Day 87 (81 days left) of my study abroad program in Baguio, Philippines.
Every international student in Baguio must visit SM City Baguio (SM Mall) at least once. It is no exaggeration to say that it has everything you need, including supermarkets, food courts, various specialty stores, and movie theaters. One of the interesting discoveries in SM Mall was a game center.
Aren’t you interested in how game arcades are like in other countries? Even international students may want to go there at least once. Here are some game centers in Baguio that even international students might want to visit at least once. As an added bonus, I will also introduce a shortcut to SM Mall, which is surprisingly difficult to reach due to its steep slopes.
Shortcut to SM Mall that Google map doesn’t tell you
SM Mall is located at the top of a hill, and it is difficult to get there on foot, or it may take a long time to get there by cab due to traffic congestion. Although it looks close, it is surprisingly difficult to get there. However, if you are coming from the Burnham Park area, you can take a few shortcuts.
First, walk east of Burnham Park, along the road where the skating rink and other activities are located, with the archery activities on the side, to where it connects to Harrison Road.
Turn right along this road as you come to a busy stretch of traffic. Turn right and then continue straight along the road until you see Cordilleras University on the other side of the road.
You will soon see a multi-level pedestrian bridge, which you can use to cross to the other side of the road. After getting off the pedestrian bridge, go in the right hand direction. You will see many people heading to SM Mall around here, so you should be able to reach it even if you follow behind them.
It will take less than 5 minutes to reach the SM Mall’s multi-story parking lot. From here, visitors on foot can also enter the mall. Actually, this entrance is on the 5th basement floor of the mall floor, from where you can take the escalator and skip 5 floors to reach the mall.
That’s all there is to it. If you are planning to enter SM Mall from the Burnham Park side instead of the Session Road side, please refer to the following information.
SM Mall Game Center
The top floor of SM Mall has many places to pass time for a long time, including an observation deck and a movie theater. On one of these floors, near the movie theater, there is a game arcade.
The facility is quite crowded on holidays, with everyone from small children to elderly people.
It is a UFO catcher, and there are about 20 of the same machine. I tried several times, but the arm is quite weak and there is no sign of getting it. I don’t think there was a single person in the building with a prize…
There are also shooting games and driving games such as Mario Kart. All of them are working properly, and the LCDs are clearly visible and can be played without any problems.
There are rhythm games played by hand and sound game types such as Dance Dance Revolution. I saw many players who were playing these games and were getting high scores with their skilled moves.
Medal games: For some reason, there seemed to be a high percentage of elderly people playing these games…? Maybe this area is similar to Japan.
Personally, I felt a sense of nostalgia to the max for this aircraft. It reminded me of the old days when I used to spin the roulette wheel as hard as I could at the local arcade. The jackpot prize here is a stuffed animal. There were also purikura and other things.
How to play and prize exchange system
In Japanese game arcades, you need to exchange cash for UFO catchers and arcade games, and medals for medal games, but here, all games are played with medals called tokens. The rate is 4 tokens for 20 pesos .
The rate is 4 tokens for 20 pesos (about ³), and each token is exchanged for a slightly lower price as the exchange amount increases. All games can be played at a relatively low price compared to the Japanese system.
Another crucial difference from the Japanese system is that you can get prizes for playing games. For some games, you can get tickets after playing. The tickets look like the picture below, and the next picture is a special machine for counting tickets.
And in the center of the arcade is a counter where all the prizes are lined up. There are various kinds of prizes such as stuffed animals, figures, toys, etc. Each prize has a number attached to it.
You may have noticed that each prize has a number attached to it. To win a prize, you need the number of tickets corresponding to this number, and it is common to find tickets for prizes in excess of 1,000 or 10,000.
When I played a little basketball game for about 5 minutes, I got about 10 tickets. Since this game was 3 tokens, how much time and money do I have to spend to get the prizes….
Summary
This time I introduced a game arcade in Baguio SM Mall in the Philippines. The facilities are well maintained, and those who haven’t visited a game center in a while will probably enjoy it.
Prices seem to be cheaper than in Japan, and it might be a good opportunity to start playing sound games and try to master them. Well, I think that many people come here only for the purpose of studying abroad, so it must be done in moderation. Also, if you have something to do in SM, please try to use the shortcut as well, by all means!