RolandSubject: Dragon Ball: Zenkai Battle Royale, Developer: Bandai Namco, Year: 2011, Arcade: Taito Station Shinjuku Minamiguchi Game World, Location: Shinjuku

Dragon Ball Zenkai Battle

RolandSubject: Dragon Ball: Zenkai Battle Royale, Developer: Bandai Namco, Year: 2011, Arcade: Taito Station Shinjuku Minamiguchi Game World, Location: Shinjuku
Dragon Ball Zenkai Battle
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Dragon Ball is one of those franchises where you could easily spit out another something at a fingerclick. Everyone wants to make it; everyone wants to publish it; everyone wants to buy it. How many decades and a bottomless appetite. Click! Dragon Ball Zenkai Battle.

How do you summarise lore cultivated in a billion worldwide playground roleplays since 1986, 7 versions of a 519-chapter manga series, 28 movies and TV shows and 87 videogames? Thus: fantasy ninja fighting.

Dragon Ball Zenkai Battle, this “full-throttle” tagteam fighter, has been going for 8 years. It’s nationwide gutpunching – play for fame in a Japanese league. These network games almost never include non-Japanese arcades. Why hassle with localisation? You can see 32 cabinets in shinjuku Sportsland and at least a corner like this in any respectable arcade from 2011 to the present day. Just Japan’ll do.

Photographer and writer covering Tokyo arcade life – the videogames, the metropolis and the people

RolandArcade: Taito Hey, Developer: Bandai Namco, Developer: Sega, Location: Akihabara, Subject: Arcade Interior, Subject: Border Break, Subject: Tekken 7, Year: 2009, Year: 2015

Staring Down the Brown Tube

The lights in Hey are famously blue. First foot off the IN escalator is *that* row of a dozen or so Egrets on either side. They actually have a Kodak PhotoPoint(TM) standee there now, yellow greyed by the blue light, with a cutout for where experts say to point your camera. That’s actually true!

RolandArcade: Taito Hey, Developer: Bandai Namco, Developer: Sega, Location: Akihabara, Subject: Arcade Interior, Subject: Border Break, Subject: Tekken 7, Year: 2009, Year: 2015
Staring Down the Brown Tube