David J. Mathis - Kachou On!: The Unauthorized Guide to Game Center CX

Kachou On!

The Unofficial Guide to Game Center CX

by David J. Mathis

Text Copyright 2013

This book is not affiliated with Game Center CX , Fuji TV, Gascoin, or any other producer of Game Center CX products. It is a completely unauthorized, unofficial guide.

Dont pass up anything, if you dont have to.

-- Jeff Rovin, How to Win at Nintendo

The same could be said of life itself.

It could be easy to pass by Game Center CX . A Japanese reality show about a man playing old games badly doesnt seem like it would hold a lot of appeal for American viewers. Yet it is gaining fans all around the world.

Theres something endearing about Shinya Arinos struggles to overcome old games. It takes me back to the days when I would rent a Nintendo game and try to beat it before it went back to the store. Whether I was playing a good game or a terrible one, an action game or a puzzle game, the clock was my enemy and I had to try to beat it. Sometimes my friends would help, saying May I play a life?

The appeal of the show goes deeper than that. Every episode is an underdog story where the ending is in doubt. We want to see Arino to overcome the handicap of his poor playing to win the big game. He loses too often for it to be a sure thing and that leaves us in suspense.

One of my favorite things about the show is the window it gives me into the world of Japanese gaming. The episodes are showcases of strange and obscure video games that were never released outside of Japan.

I compiled this book because the scope of Game Center CX had become too large. If you started watching the show from the beginning right now and watched everything, it would take over ten straight days without break until you were finished. Thats too much to keep track of. Which episode had Arino surprised by an escalator? What was that game with the model train? How many times does Arino play Metal Slug ? The answers are here.

This book covers the first sixteen seasons of the show. The DVDs, videos produced for Nintendos video streaming services, the books, and the games that have been released through that point are found here. Details about all of the games challenged are included, too. I round it out with some of the other projects related to Game Center CX . Finally, theres an extensive index of every game featured on the show.

Time to turn this game on and play through to the end.

Challenge Start

Staff Profile

Arino Shinya ()

Position: Chief

Born : February 25, 1972 in Osaka

Memorable Moment: Playing Lemmings for 24 hours

The first major event for Arinos career happened when he was young. He met Yu Hamaguchi while in middle school and they became best friends. Shortly after Arino graduated from high school, Arino found employment as a hotel cook. Hamaguchi approached him to try to lure Arino into leaving that job and becoming an entertainer. The argument that convinced Arino was that as a comedian he might have a chance to marry the singer Noriko Sakai. Together, Hamaguchi and Arino formed the comedy team Yoiko.

Eventually, the two would go on to appear regularly on shows such as Mecha-Mecha Iketeru! and Ikinari Ougon Densetsu . Arino and Hamaguchi also star in television specials such as their Desert Island Life series where theyre deposited on an island. Yoiko might not be A-list celebrities, but they're relatively well known.

Arino gained a reputation as a nerd due to his love of video games, comics, and cartoons. One of his prize possessions was a massive collection of action figures and models from things as wide ranging as Mobile Suit Gundam to Spawn , the American comic book. These hobbies have leaked into Game Center CX where his knowledge of comics and cartoons has come up many times , especially during the quiz episodes.

Of course, it was his love of games that got him his role in Game Center CX . Arino still plays a lot of games as a hobby even though it's his job is to play video games. At home he has a PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Wii U, Nintendo 3DS, and a PlayStation Portable; he hasn't mentioned upgrading to a PlayStation Vita yet. Dragon Quest is a particular favorite of Arino's and he has played all of the games including the online RPG.

Playing games isn't Arino's only skill. He has a reputation for goofy drawings and has illustrated two books. When a strange picture of a game character appears on the whiteboard, Arino drew it. Hes also very good at word games and has won competitions with them.

Arino met Yuko Kitamura and after a whirlwind four months relationship, they became engaged. They married on February 27, 2005, the day after her birthday and two days after Arinos. Their mutual love of playing games was one of the major reasons that Arino asked Kitamura to marry him. They have two daughters together that were born about a year apart.

The Show

Game Center CX airs biweekly on Fuji TVs satellite service on channel 721, a channel called Fuji TV One-Two-Next. For most of its history, the show has aired on Thursday nights at midnight. One-Two-Next is a commercial free station and promos only appear between programs which is why episodes of Game Center CX run for nearly a full hour.

The series got off to a slow start in the ratings and for the first few years it wasnt certain that it would be renewed for another season. Interest in the DVD releases and the video game built a fanbase over time until the show became a modest hit for Fuji TV. Today, the DVD sets are best sellers and there's no danger of the show ending.

Originally, Game Center CX was going to be an interview show following the format an earlier show BeWild created about comic book artists. The style of program in the first season was the intention for the entire series. That plan changed when the production crew ran into problems with getting interviews with people about older games. Many of those creators had left the industry and would not talk about their experiences. That made the crew transition the shows focus to the Arinos Challenge segment, the most popular feature. By the end of season two, the interviews would be gone.

Like most reality shows, the budget for Game Center CX is miniscule. The lack of money is why Tsuyoshi Kan, the shows producer, acts as the narrator and the production staff pitch in as Arinos assistants. Another cost saving measure that has become an iconic part of the show is the challenge room. Challenges are shot in the production office instead of a studio in a room that serves normal purposes when Arino isn't playing a game.

One of the biggest challenges for the show is obtaining the rights to use games in challenges. Not every game company has been receptive to the shows requests. Nintendo, Capcom, and Namco have generally been very open to the show using their games which is why they have been so common. Among the major companies, Square-Enix and Konami have been less willing to allow their games to be used. A few times in early seasons, it seems that a concession for using a particular game was to advertise an upcoming game from the same company and an advertisement for a product from the publisher is inserted into the episode.

The production company behind Game Center CX is Gascoin, originally called BeWild, and the staff are all employees of Gascoin. They produce more shows than Game Center CX , but Game Center CX is the only one that is actually shot in their office.

The CX in the shows title came from Fuji TVs call letters, JOCX-TV. However, Game Center CX has not been broadcast on that channel.

Season One

Game Center CX

Season one is the odd duck of the series. The title actually reads Game Center CX , the brackets acting as quotation marks in Japanese. The title would change slightly next year as the show was completely retooled between seasons one and two. Though they still used this year in the season count after they changed the title, the television listings and references to the number of episodes in the show dont count these shows. In this guide theyre the P episodes.