A man was in Japan. He found two Sonic The Hedgehog games, one of which also doubles as a popcorn machine. He goes on about them in quite a long-winded fashion, but it’s OK as there are pretty photos of Sonic to look at as well.

THE INTRODUCTION:
“Hi, I found two old Sonic arcade games last month when I was in Osaka, so I took some photos and video to upload for the sake of making myself feel like I did something worthwhile on the internet, once. Judging by the way things have been going recently, if I send this information to you in an overly-detailed email, Kotaku will make a post about it next week.”

“Neither machine was really much of a game, but they had screens and you could control Sonic, so for lack of a better phrase, I’ll call them ‘Sonic arcade games’. The first ‘game’ I came across was in Tennoji Zoo, and was called the ‘Segasonic Popcorn Shop’.”

“It’s really just a clever blend of an arcade game and a vending machine. You’re really paying for hot popcorn rather than the game, but I was much more interested in the strange Sonic game than my dry, disappointing snack.”

“If I remember correctly (it was a month ago, so surely I can be forgiven for forgetting minor details), you play as Sonic, trying to deliver popcorn to the customer. Robotnik, however, is a dick, and tried to stop Sonic by placing him on a treadmill. You have to make Sonic run faster than the treadmill, so he can jump off the end and deliver the popcorn. You have to make Sonic run by turning the wheel on the front of the machine as fast as you can.

“The machine I was playing was outside, and the wheel had rusted to fuck, so it made an incredible high-pitched screeching noise as I turned it faster. This only attracted the attention of surrounding Zoo visitors, and made me feel quite uncomfortable in the children’s area of the park.”

“The machine lets you choose from Salt, Butter and Curry flavour popcorn. It was quite a hot day, so I thought butter would likely be the safest option. I don’t know how correct I was, but the butter popcorn tasted like shit, and made my hands really greasy, so I wouldn’t recommend it.”

“The machine also advertised a wonderful Sonic and Tails popcorn tub, so I was really sick when I received my crappy popcorn in an Anpanman tub.”

“A few days later, I went to Abenobashi and visited a large shopping center, which I think was called the “Abenobashi Store” (if anyone’s desperate to find these machines, it was opposite Abenobashi Station). The roof had an outdoor arcade, where I found “Waku Waku Sonic Patrol Car”. This comes in the form of police car, which reminded me of the 20p Postman Pat rides that you used to find in Tesco. Luckily, the machine is big enough for two fully-grown foreigners.

“After the slight embarrassment of playing the popcorn machine in Tennoji Zoo, I made my friend play this one, as I recorded the screen. Since I recorded gameplay this time, I won’t bother detailing the rather basic top-down driving game. The whole machine starts swaying in time to the Green Hill Zone music that plays once you start driving.

“To carry on detailing disappointments with the machines, the steering wheel didn’t work this time, so the game couldn’t be played properly. We didn’t really want to look like paedophiles much longer though, so the fact that the game was broken gave us just the incentive we needed to leave.”

“If you’re considering whether it’s worth travelling to Osaka to play these as-good-as-unreleased Sonic games, I can tell you this – it’s no, and to be quite honest, you’re a bit of a sad prick for thinking about it.”