What Video Game Did I Play Yesterday?

Maimai (Arcade)

August 13th, 2022

Today's post is a little unusual. The images will be a bit higher quality than normal, since the photos themselves are a little different. I'm posting this before going to bed the night of, but after midnight, the day of playing these games for faster travel and less stress in the morning.

That being said, I finally had a fantastic vacation day! I still don't have my bag, but with enough clothes replaced to get by, I set out to have fun and succeeded. I ate at a hole in the wall Japanese restaurant for some fantastic tempura, I took a big sightseeing bus around the city, and, most relevant to this post, I stopped in at a Round One to play some music games!

My first stop was Maimai, a game one of my students in Japan had demonstrated for me when she found me across the game center, binge playing Kiratto Prichan. I had been impressed watching the student play- she was really good- but I questioned why she threw on gloves first, since it looked like you just hit the buttons in the circle around the screen. After playing, I now understand her strategy. The notes you have to drag across the screen have way more friction than you might expect from a touchscreen, making the literal game-feel a bit strange! I was only playing on normal difficulty and felt a bit irritated by it, so on hard and above, I can definitely see where the gloves might be a necessity. Even so, it was fun, and I got an S+ score and felt like a princess.

After that, I tried Chrono Circle, which took the buttons in a circle around the screen from Maimai and added a lot more touchscreen notes and lots of needless complications in the form of the buttons now being on a spinning wheel. I know that sounds like a negative description, but I had a blast playing this one! If there were a Round One closer to me, or if the Spare Time in my city had the nerve to carry music games, I think I'd play this a lot. It was too-much-going-on in a fun way.

My last music game trial of the day was Tetote x Connect, and it was my least favorite. The concept, to match the movements of the dancer on screen by hitting, holding, and dragging notes, sounded cool, but in practice, it was a little overwhelming. The touch screen didn't seem very responsive, either. I can see this being something that might get more fun the more used you get to the game's timing and to keeping track of the full, life sized dancer, but it's so rare that I get the chance to play arcade music games that I'm not sure I'd give this another go if there were other options. I loved how garishly sparkling it all was, though.

My last action at Round One was to play a little Project Justice before I left. I love this game on Dreamcast, so it was so cool to sit at an arcade cabinet for a few rounds! I picked Zaki over Momo for aesthetic reasons, though, and it proved to be my undoing. Poor Kyoko was my team's solo MVP as I floundered with Zaki's moveset! It was still great, though, and a good capper to my arcade trip.

This isn't a game, but I was also very excited (lucky, even) to see Franz Ferdinand in concert tonight! I had a fantastic time, and even though, as you may have noticed, I'm a terrible photographer, I wanted to share some of the photos I got before clicking "save" and posting this. It was a fantastic day!