This article is based on visits made on Sunday, 30 March 2014 and Sunday, 13 November 2016.
Edit 2 October 2019: Updated to reflect the increase in Japan's national sales tax, and the replacement of certain activities.
Previously on Sekai Ichi,
I visited the Decks shopping mall in Odaiba. Another major attraction of Decks is Sega Joypolis, an indoor theme park and arcade. It reminds me of the similar DisneyQuest, which closed earlier this year in Orlando. There are other Joypolis locations in Osaka, Shanghai, and Qingdao, China.
Edit 11 June 2018: They have also owned another similar indoor park in Dubai, known as Sega Republic, but this has since closed and replaced by a different virtual-reality attraction.
Note that admission to the rides is separate from the admission to the park itself, which alone costs ¥800. Be sure to buy tickets from one of the ticket machines for the price of the ride you wish to get on. You could also buy a passport, which includes admission and unlimited rides on the day of purchase. It starts at ¥4,300, but goes down in price at certain points in the afternoon and evening.
It appears that somebody hit a jackpot on one of the crane games! Congratulations!
Some of the attractions in Joypolis are souped-up versions of Sega's arcade games, such as the "Initial D Arcade Stage 4" Limited attraction. Essentially a special version of their
Initial D arcade racing games, this one uses full-size cars on motion simulators. The white Toyota (centre) and yellow Mazda (right) are cars driven by main characters in the
Initial D manga & anime; I, on the other hand, got put into the blue Subaru (left). And won.
Edit: As of 2019, this attraction has been replaced by "Spicy Taxi", a different kind of motion-simulator ride where up to 4 guests take control of a tuk-tuk in a Southeast Asian-styled setting.
Not all of the rides in Joypolis are based on an arcade game. Halfpipe Tokyo, for example, riders rock back and forth along the titular halfpipe. There is some still kind of game element, but I wouldn't know, since I didn't manage to get on this one.
It's a Sega park, so naturally Sonic the Hedgehog and friends are the mascots of Joypolis, and feature in several of the attractions. In Sonic Athletics, you play track-and-field events as one of eight characters by running on a treadmill. I did this, and I'm embarrassed to say that it wiped me out, leaving me unable to explore the park further. But, that's what my return visit was for!
A tamer Sonic-themed attraction can be found in the form of this 3-D movie, "Night of the Werehog", where Sonic and Chip, his companion from
Sonic Unleashed, mess around with some ghosts out to chase them. There's not really any spoken dialogue in this 15-minute film, so that means no language barrier to worry about!
But Sonic's not the only video game icon represented in Joypolis! "Ace Attorney in Joypolis" is an attraction based on the courtroom visual-novel games published by Capcom, starring (and I'm using their English names here) defence attorney Phoenix Wright (right) and prosecutor Miles Edgeworth (left). In this attraction, guests can try their hand in solving one of three murder mysteries. Unfortunately, it is presented only in Japanese.
Joypolis also has a mascot of its own. Down on the first floor, there is a stage where "Lopit", the park's own virtual idol, performs periodically. If you've ever seen a "live" performance by Hatsune Miku, you've got the idea.
Due to the limited space, most of the thrill rides involve spinning the rider around in place. One example I rode on was "Storm-G", a bobsled racing ride which is like the Initial-D attraction described above, but spins side-to-side and upside-down during play. But there is a ride that gets to stretch its figurative legs, and that is the "Geki-on Live Coaster". It starts out slow, stopping every so often for the riders to play a button-pressing rhythm game. But halfway through, the car picks up speed and zooms about the place, doing a corkscrew roll above the main atrium and spinning wildly. The car spun so much that, when I rode it, it slid my glasses clean off my head! (Luckily it landed in the car and was in one piece when I managed to pick it up.)
As we leave Joypolis, we get to see autographs from a few celebrities who have visited in the past, such as Michael Jackson (upper-centre), Leonardo DiCaprio (lower-left), and the pop band Dreams Come True (right). Did you know that one of its members, Masato Nakamura, composed the music for the first two
Sonic the Hedgehog games?
Oh yeah, and my return visit coincided with the 20th anniversary of Joypolis Tokyo. Its longevity is an amazing feat when you consider that
out of the 8 Joypolis locations opened in Japan, all but this and the one in Osaka have closed due to low visitor numbers. (Another Joypolis branch still exists in Okayama, but now operates as a straight-up arcade instead of a theme park.) So congratulations on reaching 20 years, Tokyo Joypolis! May you have twenty more!
Hours: Open 10:00 AM - 10:00 PM. Admission ends 45 minutes before closing time. No regular closing days.
Costs: ¥800; attractions cost an additional ¥500-1,000 each. A Passport allowing use of unlimited attractions for the day costs ¥4,500 (¥3,500 after 5:00 PM, ¥3,000 after 8:00 PM).
Address: Decks Tokyo Beach 3F-5F, 1-6-1 Daiba, Minato-ku, Tokyo 〒130-0091
Access: 2 minutes from Odaiba Kaihin-koen station (Yurikamome line
(U06)), or 5 minutes from Tokyo Teleport station (Rinkai line
(R04)).
Directions: Joypolis is on the western end of Decks, opposite the aforementioned stations.
Read my article on Decks Tokyo Beach for directions to the mall itself. The entrance hall is on the 3rd floor, same as the Centre and Seaside Decks. Simply follow either promenade to the far side of the building to reach the entrance.
Website:
(English) (Japanese)
