You don't go to jail for these beats: Jubeat Plus and Reflec Beat Plus.

This pic doesn't do the cabinet itself justice:
it's an impressive machine. 

Has that expensive new iPad kept you from traveling the world and seeking out new experiences? Well, if one of those desired experiences is playing a few select Japanese arcade games, YOUR WAIT IS OVER. Nearly two years ago, Konami released two of its most popular push-button and touch-screen music arcade games in near perfect ports for the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch on the Japanese App Store: Jubeat Plus and Reflec Beat Plus. Better yet, Konami has also released them in the U.S. App Store as Jukebeat and Reflec Beat +. All four versions are free to play with three included songs, each with three difficulties, and have in-App stores where you can purchase four-song packs for ¥450 and $3.99 each, respectively.

Jubeat Plus (ユビートプラス, pronounced yu-bee-toh pu-ra-su) is my favorite, easily. In the game, you touch the virtual buttons in time with the music and, as the difficulty rises, the more frantic your fingers get. But, the sense of satisfaction you feel when you finally clear a song that had been driving you nuts rivals finishing off a boss in Dark Souls or, way back in the days of the original Guitar Hero, finally, finally beating "Bark at the Moon" on Expert. If you have friends who also have the game, you can play a hosted game where you compete against each other for the best score, exactly like the original arcade game.

Why are arcades so damn popular in Japan? Americans have it easy is why.

[Note from Jake: as we expand the staff here at the blog, we add our first foreign-based writer. Let's call him our "Japan correspondent"--John Mason!]

Japan is an industrious nation. As a people, the Japanese work very hard. Much, much harder than any normal Westerner's schedule - it is not uncommon for a Japanese office worker, or salaryman, to leave his house at 7 am and not return home until midnight, every night - and it shows in their recreation. "Onsens," or public bathhouses, are one of the most popular recreations in Japan because it's a place designed for people to go and relax for a few hours away from home.

Come Hither! Kitty.

"Away from home" is the distinguishing qualifier here. A lot of Japanese adults spend so much time at work that they literally do not have time to do anything else after work except go home and go to sleep, maybe spending some time with their wives or children if they're still awake. Because of this relentless schedule, they simply never go out during the week.

So when the weekend rolls around - sometimes Saturday and Sunday, sometimes only Sunday - it's understandable that you wouldn't want to stay at home for yet another day. Given the choice of staying at home and firing up your PS3 or Wii or going out and blowing off steam at a bevy of exhilarating, fantastic, sometimes physically exhausting arcade machines, many people choose to get the hell out of the house and blow some of the Yen they worked so hard for during the week. I know I do.

Megami Tensei Retrospective: Persona 4

The Megami Tensei series is one of the longest-running JRPG franchises in the history of video games, yet until very recently it was almost unknown among Western audiences.  As a JRPG hipster I've played most of the modern games, but unlike a JRPG hipster I want as many people as possible to play them.  To encourage this, I'll do a retrospective of recent games in the MegaTen franchise, in reverse chronological order.

Series Overview

To begin with, I thought it prudent to mention properties that almost all games in the series have in common.  There are exceptions, and I'll mention them when it's relevant.  MegaTen is a truly massive franchise, with multiple side stories that have become franchises themselves.  Despite this, they are all descended from dungeon crawlers, being some of the unconditional titles in that genre.  To begin with, the games are time sinks, typically taking between 60-80 hours to complete the basic story.  Very difficult turn-based combat is the mechanic of choice, and the MegaTen franchise was one of the first to have a mechanic popularized by Pokémon: the ability to convince enemies to join your party and fight for you.  In addition, you can also fuse these demons (it's usually demons, but even when it's not the fusion mechanic is still there).  Fusion is vital, as you can't recruit all enemies and the skills you've grafted to your new demon may not be learned normally.  The stories of MegaTen games are also significantly darker than the stereotype of the happy-go-lucky JRPGS, often featuring apocalyptic or post-apocalyptic settings.  With all that said, let's get to the games!

Persona 4: The Popular, Mainstream One

This game is very yellow, color-wise

This is the one most people have heard of, if they've heard of it at all.  Persona 4 is incredibly popular in America and Japan, with huge merchandising, and animated adaptation, a updated re-release for the PS Vita (Persona 4: The Golden), and a spin-off fighting game bridging the stories of Persona 3 and Persona 4 (Person 4: Arena).  The story focusing on the unnamed main character moving to a small country town in Japan, where a strange fog rolls in to town followed by a serial killer.  The protagonist teams up with his high school friends to solve the mystery, which (due to the protagonist's ridiculous power to climb inside a television) leads them to the Midnight Channel, to fight the dark side of man's collective unconscious.  The story is very character focused, each level being generated by the dark side of whatever particular character is trapped in the Midnight Channel.  This brings a lot of character development to the game, while the murder mystery overplot is well paced and gives you a constant goal to focus on.

Global Gaming Spotlight: Tokyo Jungle (Japan)

With each post in this mini-feature, I highlight a game from a different country around the world. Keep in mind these aren't necessarily the best or most popular games from each nation, but simply a fitting representative. After beginning with my native United States yesterday, we head to the other colossus of the gaming world today: Japan.

Tokyo Jungle - Sony, 2012

Of course, there are thousands of Japanese games to choose from. But while many Japanese games take place in fictional worlds or even in America, I wanted a game that takes place in Japan.

Tokyo Jungle took the world by storm this year. Taking place in a future version of the Japanese capital where humans are gone and animals must duke it out, Tokyo Jungle takes a very Darwinian approach to the survival genre.

The game was a hit in its home country, and later became a cult success in the West, despite its decidedly-Japanese weirdness. In an era where many people think the Japanese game industry is faltering internationally, Tokyo Jungle makes no concessions to try to appeal to global audiences.

Producer Masaaki Yamagiwa recently told Gamasutra:

"Users from other regions and Japanese users have different perspectives to begin with, so it's not surprising to see the gaps between what they think is fun versus what we think is fun. Japanese people should be 'Japanese' and simply create what they think is fun, and have other regions accept it as a novelty item."

Hopefully this is inspiration to other Japanese studios to really flex their creative muscle, instead of trying to please Westerners with more big-budget flops like Resident Evil 6.