Now nearing its 20th anniversary, Game Center CX (aka Retro Game Master) sees Japanese comedian and show Section Chief (or ‘Kachō’) Shinya Arino take on hundreds of video games and reach their endings. He doesn't always succeed, but with the help of his ADs, snacks, and cooling pads, he gives it his best. The show is an engaging watch thanks to his easy-going charm that plays off the game, his staff, and others.
It's like a precursor to today's Twitch streamers and YouTube Lets Players, only with tight editing and additional fun segments like visiting game centers or talking to popular developers like Pokémon creator Satoshi Tajiri or the late Satoru Iwata. But where should curious viewers start? Ranked in order, here are the recommendations.
10 Quiz: The Feudal Lord’s Ambition
Pub quiz games are one of the few forms of entertainment that still remain in bars, clubs, and elsewhere. However, they managed to reach consoles in Japan. This episode saw ‘Section Head’ Arino try to reclaim his ‘Chief’ title after being demoted following a series of losses and forfeits.
The aim of the game is to unify all of Japan under one feudal lord by…answering multiple choice trivia questions. Arino gets helpful suggestions from his staff via little sign posts, though not all of them are right. Some, like ex-biker cameraman Abe, don’t take sass lightly either.
9 Densha De GO!
One of Japan’s quirkier game genres is the train driving sim. For the 100th anniversary of the Yamanote Line, the railroad that loops through Tokyo’s biggest districts, Arino had to tackle its digital depiction in Densha De GO!, complete with its dedicated controller. It turns out the game's more difficult than it looks.
Arino has to start and stop gradually, reach his stops within the time limit and, most tense of all, brake in time to reach the right mark. The more fouls, the more points lost. The more points lost, the closer he gets to a game over. Plus, he has to do it in character with a train driving uniform and procedure, despite just sitting in a room with a TV and a PS1.
8 Parappa the Rapper
Arino may have played hundreds of games, but he’s not exactly a gaming master. Luckily, rhythm games shouldn’t be too hard for him. They just require pressing the right buttons at the right time, right? Unfortunately, the original Parappa the Rapper had very strict timing requirements and slippery inputs.
The game tests Arino to the point that not even his newly urban-adorned ADs can lift his spirits. But like Parappa himself says, he’s gotta believe! This episode is pretty popular among the show’s Western fans but got a cooler response from its home audience, despite Arino’s attempts to translate the English dialogue into Japanese rap.
7 Tokimeki Memorial
To celebrate Arino’s then-recent engagement, his AD Urakawa gives him the first in Konami’s famous dating sim series. That way Arino can share his tips on how to woo the ladies. In this case, he has to charm ‘main girl’ Shiori Fujisaki, the most difficult of the women.
It’s not enough to focus solely on one girl either. Arino has to keep every woman he meets happy with dates, while keeping his looks, smarts, and physical stats high. It’s trickier than it looks, and things that seem funny at first (entering his nickname as ‘Daddy’) take a turn later on (He feels wrong about every girl calling him ‘Daddy’ all the time).
6 Game Center CX In the USA Special
The show also has extra segments to spice things up. One of the most popular running segments was ‘TamaGe’, where Arino would visit game centers all across Japan and play their games (Metal Slug is surprisingly prolific). They caught on so well that the show went abroad, with specials set in Cambodia, Korea, and Cannes.
However, the best of the bunch has to be the USA special, where he travels around LA and San Francisco. He plays old arcade machines at the Musée Mechanique, plays Sunset Riders at a retro game store, and attends a meet & greet with American fans. But if viewers want to see him beat a game, don't worry: he takes on Robocop for the NES too.
5 Clock Tower
Arino’s played a wide variety of genres, but Clock Tower is his first go at a survival horror game on the show. Using the original 2D point & click game, Arino has to find a way to get Jennifer out of the mansion without bumping into the Scissor Man or the house’s other creepy monsters.
It doesn’t go too well, as Arino achieves multiple bad endings, but only the good ending counts. But with enough snacks, whiteboard planning, and a little mood lighting, he makes progress step by step. He just has to watch out for his own spooky companion: Tani the sound mixer! This is one of the few episodes available on Kotaku and the Retro Game Master DVD set.
4 Lemmings
The classic puzzle game Lemmings was everywhere back in the 1990s, so it’s not a surprise the SNES version became a challenge for Chief Arino. The game does have an ending, but it’s not enough for Arino to beat it on the easiest difficulty. The overly polite AD Nakayama informs him he has to beat it on ‘Taxing’ difficulty and save 99% of all the lemmings. Needless to say, it lives up to its name, taxing Arino to the limit.
It also served as the basis for the show's first 24-hour special, where Arino was cheered on by fans all over the world by email and fax(!). Though show writer Kibe couldn't (or wouldn't) explain how these international fans got to see their Japanese TV show.
3 Donkey Kong Country
Some of Chief Arino’s challenges have overrun into two-parters, like Super Mario 64, The Quest of Ki, and Mega Man 3. But Donkey Kong Country was challenging both his skills and his morale, as he did better at the game when he was young (“I can't remember games I played when I was 22!”).
Even worse, he often forgets to save! He’s left facepalming as much as Donkey Kong himself on the Game Over screen. The prognosis doesn’t look good as the action spreads across two episodes. But with perseverance and the help of AD Nakayama, he can finally get the Kongs' bananas back from King K.Rool.
2 Ninja Gaiden
In the early days, the show's seasons often kept a record of how many wins and losses Chief Arino had across its run. By the penultimate episode of Season 4, he was at 4 losses to 3 wins. He needed to beat that episode’s game and the next to win the season. Unfortunately, he was covering the original NES Ninja Gaiden, one of the hardest games on the console for both fair and foul reasons.
Aside from dealing with cheap enemy placement and those infernal birds, Chief Arino also had its notoriously spotty checkpoints to handle too. He needed more than cooling pads and his whiteboard to get through this one. Kotaku and Discotek both covered this episode, with the latter throwing in Ninja Gaiden 2 as a bonus episode.
1 Mighty Bomb Jack
Tecmo’s arcade platformer had the heroic Bomb Jack collecting the bombs in numerous levels before they blew up. While it’s not quite as infamous as Ninja Gaiden, it proved difficult enough for Chief Arino to cover 3 episodes! Well, more like 2 and a half. Episode 2 saw Chief Arino tap out within the first quarter and play Gargoyle’s Quest 2 instead. But he pressed on by playing the game in front of a live audience at the Japan Education Hall!
The 3rd installment took on a documentary-style approach as Arino and staff take on the game one more time. Even so, Arino needed the help of all his ADs up to that point, and a few lucky audience members. Check it out to find out. Kotaku managed to edit all 3 episodes into 1 show, but it’s worth watching the full deal to see how far the Chief will go to get the ending.