Wellington gamers can now enjoy the popular arcade rhythm game Maimai DX, after Timezone Courtenay Place opened the game to the public on Friday.
Maimai is perhaps best known for its resemblance to a front-load washing machine—a fact that some of the game’s early advertising leaned into. The joke went as far as a marketing collaboration between Sega and Sharp for one of the latter’s new washing machines, and a Maimai concert/fan festival in 2014 was officially known as Laundry Festival.
But underneath the laundry jokes, Maimai is a game that’s found remarkable popularity throughout Asia and Australia for its simple concept, beginner-friendliness, high skill ceiling, and wide selection of music. Like all rhythm games, the basic idea is that you press inputs in time to music, according to cues on a screen. In this case, it’s a round touchscreen with eight big buttons around the size, and inputs combine a mixture of hitting those buttons and tapping and sliding fingers across the screen.
It’s a recipe for a whole lot of fun, whether you’re a casual player looking to enjoy a unique style of play that you can’t get at home, or you’re on the grind to master the game’s hardest challenges. You’ll get some incidental exercise, too, because Maimai sure does make your arms move.
Maimai has been gradually rolling out to arcades across Aotearoa in the last couple of years. Auckland got the first few machines (as usual), and more recently, we’ve seen the game pop up in Christchurch (Timezone Riccarton) and Hamilton (Timezone at The Base). With the arrival of Maimai DX at Courtenay Place, Wellingtonians can finally get in on the action. A heads up, though: I hear the queues can get long …
