Our crane game novice heads to Benex for a training day with the Assist Crew.

We’re in the middle of a golden age of crane games in Japan. Though traditional video games continue to have a diminished presence at game centers, statistics show that the crane game industry more than doubled between 2013 and 2024, growing by 120 percent in that time frame.

A lot of this is thanks to the diverse array of prizes that modern crane games offer. Plushies and figures of popular characters remain some of the most sought-after items, thanks to Japan’s multi-generational fandom population where everyone from little kids to mature adults has a series or two that they’re fond of. Today’s crane games are also often stocked with candies, chocolates, and other snack foods, and even practical things like cleaning supplies and other sundry household goods, all waiting to be won by players willing to part with 100 yen (approximately US$0.65) per chance.

▼ A crane game with electric water kettles as the prize…

▼ …and another with high-end facial skin care packs.

With crane games a bigger deal than ever, they’ve been catching the eye of our Japanese reporter Natsuno Futon more and more. There’s just one problem though…well, actually two, which is that Natsuno doesn’t have the luck or skill to consistently win at crane games.

The luck part we can’t help her with, since the blessings of Japan’s get-idol-concert-tickets shrine don’t transfer to crane games, as far as we can tell. There is a path, though, for Natsuno to improve her crane game technique, and that path led her to Benex.

▼ Benex’s Kawasaki branch has 387 crane games.

Benex is a chain of all-crane game arcades, with five branches in Tokyo’s neighboring prefectures of Kanagawa, Chiba, and Saitama. The chain wisely realizes that if players aren’t winning, they’ll stop playing, and so it takes a couple of extra steps to up visitors’ chances of going home with a prize. For example, at the Benex that Natsuno visited in the city of Kawasaki (just south of Tokyo), they have a dedicated free-to-play crane game that visitors can use for practice.

But there are skills in life that are hard to acquire though self-taught methods, so Benex also has a team of employees designated as the “Assist Crew,” who’ll give you personal, on-the-spot advice as you try to win prizes from the machines.

While it’s common for arcades in Japan to have their staff reposition crane game items upon request from customers, the Assist Crew goes a few steps beyond that, as they’ll aid you in forming specialized strategies such as figuring out where the center of gravity is for a specific item, rather than just leaving you to flail around on your own after they position the prize.

So with Benex’s extra level of support, how much could our relatively inexperienced Natsuno win with a budget of 5,000 yen? There was only one way to find out, so she filled a cup with coins and got to playing.

With her Assist Staff assistant by her side, Natsuno started off with what’s called a hashiwatashi, or “bridge-passing,” type of machine, with boxes of sweet potato snacks.

Here you need to use the claw to move the prize around so that it falls between the slats of the rack it’s resting on top of. Obviously, it helps to start off with the staff positioning it such that you won’t need to shift things around too much to get it to drop.

But what was really helpful was the Assist Crew’s insight into exactly how the prize’s shape and distribution of weight was going to make it swing and sway depending on where Natsuno grabbed it with the claw.

Armed with this knowledge, she was able to win the box of sweets in just three tries!

Sticking with the same type of machine, Natsuno next decided to try for one of those facial packs she’d had her eye on since entering the building.

This time, the Assist Crew even demonstrated the best grabbing point for her, with the employee grabbing the pack on their very first try. When it was Natsuno’s turn, she couldn’t quite match that performance, but with repositioning and advice between tries, she won the prize on attempt number five.

With someone coaching her step by step, Natsuno began to see winning the prizes not as a purely luck-based game of chance, but something where she could influence the odds through skillful strategy. Filled with a new sense of confidence and fun, next she decided to go for a big Monchichi plushie that was waiting inside a conventional claw-type crane game.

This turned out to be tougher (the staff had told her that the hashiwatashi-type machines are generally the easiest to win at).

But again, with the Assist Crew helping her fine-tune her approach…

…Natsuno won her Monchichi in 10 tries. That still works out to just 1,000 yen, which would be a really good bargain for something this size if you were buying it at a regular store.

Of course, as we’ve covered before, crane games are not vending machines, and there’s never any guarantee of winning a prize (well, almost never). Try as she might, Natsuno couldn’t grab the lucky bag from this hook-type machine, and since she didn’t seem to be getting much closer, even with the Assist Crew’s assistance, after a few tries she decided to move on to different machines, so as not to blow her whole budget just to come up empty-handed.

So instead, she focused her newly developed talents on the machines containing things like cocoa milk drink powder…

…somen noodles…

…and toilet paper.

So what was her total haul?

● 1 big Monchichi plushie
● 1 crate of sweet potato chips
● 1 Kiku Masamune facial skincare pack
● 1 crate of soup pasta
● 1 12-roll pack of toilet paper
● 1 pack of Milk Make cocoa drink powder
● 1 bag of croissants

Considering that she was starting from zero in terms of specialized knowledge or techniques, Natsuno is very happy with what she came home with from her 5,000-yen experiment. Really, there’s just one problem, and it has to do with her Monchichi.

As adorable as it is, Natsuno has two young daughters, so she’s keeping the Monchichi hidden until she’s got another similarly sized plushie, so that each of the kids can get a present from Mom. So maybe she’ll be back at the arcade soon to try for another one…

…and also maybe to get one of those fireworks packs she wanted too.

Location information
Benex (Kawasaki branch) / ベネクス（川崎店）
Address: Kanagawa-ken, Kawasaki-shi, Kawasaki-ku, Kokkan-dori 4-8-3
住所　神奈川県川崎市川崎区鋼管通4丁目8-3
Open 10 a.m.-midnight (weekdays), 9 a.m.-midnight (weekends, holidays)
Website

Related: Benex location list
Photos ©SoraNews24
● Want to hear about SoraNews24’s latest articles as soon as they’re published? Follow us on Facebook and Twitter!
[ Read in Japanese ]