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Sunday, September 23, 2012

Feature: Namco Wonder Park Plus in Hong Kong


Do you visit arcades? Do you like Taiko no Tatsujin? Ever wondered what an arcade would look like if the ENTIRE thing was Taiko no Tatsujin? Namco Wonder Parks do exist in Japan, and there are always Taiko corners for players to strut their stuff every day. There's one in Hong Kong too, and this feature goes out to everyone not from Hong Kong or Japan! An exclusive look at the insides of a Namco Wonder Park!

Thank you flyboy87/dewanakatta for all the pictures!

The Namco Wonder Park Plus in Hong Kong is in the World Trade Centre at Causeway Bay, on the island itself.



The entrance to the Namco arcade is guarded by Zaku (from Gundam) and a Golden Funghi. (Funghis are mushroom mascots of the DS game series Touch Detective, though what it's doing in a Namco arcade is beyond me). The screen is kind of a slideshow with images playing on it, to some sort of song.


Lots of UFO machines with tons of plushies. Small ones, huge ones...wow. The Taiko Claymation cartoon is playing in a TV on the top left.


A little more to the right...and you notice the entire arcade's decorations are Taiko themed.


Yep, Taiko heaven for sure. There's lots of other merchandise though.


Now here comes the fun part. There's an entire wall in a corner of the arcade where the producers of the game have visited and placed their mark on! With autographs and photos too!


That up there is the executive producer of Taiko no Tatsujin, the maker of this great rhythm game series!


 And that's the director responsible for the production of the 2 Asia versions of the Taiko no Tatsujin arcade.


The main attraction if of course, the Taiko arcades, and though not all of them are in this shot, there's 5 of them in a row, intercepted by a Music GunGun 2. There is a Taiko 11, two Taiko 12 Asian versions, one Taiko 12.5 and a Taiko 14 (without the patch).

Update: The picture here shows the machines using coin slots, but they have recently swapped for card readers, the kind with arcade credit pre-loaded into them. Thanks to tetsutaro from osu!


Close up of Music GunGun 2, with Saitama 2000 on the select screen.

And that's it! Hope you enjoyed looking at the pictures; I'm definitely marking this spot down if I go to Hong Kong. HK fans are so lucky! It's just too bad there isn't any HD Taiko in the vicinity, the newest machine is, sadly, still exclusive to Japan.