200+ Japanese Arcade Games On Free Play: The Best Reason To Attend LVL Up Expo In Las Vegas

One of the unique things about LVL UP Expo is the sheer number of free experiences it has. This year’s convention, hosted at the Las Vegas Convention Center this past weekend, fea🦹tured free professional wrestling, free drone racing, free VR, free retro console gaming, and most impressively of all, a Japanese arcade with over 200 machines, all set to free play.

Luigi's Mansion Arcade, as seen from a side angle.

Have You Played Luigi's Mansion Arcade?

A friend and I went to Dave & Buster's, a U.S.-based arcade chain, for Christmas. We were delighted, and even a little bit overwhelmed, by how rad the place is. Our favorite game was Luigi's Mansion Arcade, which, I must confess, I did not know was a thing until last night. It's... quite cool, actually! You hꦫold a "vacuum" as your gun. The cabinet has superb surround-sound effects. It's on-rails, which I'm not typically a fan of, but that's the perfect setup for an arcade machine𓄧. Have you had the chance to check it out?

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In all my years of attending gaming conventions, I’ve never seen anything like iꦡt. The games were supplied by a North American supplier of Japanese arcade machines called Gam🍸e Saru, and for three days, expo attendees had unlimited access to modern, retro, and extraordinarily rare arcade cabinets - including some fascinating games I never even knew existed.

Every Arcade Game You Can Think Of, And Many You Can’t

As attendees entered the convention center’s South Hall last weekend they were immediately met with rows and rows 𝔉of arcade games, organized by genre, all completely free to play. The pop-up Japanese arcade had all of the staples you’d expect to see, including shooters, fighting gam⭕es, dance machines, racers, and just about every type of rhythm game ever.

Considering how rare ar⛄cades have become in the US, especially ones with Japanese games, this was a pretty incredible opportunity. I made a beeline for the shooters and spent 40 minutes playing through Time Crisis 5 from beginning to end with another attendee. This is t♓he only game in the series that hasn’t received a console port and the only one I haven’t beaten before, so this really kicked off the day on a high note.

After that I went through the rest of the shooters, which included one of my favorite PS2 ꦍguncon games, Ninja Assault, as well as Crisis Zone, Gunblade NY, and a Sega dogfighter with s🍬ome pretty intense motion simulation called After Burner: Climax. All fantastic games that you would have a hard time finding anywhere else.

Of course, it wouldn’t be a Japanese arcade without rhythm games. I spent a good chunk of the weekend trying (and failing at) a whole bunch of different music and rhythm games - which were also th🐷e convention’s most popular. Some I rec🐲ognized, like the Taiko no Tatsujin drum games, dancing games like DDR and Dance Rush, the Beatmania DJ games, and , but a lot of them took some time to figure out. Pop’n Music, Museca, and Sound Voltex were just some of the games I played for the first time at LVL UP, and I was only able to get into a groove with them because I could play as long as I wanted without feeding them any quarters.

All of the fan favorites were there, like Mario Kart, Pokken, Crazy✤ Taxi, Jurassic Park, Guilty Gear, Monkey Ball, and Silent Scope, but there were a lot of interesting games most peo💝ple have probably never even heard of.

Half-Life, Trains, and Arcade Drive-Bys

One of the biggest surprises I found was Half-Life 2: Survivor, a first-person arena shooter designed for competitive multiplayer. It has a bizarre double-joystick 🐭control scheme that includes two floor pedals, one to jump and one to crouch, as well as an arsenal of weapons that blend familiar Half-Life staples like crowbars and SMไGs with weird lightning rifles and shield deployers. There was only one machine so I had to play with bots, but it was still great to play a Half-Life game I didn’t even know existed.

I also didn’t know there were so many train engineer games. One of them, Densha de Go!, has an immersive train cab with multiple displays and realistic controls. There⭕ were several different train simulator games, but this one was by far the most elaborate.

Another surprise: typing games. I played Typing o🍃f the Dead on a school computer in middle school, but I had no idea it started out as an arcade game, or that there was a Lupin the Third typing game, which was also ✱playable at LVL Up Expo.

There were some incredibly rare games at the convention, too. One I recognized was Panic Park, a two-player game where each person uses a moving handle to smash into each other. I played it once before at Two Bit Circus in Los Aꦦngeles and, at the time, I was told it was one of the last remaining cabinets in the world. The one at LVL UP Expo may have even been the same one.

Even꧅ with three days at the expo, I’m sure I didn’t explore everything the arcade had to offer, and I’m doubly sure I’ll be b𝓡ack next year to play again. If you’re wondering if the trip to Las Vegas for this convention is worth it, the arcade alone is worth the price of admission.