Tokyo pt 10 - Street Fighter IV + Yet more Ramen...

After the Hamasaki Concert we grabbed a late dinner in Shinjuku (without incident!)

浜崎ちゃんのコンサート後、新宿で食事した：

Yakitori... oishikatta!  ご馳走様でした

The next day we took it easy, we went to Ikebukuro( 池袋) and stopped off at a video arcade, guess what game had just come out?　次の日池袋に行った、ゲームセンターに止まった、新ゲームが有った：

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGCWatkNOO0 Yes,  Street Fighter IV!

Apparently it hasn't come out in the US, I think this was the first week in Japan too... they had it playing on a big screen TV facing the street, we stopped for a while to watch:

Chun Li kicks Ken's ass w/ some kind of splits throw... チュン・リーちゃんとケン君。。。

It turns out the screen on the street was showing a head-to-head games going on inside the arcade.  We went to go watch:

Yes, thats a super game otaku woman playing... I secretly snapped this w/o anyone noticing.

スーパーゲームオタクオバアサンが居た、彼女とても上手だった。

They moved a Gundam game out of the way for this special SFIV station (they had a rope line behind these guys w/ like 10 people waiting).

A key thing with this Street Fighter IV arcade console is that you can play 'network battles' against other players on other consoles.. so no more of that ghetto sharing-the-same-console two player stuff like we used to do back it the day. :-P

Drum Master V5 and Guitar Master V5.  Guitar Hero may be big in the US now, but these kinds of games have been around in Japan for like 3-4 years at least.

I didn't get a good picture of this, but i saw it at two game arcades:

They had a bunch of these pod things in a row, it turns out they were full screen pods for playing a multiplayer Gundam game (similar to the 'Battletech' things they had in the US before).  On the right you can see inside one of them. Its a clamshell like thing that completely closes when you get it in. its got an enveloping curved screen and some fancy duel joystick + footpedal controls.  8+ guys get in these things and battle it out.  While you're waiting for your turn you can watch the progress of the battle on a map on a TV screen.  

Funny thing to note, if you zoom on the picture on the left, you can see a warning sticker that warns against 'drunken playing' (depicted by a guy pouring beer down his pac-man-like gullet.)  Next time I'll try it. ;-)

After the arcade we went for....... more ramen.

Its the Ikebukuro location of my favorite private-booth ramen restaurant - Ichiran! (一蘭)

This one came w/ pictographic instructions chained down to each booth.

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

For those keeping score - yes, our 3rd trip to Ichiran in 3 days...