Ema's Arcade Archive

A kinda messy (but hopefully interesting) personal archival project that I thought I would actually try to spread outside of just my friends! DMs with any arcade research you may have are encouraged, and reformatting suggestions are helpful too! I'll try to post fairly often about certain games.

[gynotai]

Hi!

I'm Ema, and I've had a small personal archival project going on for a bit and thought I'd try to share it with the world! Requests and information is always appreciated and encouraged: just DM me what you've found and I'll try to add it to the drive and post about it too if you'd like! Additionally, formatting is kinda a mess right now, so if there are any specific folders you'd like me to organise or change the names of, please say. This has been fairly casually done for a bit, so there's still a lot of mess lol.

Link:

[gynotai]

X-DAY

HAPPY 30TH ANNIVERSARY TO X-DAY!!!!!

X-DAY, a game with 3 seperate versions (all lost), released on January 1st 1994, according to this pdf mentioning the games that Namco no longer supported service for as of July 2015. It's a combination of a quiz and fortune game that determines when you will die using your answers to questions and reaction time. This game is much more famous for its thankfully available sequel X-DAY2 and the remix X-DAY2000 in the Taiko No Tatsujin series. Despite the fairly high popularity of 2 and the release of soundtrack CDs for both games, the first X-DAY game remains lost, alongside its Web conversion (while the site is available via Wayback Machine, the game itself is seemingly inaccessible) and i-Mode port (old phone games like this aren't preserved very well generally, Namco had a bunch of these that are now lost). There are no gameplay videos of any version online, as far as I can tell, and I have yet to find actual cabinet photos either...

The X-DAY series is fairly known for its soundtracks, with both 1 and 2 having Namco Game Sound Express CDs, which are both heavily 90s Dance influenced and have a pretty intense sound to them, which seems to throw people off for a fortune game. The first game's in-game music was all done by Ayako Saso, but the arrange tracks on the album were by Ayako Saso, Shinji Hosoe and Nobuyoshi Sano. The second game was seemingly all done by Akihiko Ishikawa, with credits for the previous game's composer and arrangers as multiple songs in 2 were sequenced conversions of 1's arrange tracks. Ishikawa converted the remixes from 1 and also created the new FOX-day and FIX-day tracks.

I've never seen an image of an X-DAY 1 cabinet that isn't the same promotional one, sadly, as it seems most of them were converted into 2 cabinets. If you pay attention to images of X-DAY 2 cabinets, you can see that some look a bit different in their casing, having the physical features of a 1 cabinet. There are very few screenshots and the only ones I have ever found are from official promotional media and the CD. The machine also printed receipts showcasing your results, at least there are plenty of images of those around.

[This post is more focusing on X-DAY1 but just a fun fact about 2: it's actually surprisingly really progressive for a fortune game of the time (1996), featuring the ability to have gay relationships and also even having options for trans players! Funnily enough, relationships get referred to officially by the game as "Super" if one member is trans, and "Ultra" if both members are trans, which explains the song names "FOX-day - Ultra gay edit" and "FOX-day - Super les edit". Another bonus fact, there's a doujin X68000 game based on 1 called Super X-DAY X.]

Also thanks to X-DAY for getting me into this whole obscure arcade thing in general! The music led me down a rabbit hole.

[gynotai]

Petit Petit Medal

A series of Namco medal games for kids, with cute animal mascots. The games (in order, labelled by the number on their hyperlink in the first image):

Neko Shot!

Pakkun Restaurant

Kanransha

Otenki Ten-Chan

Bun Bun Boomerang

Nigaoepittanko

Happy Omikuji

Doki Doki Flower

Kisekae Studio

A few of these games seem to have a bit of footage, but as far as I can tell NONE of them have been put online or even had any released music. The attached link is a video of "Neko Shot!".

[gynotai]

Karma Eye

A 1994 Data East fortune telling game, which, according to the extremely helpful @ ARCADE_LAB on Twitter (source of the images below), would predict your past life, rather than your future. Seems to be part of a series of 3 fortune telling games by Data East, all of which have little info and (mostly) no footage available online. (there's a bit of recording of the game "Twilight Spread" from an AM/AOU Show, but otherwise I can't find anything)

[gynotai]

Outburst4D

Outburst4D is a cancelled Taito game from 1995. It was apparently shown off at a location test event but seems to have not been seen since. It also apparently was later used for the IDYA system (effectively one of those rides that have a screen and a moving seat iirc?) , a fate that also befell other cancelled Taito game City Diver. Seems similar to ANOTHER lost game, Cyber Sterra. Also, has one of my favourite soundtracks ever, released on the ZUNTATA RARE SELECTION Vol. 3 - S'WORKS SHU. FUTURE EXPRESS is the iconic one, even having a live version on Zuntata's Guten Talk album, but I'd also recommend Travelers In Asia.

[gynotai]

Spin Fever

A medal game series by Konami, notable for seemingly having some music in Bemani (and personally notable for having some music I enjoy, from the few YouTube uploads I have been able to find). [First image is Spin Fever: Phantom Orchestra, second is a screenshot from the Spin Fever website]