Exploring Mikado - Retro arcade in Ikebukuro

Last week I took a trip up to Ikebukuro, Tokyo, to meet a friend for lunch. We ate delicious (and quite spicy) Hunan Chinese food at a place he knew, and chatted about life since we had graduated from Japanese Language School a month and a half before. He is getting adjusted to life as a student at a technical school (専門学校) for video game programming, and was telling me about all the impressive guest speakers and teachers he's had the chance to meet there so far.

Ikebukuro is a neighborhood famous for shopping and entertainment, including lots of Pachinko and night life establishments, but also a sizeable collection of arcades and "Game Centers." We found ourselves at a place called Mikado, a smaller chain version of the more famous one in Shinjuku, full of retro and antique arcade games.

The three-story building is dim and cozy inside, with each floor packed with huge machines, some in various states of disrepair, but most in as good working order as when they were first manufactured decades ago. There were racing games, shooting games, platformers and puzzle games, and a few more modern introductions like a Train Simulator and some crane games.

One that caught my eye was this Brickbreaker style game from Taito, which I even managed to set a high score on (though this may be simply because it wasn't as popular as the others).

My friend and I also teamed up at Typing of the Dead, where you play as agents armed with computed keyboards. You sit at a desk in front of the console, each in front of a faded plasticine keyboard, and try to type out the words that appear on screen with each enemy that pops up. We struggled mightly, but had a blast travelling back in time to play these games.