For those who don't know: Game Center CX - OMG Nintendo

As you may have already noticed, the background for OMGNintendo has been temporarily changed to showcase a new game coming out for the DS this week called Retro Game Challenge. What you may not know is that Retro Game Challenge is actually the licensed game for a show in Japan called Game Center CX.

What is Game Center CX, you may ask? What does it have to do with games from the 80s and strange challenges that the disembodied, virtual head of some guy named Arino forces you to carry out?

Wonder no more, as a full explanation is now here!

Game Center CX started life in October 2004 as a gaming culture show in Japan, showcasing unique things gamers had collected, different arcades throughout Japan and other points of interest. The most popular segment on the show, and one that would become the centerpiece of the program after the first season, was something called Arino’s Challenge.

The concept of Arino’s Challenge is simple: Take Japanese comedian Shinya Arino (pictured above), lock him in a room with a game system (usually an NES or SNES), give him a ridiculously hard old school game and then record the fun as he plays it to the end... if he can.

There are two catches that stand in the way of Arino completing his goals. The first is that Arino is only average as far as gaming skills goes and, as was stated earlier; these games are ridiculously hard. We’re talking stuff like the original Ghouls and Ghosts, Takeshi’s Challenge (a game that quite literally goes out of its way to be as unplayable as possible), Milon’s Secret Castle and many others. The second catch is that, nine times out of ten, Arino initially goes into the games completely blind and has to learn how they work on the fly.

These difficulties can lead to hilarity in situations such as with the game Transformers: Mystery of Convoy. He’s learned that power-up icons exist but doesn’t realize that some icons are actually power-downs and he’s so desperate to reach one of the said power-downs that even the narrator for the show begins yelling at him.

Fortunately, Arino is not without the ability to call upon some assistance to help him when he becomes stuck. This usually comes in the form of his Assistant Directors who will give him hints, cheats or play through a particularly hard section of the game for him once (but if he dies and has to restart then Arino has to replay it himself), but Arino will also make use of old gaming magazines and hint guides if they can be found and if the section he is stuck on is too hard even for his Assistants, they can sometimes call in Special Guests who have a particular knowledge about the game in question… but may end up doing something completely unexpected.

For example, when braving the horrors of Super Mario Bros. 2 (not the one Americans know by that title with but the one we would later come to call The Lost Levels) Arino and his Assistants find themselves stuck on the final stages of the game. Near the end of their ropes they call in a young man who has a small amount of fame amongst gamers for having one of the best speedrun times for The Lost Levels and ask him to help with the area they have become stuck with.

He agrees but Arino discovers too late that this player has a certain point of pride he likes to uphold when dealing with the game. The guest casually asks Arino if he has used any Warp Zones on the way to World 8 and when Arino answers in the affirmative, he can only look on in slack-jawed shock as his guest slaps his hand forward and resets the machine, starting over from scratch.

At the end of the show, Arino is either successful in beating the game or has failed due to giving up or some unspecific time-limit being exceeded. Yet, no matter the result, Arino can go home safe in the knowledge that he has at least tried to stand up as a man against the mightiest foes that the video game world is able to throw his way, entertaining his legions of fans along the way.

At the New York Asian Film Festival in June of 2008, Fuji TV showcased two of Arino's Challanges featuring Ghouls And Ghosts and Mystery of Atlantis with the title of Retro Game Master. The segments were subtitled, save for the Narrator who was dubbed over (not unlike the translation for Sasuke AKA Ninja Warrior) and the other segments covering Gaming Culture issues were dropped entirely. The segments went over well and the fact that the back cover the manual for Retro Game Challenge has an advertizement for Retro Game Master (ending with the question "Coming soon to the US?!") shows that Fuji TV has an interest in releasing official DVDs of the show here if they can find a US distributor.

So if we’re lucky, and maybe if enough petitions are sent to companies that would most likely be willing to take a chance with this kind of show, we'll be able to join in the fun of watching Arino battle the classics.