Inside Bandai Namco's First Akihabara Arcade
by Richard Eisenbeis,On March 1, a new arcade, the "Namco Akihabara-ten," opened at the site of the recently closed GiGO (formerly Sega) Akihabara Arcade #4 across the street from Akihabara Station. This is Bandai Namco's first ever Akihabara arcade, so ANN dropped by opening day to see what it had to offer.
This arcade, occupying 1,082.9 square meters (approx. 11,656 square feet), is spread across six floors packed to the brim with arcade machines, crane games, gashapon dispensers, and card tables.
Let's start at the top. The fifth floor is dedicated to Bandai's various collectible card games. The floor is a single open area with tables for you to play at where you can even buy starter decks and booster packs and then try them out for yourself. And more than just being a place to play, there are display cases filled with new and rare cards. Everything from the walls to the floor is painted with vibrant yellow lightning bolts to make this area feel more exciting than your average card shop.
The fourth floor, on the other hand, is nothing but narrow aisle upon narrow aisle of gashapon dispensers. These six-foot-tall walls filled with toys trapped in their tiny plastic shells contain everything from small anime figures and figure-sized hats to miniature condiment bottles and rice cookers. Dispensers are grouped by a common theme, but even then, it could take quite a while to see what each and every one of them has to offer.
The third floor of the building is mainly dedicated to music games. About a third of the entire floor is taken up by Taiko no Tatsujin: The Drum Master arcade cabinets with their full-size taiko drum controllers. Another third contains other popular music games like the latest editions of Chunithm and Maimai. The final third contains several cabinets, each of the card-utilizing Gundam Arsenal Base game and the JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Last Survivor battle royal game.
The first floor is split into two separate areas. The first is another area of crane games. However, unlike the floor above, these contain figures only. Every figure you can win on this floor is female—and usually in some state of undress. The other area, which has a separate outdoor entrance to the arcade, is a small Ichiban Kuuji store where you can buy a raffle ticket and win a small prize related to a popular game or anime.
The basement of the building is dedicated to a single arcade game: the newest entry in the long-running Gundam Vs. series, Mobile Suit Gundam Extreme Vs. 2 XBoost. Arcade cabinets, account card dispensers, or monitors showing recently played games take up every square inch of the floor.
Overall, the building is clean, well-lit, and full of games to play and things to buy. While it doesn't have the largest selection of arcades, it's undoubtedly a great place to go for some Taiko no Tatsujin or Gundam Vs. Just know that if you do plan to visit yourself, the place is extremely cramped, so it's probably best to visit in the morning or midafternoon on a weekday if you don't want to be forced to wade through a sea of people to check the place out.
Richard is an anime and video game journalist with over a decade of experience living and working in Japan. For more of his writings, check out his Twitter and blog.
Disclosure: Bandai Namco Filmworks Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Bandai Namco Holdings Inc., is a non-controlling, minority shareholder in Anime News Network Inc.
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