforce, Gradius III. The cabinets were all modded for auto fire, with little knobs to adjust autofire rates. My RSI appreciates it.

NES Gradius II was Japan exclusive for mapper reasons; it is lightyears beyond the US Gradius. But it turns out when this impossible-feeling NES title is a pale shadow of the arcade version. I have no words for the scale of this thing.

They had some VERY good t shirts here, but this lead to only frustration for me as

- City Connection shirt but no City Connection cab

- As with every graphic tee I've seen in Japan, and in general almost every graphic tee in nerd space, only the unisex cut!! No baby tees, no tanks. How do you make a City Connection shirt that girls cannot wear!! How *dare* you!!

The Nintendo Store has the same problem.

Oh, and speaking of the Nintendo store—

I am about to make an *extremely* poor financial decision.

@mcc oh! we've read about one-handed controllers! supposedly they became popular for use with RPGs, where people would use the other hand to write notes. that looks fun!
@mcc but this one's just a toy...?
@ireneista they're not real! They're fidget devices.
@ireneista @mcc there is a one handed switch controller shaped like a pokeball for pokemon let's go. I think it could also be used to store a pokemon and keep it with you?