Motion control isn’t just invading the home gaming market- unique motion controllers are the latest fad in Japanese arcades, too. These games don’t use Move, Kinect, or even Wii like devices, they use less “traditional” motion controllers. The latest game on the scene is The Tablecloth Hour, which is currently undergoing location testing at various locales in Tokyo. It doesn’t actually take an hour to play, but it does involve a tablecloth. The game allows Japanese arcade-goers to be smooth and live out the kinds of scenes that populate old cartoons–the ones with suave guys pulling tablecloths quickly from underneath dishes without upsetting the table setting.
The game uses a vertically-oriented monitor, and below it sits a platform with a red cloth and a warning that reads “beware of broken objects.” Tablecloth Hour costs the standard arcade price of 100 Yen per play (about $1) and supports two levels of difficulty, normal and realistic. Normal allows players to fail up to three times, but realistic mode will end the game after a single failure. Players have to defeat five people famed for their tablecloth pulling skills.
