The Enduring Appeal of Game Center CX: Laughing Through Failures and Embracing Nostalgia

I've been wanting to write a blog post about Game Center CX for a while now. After all, it's one of my favorite shows of all-time, and something I still look forward to whenever a new fansubbed episode is dropped. But I get overwhelmed, because the show is so big. It's been going on in Japan for 20 years now! And I'm pretty sure that I've been watching it for almost as long! If I had to guess, I believe the first fansubs started popping up around 2007 by a group called TV-Nihon.

For those that don't know, Game Center CX focuses on comedian Shinya Arino, who each episode is challenged with finishing a retro game, usually by the end of filming that day, which usually gives him about 12 hours. The show has a charmingly low budget quality to it, with the producer, Kan, also doing the dramatic voiceover that occasionally breaks in to narrate, and the cameraman, Abe, occasionally shouting out words of encouragement or sound advice, and various writers and producers that you can hear laughing off-screen (and occasionally on-screen, when the camera pans around to show what's going on behind-the-scenes).

Arino shows up dressed in a standard Japanese workers outfit in a teal green and orange necktie. What's so captivating about this show is Arino himself. I wouldn't say that he's a good gamer. He makes so many careless mistakes. But everything he does, all the failures he encounters, it's all taken with such good humor and positivity that you are always routing for him, even when he occasionally does something unforgivable like accidentally restart instead of continue.

That's the main part of the show, the 'challenge' segment. Traditionally there's two more parts that will get inserted in the middle of the challenge somewhere. One is usually called something like "If you're going to an arcade, try this one..." or "Tamage" for short. In this segment, fans send letters recommending Arino try an arcade or a store that has an arcade machine. Sometimes the letter will recommend he try a specific game, and other times it's just to visit the game center. Most of the time it's not a full arcade, but maybe a few arcade machines in a candy store or someplace like that. The other segment changes each season, but it's always a silly concept involving video games in some way. Sometimes it might be straightforward, using a barcode battler to have two games face off against each other. Other times it might be something like a priest that reads tips from all strategy guides and then applies them to our daily lives! There's been some truly great ones and I'll probably make that a whole separate blog post at some point.

It's a little hard to describe exactly what makes me keep coming back, and why this show has been one of my favorites for a good 15 years now, except to say that it's Arino himself. Arino is funny, and not afraid to laugh at himself. I say he's average at games, and makes a lot of stupid mistakes, but he keeps trying, and sometimes really surprises you with how hard he's willing to push himself. I found it crazy how hard he found the final battle against Bowser in Super Mario World, but then he goes and finishes Ninja Gaiden on the NES! The narrator will sometimes talk about "miracle" plays that Arino will perform (that over dramatic nature I think is also part of the charm), and it's true, he can genuinely surprise you with his performance at times.

It's also been amazing to see how big the series has gotten in terms of fans! While it started as a single man sitting in a small office playing games...well, okay, the main show is still that! BUT! He's has also played a live show at the Budokan, with seven thousand people in attendance! There have been numerous video game adaptations made, and the first one even made it to the US, as a DS game called Retro Game Challenge, and it's really really good, one of the best "retro game collection that's not actually retro games but just trying to capture the nostalgic feel of retro games" type of games I've seen! There was a movie...but let's not talk about that! There was even an attempt to bring the series itself into the US, with ten episodes dubbed (but I have a big problem with their audio mixing) re-titled as Retro Game Master, and then an official box set that contained those episodes plus a few more, in both subbed and dubbed format!

Did this blog post really have a point to it? Was it just "Man, I really love Game Center CX still"? I mean, I guess that's enough, right? Although maybe I'll end this post with a "where can you learn more" breakdown. Right now there's a Twitch channel that airs episodes pretty much 24/7, called 'notGCCX'. I don't think that name will fool Fuiji TV for long, but we'll see. Fuji TV has been pretty active in making sure unapproved clips and episodes are wiped off of YouTube, and there have been plenty of Twitch channels in the past airing the show, and they all eventually get taken down. There is a YouTube channel that officially hosts the English dubbed episodes, and even though I personally wouldn't go with the dubs, they're here for people that want to check them out (edit: I looked around for the link, and it's possible they are no longer officially on YouTube, I couldn't find it). The DVD is still being sold too. They chose pretty good episodes to bring over, too. There's a Discord channel that a lot of GCCX fans hang out in, and when new episodes get fansubbed they post a link to the torrent there, but I don't think I can make invites. There's a subreddit that also posts the new torrents as they go up. Ray Barnholdt was doing an episode guide for quite some time, and while it's been years since he's updated it, the introduction page is a good read for a breakdown of everything great about Game Center CX. Read it here!

I don't know why it took me so long to talk about Game Center CX, like I've said, it's one of my absolute favorite shows. In the future I'll talk up some of my favorite episodes and segments. There are so many to choose from at this point! Anyone else a fan of GCCX? Leave a comment and let me know!