November 28 2023
I’ve been part of an internet video game community for 20 years. I am almost the only consistent part of that sentence. That I was there. I’ve threatened to leave. I’ve left. I’ve come back.
So I began to feel wistful and read old articles on insert credit dot com. In one, a man mentions Kawagoe. A station that is far from Yokohama, Japan. It’s so far, it’s in Saitama. That’s like Tokyo’s New Jersey. Yokohama is equal distance from Tokyo and avoids this title, even if Kawasaki deserves it more than anything.
I’d never been to Kawagoe. Lady Rude informed it had lots of old buildings. When I got there, I saw that the old buildings were pretty far from the station and my time was limited.
Let’s back up.
Previously I had travelled to America without my 3DS. I had many friends wistful for street-passing. They street-passed in my presence like it wasn’t a crime. I’d have done it if I had had my 3DS.
Upon being back in Yokohama, Japan I thought, “How long would it take me to get street-pass in an area with roughly 20 million people in 2023?” I put my 3DS in my bag and walked around downtown Yokohama on a Saturday. I saw a terrifying Christmas tree advertising the films owned by Warner Brothers. I stared at it and went, “but what have you done for me lately?”
I checked my 3DS. No street-passes.
On the train home, my friend and I gaffed at a man across from us holding a DSiLL. I pulled out my 3DS. He looked at me inqusitively. I looked at him wanting approval. He went back to his game.
Days later I would check the 3DS and find out I did not have street-pass on. “Oh.” I turned it on and then proceeded to not play Link Between Worlds for a full week. Link sat there waiting to begin to save Hyrule and I just refused to move him or turn the console off.
Then it was November 28th, 2023. I put my 3DS in my bag and left Yokohama, Japan and got on the train for Shibuya, which would lead me to the train to Ikebukuro, which would lead me to the train to Kawagoe.
I tried to move Link along. The first train was too crowded. I was too amused with my phone on the second. On the third, I sat down ready.
The beginning of Link Between Worlds is not the beginning of Link To The Past. It features lots of wandering. It is not even a dark and stormy night. You’ll meet the villian twice before it’s trouble. You’ll meet the merchant three times. You meet Princess Zelda when the trouble has only just started.
It was at this point the train shifted 20 degrees and the sun blinded my Mickey Mouse-themed 3DS. “The Only Room That You Hate” by Big D and The Kids Table started playing on my phone. I decided to look at my better screened phone. I waited for a conversation to start on the internet. It didn’t.
The train continued until it was Kawagoe. I got off the train and walked up the steps. Leaving the station showed me a Kyushu omiyage stand. I thought about the time I went to Kyushu. I walked on to the walkway perched above the bus station. It felt standard. It felt Heisei if anything. To my right was a Saizeriya. Ahh, I thought.
Right after I had left the train, on the walkway, a man lit up a cigarette and the smoke zeroed in on my nostrils even behind a mask. Even this was filled with nostalgia. When I was first in Japan, everyone smoked. When I was second in Japan, even still everyone smoked. You could smoke on the train platform even. In the time I had been living in Japan, the amount of smoking had drastically changed. You used to at least once a year get cigarette burns in your hands, just from crowded streets. Now I was getting nostalgic for a habit I have a multiple personal vendettas against.
I took my feet down to the shopping street that would extend for over a kilometer. The shopping street would have three arcades which is three times what you would find in a Yokohama shopping street. None of the arcades had Astrocity or Egrets. That’s the machine you would traditionally play an arcade game. There was just a few Vewlix Cabinets which I remember seeing for the first time at the location test for Street Fighter IV in Capcom Plaza in Kichijoji. If that location still exists, it is surely like these arcades were in Kawagoe, near wall to wall UFO Catchers.
