‘A portal to a different world’: a gamer’s guide to visiting Japan

Whether you enter the big green pipe to Super Nintendo World, or want to rummage through rare games in Tokyo’s Electric Town, Japan is a video game paradiseThe experience of travelling in Japan is simultaneously overwhelming and freeing. The world feels bigger out there, gilded by how mainstream video game culture is in comparison with the west. It doesn’t feel like a subculture; it is ordinary. For example, I walked into a FamilyMart for a snack one afternoon, and found a Legend of