Big Picture Mode Nathan Brown reflects on a career-long bond with Japan

Industry issues given the widescreen treatment

I fell in love with Japan because it made me feel like I’d travelled to another planet: it’s science fiction made real

During the almost eight years I’ve been working on Edge, Japan trips have been a rare commodity. I joined the team at the peak of the 360 era, when western developers ruled the roost, and big Japanese publishers were struggling to catch up. So, if there was a trip overseas, it was almost always taking you to the US, and mostly the west coast. Yes, there’d be the odd bit of Canada, and a fair bit of Nordic action. But in my first six years on Edge, I went to Japan once. I just got back from my fourth trip in 18 months. Japanese game development is back.

Thank god. When I fell in love with Edge in the early 2000s it wasn’t the reportage on western games that drew me in; it was the unearthing of far-eastern curios. It was

Katamari and Rez, God Hand and Ryu Ga Gotoku. Games with an otherworldly quality that this grown-up, well-travelled mag had handpicked for me and me alone. It was a western magazine with, I felt, a Japanese soul.

As such it heartens me greatly to see Japan punching its weight again – not least because it gives me an excuse to go back. It’s changed a lot since I first went in 2005, when the only place you could reliably find an English speaker was your hotel, and as soon as you set foot outside you were on your own, with only your (meticulous) plan for the day and a Lonely Planet guidebook for company. Now English is spoken all over, and Google Maps, powered by a rented WiFi hotspot, will get you from door to door, right down to the train platform numbers.

That’s a good thing, though I’ll admit a little of the magic has gone. I fell in love with Japan because it made me feel like I’d travelled to another planet: it’s science fiction made real, an immaculate riot of neon, an impenetrable language written in a baffling alphabet (okay, series of alphabets), concentrations of far too many people in too-small spaces that work better than any city I’ve ever visited. And everyone’s so nice.

Yet it’s certainly changed. I remember walking into game stores in 2005 looking, for a laugh as much as anything, for a westerndeveloped game. One shop in Akihabara had a tiny little Xbox section with absurdly overpriced copies of Halo and the like. Now, outside Yodobashi Camera’s flagship game store in Shinjuku, Tokyo, a small display of

Spider-Man boxes sits beneath a TV screen showing footage of Detroit: Become Human. I walk inside, and the first thing I hear is English-language commentary from a demo pod running FIFA 18.

The shelves themselves tell a slightly different story – though there are still plenty of western games available – but much of the old mystique is gone, largely because worldwide releases are so common. You used to be able to walk in and buy the latest hot Japanese game months ahead of its western release. Now they’re probably already out at home, or soon to be, and in any case there’s nothing here that I can’t get from my sofa using Play-Asia credit and a Japanese PSN or eShop account. And don’t get me started on the exchange rate.

With the Akihabara retro stores long since cleared out by eBay scalpers – and prices having risen further to deter them – a videogame pilgrimage to Japan isn’t what it used to be. Most saddeningly of all, the arcade scene is really struggling. I remember walking into the basement of a Shinjuku Club Sega on a Friday night and seeing the place packed with young salarymen, their suit jackets slung over their shoulders, cigarettes dangling from mouths as they lined up to play fighting games. I went back there last month and found a handful of people playing Dissidia and Blazblue, and an awful lot of empty space. They had one Street

Fighter IV set-up in the whole place. I played three matches of Arcade mode, got bored and walked off.

The point of all this, I suppose, is that while Japan is healing from its 360-era woes, it still bears the scars. Yet there is still nowhere else quite like it, and the very fact that I’m often getting to go out there suggests that things are on the mend. My most recent trip was, chiefly, to interview Toshihiro Nagoshi, a former Edge columnist and as such a perfect fit for our 25th anniversary issue. As we left his office, out by the elevator, I saw a stack of magazines. Beneath a mountain of Dengeki PlayStations I saw a spine I recognised. Edge 255, The Witcher 3. My first cover story. It was too perfect. With a half-hearted apology I moved it to the top of the pile, then said my goodbyes. The west, I’m afraid, is still just about on top.