If i had been clever during the pandemic I would have done exactly what I can like a famous detective, deduced happened. All the Astrocity cabinets had dissappeared from the remaining arcades. With them all the PCBs. The deduction was someone had shown up at all the arcades across Japan with a truck. The arcades are in desperate times. They said they would pay cash for the PCBs and cabinets right then and there. They would take them away to sell to sicko collectors. With this power move by some dedicated individuals meant I will never randomly see a Cave game randomly in the wild again.
This also means I can say Strikers 1945 2 is one of the most common and least desired PCBs. That is one I’ve seen remain behind with the Mahjong and Shanghai games. They are buried in the back if they are there at all. The rest of the arcade gleaming and dirty alike UFO Catchers. The only thing left in Japanese arcade that might possibly cover your rent this month.
I couldn’t stop myself from being rude, “UFO Catchers aren’t games.” However I’ll say DDR is game. One of them had a DDR machine. I pressed my luck.
I am not good at DDR. I never became good at DDR. Maybe I should have. It seemed like a fulfilling life in the 2000s, to like DDR. On my second song, I failed and the game ate my 100 yen. “Oh yeah. This is why I never got into this game.” You either have to be playing on baby easy, to ease yourself in, or play on a reasonable difficulty with the chance you will zone out and fail and your playtime will be over.
DDR is a cruel rhythm game. I left it and entered my goal, an independent game store. Except this place only had Yugioh cards. I despaired. Would I just have to walk around this shopping street on a beautiful fall day, possibly see old buildings?
I took care of a side-quest first. If you live in Japan with loved ones and travel farther than an hour from your home and don’t bring omiyage, a gift, home for them, then your goose is fully cooked Buster. So I stopped by A Jaw Dropping (as was the name) bakery and picked up their cheesecake bread. It was a hit for the whole family.
The actual game store was two stores down. It was beautiful. I thought of many different video game stores I had been to in Tokyo. I racked the Super Famicom games, considering which one to buy, just to take it to the in-laws on New Years Day and see the save file. They had my Super Famicom, buried in their closet out of graciousness and kind hearts. I ended up selecting a boxed copy of Dragon Quest I and II. I had wanted for a Final Fantasy. The original inspiration for this was a Dragon Quest VI.
Look, Dragon Quest VI is the weakest Dragon Quest. It has two worlds that are only slightly different shades of green. The NPCs and towns look identical. It is the one Dragon Quest where you keep having to go “so wait what am I doing?” Even as you have sat there playing for 45 minutes. I’ve never looked back on abandoning my playthrough of VI. Who knows which world he was in at that point.
Then me in Kawagoe. I saw a gun-metal Neo Geo Pocket Color for below market price. I held it in my hands, with the plastic bag condom between us. I thought about the Neo Geo Pockets I had owned. I thought about the Neo Geo Pocket Color I did own, in my apartment. I sat it down for the next lucky sucker. I paid for my games while a heart-breaking human tragedy occurred to my right.
Eventually I was in Saizeriya. I was being even more nostalgic than the day had already been. My salad was perfect and oily. The margarita pizza perfection with hot sauce and black pepper. The espresso and melon soda exactly what you could hope for 188 yen. Two old women next to me could not begin to stop back-talking everyone they’ve ever met. Old men across from me alone, stared at their Toshiba laptops. High schoolers skipping school explained to an older woman how Drink Bars even work. Saizeriya was filled with classical art, nostalgia, and humanity. I messaged everyone I could think of that I had been to Saizeriya with saying I wished they were here. Fully half of them responded with how much they wanted Saizeriya pizza “right now omg”.
The clock was ticking, I downed half a coke, paid my bill and caught the train home. The light was perfect. I beat the first dungeon of Link Between Worlds. The dungeon consistently amused me with being slightly clever. I found the train would carry me all the way to Shibuya. I decided I didn’t have time, The Blue Hearts kicked into my ears. A song I’ve had marked as “Blues Jam” for 15 years being unable to identify it.
In 2023 I went on a Nostalgia Trip not entirely my own. I found plenty of my own memories and plans for the future.
Let’s get some Saizeriya sometime.
NEXT: Just Games!
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