June 02, 2004
Unamerican Arcade
At the ShihLin Night Market arcade. The drumming game is Taiko no Tatsujin by Namco, where you beat the drum based on the cues that scroll along the screen. When the red dot hits the target, smack the drum straight on. The blue dot means you hit the edge of the drum, and a yellow stripe is a drum roll for as long as the yellow region is in the target. You're scored based on accuracy of your drumming. It goes really smoothly if you can pick up the rhythm of the song and can go with the flow. Unfortunately the arcade was so loud that I couldn't hear the music at all, so I had to play it like a twitch game instead of a rhythm game. However, I was sufficiently amused by the drumming to consider picking up Donkey Conga when it comes out for the GameCube.
The horce racing game is another Namco wacky Japanese game, Final Furlong. You sit on the little plastic horse, and rock back and forth on it to make the video horse go. You can also pull the reins left and right to guide the direction, and there's a whip button for the stretch run. Of course, you don't want to go flat out the whole way as to not tire out your horse, and different horses have different characteristics (front-runner, stretch-runner, etc.). Unfortunately I think my horse was broken, as I kept drifting into the rail and no amount of rein-pulling could get it to go straight. Oh well, it was only one token (10 NTD = about 30 cents).
Posted by mikewang on June 2, 2004 06:11 AM