Does anyone know of any decent arcades or internet cafes with people that play fighting games? I’ve been looking and have found countless places where arcades obviously used to be (giant murals of KOF and tekken characters) but the buildings are mostly empty and appear to be closed for good. I’ve also found a few with mostly gambling machines, but no arcades with fighting games and people actually playing them.
That’s basically the MO of every arcade in China. Big bright signs, lots of window decals and murals of fighting games, then you get in, see all the gambling machines on, and banks upon banks of candy cabs that don’t look like they’ve been turned on in eons.
Hope you can find something. If you can read/write chinese you can always check here: bbs.17utt.com
I remember my friends in Beijing telling me about a really nice arcade in Xian, I’m going to bet its this one:
灿烂阳光梦工厂
陕西省西安市东大街骡马市60文商大厦一楼
They have TT2 for sure… supposedly they’re pretty good too.
So I found one. The one that you mentioned, Carmen, was torn down when I was looking for it a few months ago, I had heard it was the best from a chinese fgc site. Just recently I happened to be in that area again (钟楼, it’s right in the center of the city) and there is a brand new arcade in the same spot called Pandora. They have 4 TTT2, a few T6:BR cabs, 4 KOF '97 cabs, 4 KOF '98 cabs, 2 two-player KOFXIII cabs, and 8 AE cabs. TTT2, 98 and 97 see the most play by far, but there are some good SF players and the arcade also runs events, this past saturday they had a TTT2 tournament that I think was a qualifier for some namco sponsored thing, not sure but it seemed pretty legit. The arcade also has tons of rhythm/dance games and lots of people playing them, as well as racing and gun games and all sorts of other crap. It’s a pretty nice place and definitely the arcade to go to in Xi’an.