One of the most remarkable aspects about the Japanese arcade scene is that it still exists. Perhaps it's because organised criminals loves to launder their money through arcades and pachinko parlours, or perhaps it's just down to the reality that people still want to play games there.
More so than online gaming, arcade multiplayer is an intimate, rewarding experience. People are civil, you don't have to contend with input lag - if you mess up it's your fault, and not that of dodgy net code, and when things do go awry players are less likely to let off strings of expletives in public. Thanks to this intimacy, groups of players congregate into little communities. On a purely anthropological level, it's actually rather fascinating.
The games and communities that endure are almost always those that have a solid multiplayer game at their centre. Traditionally these focal points of interest were the classic beat 'em-ups of old - your Street Fighters or your King of Fighters - but over the last decade or so a new entry has managed to create similar fervor.
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