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Category: Jobs, Work, Careers

I work at a lot of arcades in London, UK, mainly with Japanese games *Photo thread*

As a kid switching schools a lot, moving abroad and then a boarding school which I found very tough, my second home were arcades.
 
I made good friends and had some great times in arcades!
Playing Streetfighter during the fighting game boom of the 90's, then DDR during the music game boom of the 2000's.

Went on to work at Namco, Bowlplex, Funstation, and managed Las Vegas Soho (in Piccadilly Circus, London). I did some arcade trade show work in Spain and right now I'm at "FreeplayCity" which a warehouse arcade in Manor House, north London.

We have some games that aren't anywhere else in Europe, like Ongeki (left) and Wacca (right). Chunithm (center) has got to be my favourite music game at the moment.




Also cool music titles like "Taiko No Tatsujin" it's a Japanese drum game.




Of course we have fighting game cabinets too.
** The arcade is closed due to Covid and restructuring hence the mess!!**




I used to love going to tournaments, European Virtua Fighter 5 comp.




My best arcade experience was for the Korean game "Pump It Up" (it's like DDR).
The top players met in Seoul, South Korea (I was supporting, not entering lmao)




I miss pre covid and hanging out with my arcade people.




Arcade friends keep me young, I'm 41 this year, Feb 2020 this is me :D


3 Kudos

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BrandonBurnsRed

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Your job seems like a good bit of fun. There is a Japanese arcade here in the United States in Ohio that has a really good selection of games. It's really cool to see this stuff in different parts of the world \m/


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Nice! It's not the "Round1" chain is it?

I'm glad there's a revival of sorts of traditional (non redemption) arcades.
Seems like people who grew up with games started running their own places.

by Toby; ; Report

So funny story, a Round 1 actually just opened about 45 minutes from me but they had some issues with their gaming license so they moved almost all of their UFO catchers to the Philadelphia location. The place in Ohio is called Gotcha Gachapon. Although, now that I look at their facebook it may not have survived covid.

As far as non-redemption stuff goes, I am also a huge fan. My personal favorite is the Fate Stay Night fighting game :)

by BrandonBurnsRed; ; Report

Nice info, cheers!

Lmao I used to love that game on the PS2 and saw it in arcades in Japan so I recently watched the anime and it was probably one of the worst I have ever seen

by Toby; ; Report

oh man that's funny. Yeah, I haven't watched unlimited blade works in a bit but I enjoyed the later series like Apocrypha and GO a whole lot. I'm now wondering if UBW will be good the second time around.

by BrandonBurnsRed; ; Report

Oh man I just realised, my friend Abi, she got the music games online and they are her cabs. Small world!!

by Toby; ; Report