‘I want to play this game so much’: Maimai arcade video game craze draws University of California student to Hong Kong, and she isn’t alone
- Li Ziyang, a student from China at the University of California, picked an exchange programme in Hong Kong because it lets her play Japanese arcade game Maimai
- The rhythm game has plenty of fans in Asia, with queues forming at Hong Kong arcades to play it. One gamer has spent nearly US$1,300 playing it in 18 months
In a dimly lit basement arcade in Hong Kong’s Central financial district, Lu Ziyang, 21, is tapping relentlessly at a glowing video-game machine armed with little more than headphones and a pair of gloves.
Born in Tianjin, northeast China, she was studying sociology at the University of California, Davis in the United States when she decided to do an exchange programme at the University of Hong Kong. The main reason she came to Hong Kong, she says, was so she could play a Japanese video game called Maimai.
“I just want to play this game so much,” she says.
First released in 2012 and developed by Japanese gaming giant Sega, Maimai is a series of rhythm games in the same vein as previous smash hits Guitar Hero and Dance Dance Revolution. Today, gamers around the region still can’t get enough of it.
As with those games, players have to react to visual prompts that appear based on the selection of music. For Maimai, the prompts scatter and sparkle rhythmically across a circular touch screen affixed to a glowing white box.
