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What the... ? Weird games in Akihabara, Tokyo - Part Two
5. Weird Japan Only Games
Aside from finding sex games, Akihabara is also a goldmine for discovering games that never got released in the West. Some of these titles are just plain weird... like this scary looking McDonald's game for the Nintendo Famicom (pictured above). The title actually reads "Donaldo Lando", because Ronald McDonald is known as "Donald McDonald" in Japan.
This is another Japan-only release I discovered. It's Advanced Daisenryaku for the Sega Mega Drive, and it features cameo appearances from all your favourite WWII personalities, including Hitler, Stalin, and Churchill. What more could a kid want!
I also discovered a ridiculous amount of Japanese horse=racing games. I am struggling to think of any horse racing games that are available in the West, but at least in Japan, this is a genre onto itself. Looks fun, right? Yeah...6. Famicom Hyper Shot Gun
Remember those grey toy pistols that came packaged with the NES game Duck Hunt? They were a little... well... girly, weren't they? Well, Japanese Famicom gamers had access to a far meatier weapon: the Bandai Hyper Shot, released in 1989.
Now this is the real deal. The gun is the size of an automatic weapon, and it looks legit to boot. I can only assume that this gun never got released outside Japan because the NES was known as a "family-friendly console" in the West... and having three-year-old kids running around with a giant replica uzi would tarnish that image pretty quickly.
The gun comes packaged with a game called Space Shadow. I couldn't find any videos of this title in action... but I did stumble across a collector displaying his Hyper Shot to the public. Damn, that sure is one cool accessory.
According to the box, the Hyper Shot is a "very super exciting computer game & bodily sensation system electric weapon". Can't argue with that. Price in Akihabara: 6000 yen (US$)7. Pachinko Slot Controller for Playstation
Pachinko is a popular form of electronic gambling in Japan. The machines are like a mixture of poker machines and pinball machines, and many pachinko parlours in Japan are open all night, every night. Japanese gamblers can literally spend every waking second of their entire life watching little ball-bearings bounce around a glass cabinet... while losing copious amounts of money. Fun.
Pachinko is fundamentally a game of chance, so practicing at home seems a little pointless. Still, those really keen (or addicted) pachinko players can pick up this Playstation controller that acts as a pachinko machine. Price: 950 yen (US$12).
There's still more Akihabara weirdness to come on page three!
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