This year hasn’t gotten off to a great start for arcade enthusiasts with the Brooklyn Games & Arcade on the verge of shutting down in March while a legendary Japanese game center closed its doors for good.
The iconic a-cho amusement arcade in Kyoto shuttered completely at the end of January, and said closure was also threatening to take away more than 20 years of fighting game history along with it.
Last month, we discussed the immenent deletion of all of a-cho’s YouTube content across multiple channels that equated to over 10,000 videos.
An overwhelming majority of them are connected to fighting games and tournaments with footage dating back to at least 2002.
The first a-cho Battle Movie channel was set to be deleted in just a few days on February 9 holding 2,500 videos alone, and it looked like it was really about to disappear up until this past week.
A now former a-cho worker / manager posted about their deletion at the start of the year with chibax7jp claiming the removal was being done in case of video rights issues and the staff no longer having control over the content.
About the YouTube channel
a-cho will close and the staff responsible for managing the channel will no longer have any authority over it.
In addition, the rights to manage video material that belongs to the manufacturer cannot be transferred to a third party.Please understand pic.twitter.com/BiIR4ctu22— へらちょんぺ (@chibax7jp) January 3, 2025
“About the YouTube channel, a-cho will close and the staff responsible for managing the channel will no longer have any authority over it. In addition, the rights to manage video material that belongs to the manufacturer cannot be transferred to a third party. Please understand.”
This confused many fighting game fans because decades-old videos of Street Fighter Alpha 3 and the like shouldn’t pose any problems and left the community scrambling for a solution or place to archive the probably 100,000+ hours of footage.
There were no real updates about trying to save the channels from chibax7jp until the arcade had already closed, and luckily it seems to be some good news.
Announcement
YouTube channel “a-cho GAME”https://t.co/SPzLAj3ltr
It has been decided that the operation of a-cho will be transferred to Daiichi Bussan Co., Ltd.
Therefore, this channel will remain
Please continue to watch.— へらちょんぺ (@chibax7jp) February 1, 2025
“Announcement: YouTube channel “a-cho GAME” It has been decided that the operation of a-cho will be transferred to Daiichi Bussan Co., Ltd. Therefore, this channel will remain. Please continue to watch,” reads chibax7jp’s recent post.
The same also goes for the a-cho Battle Movie channel as well, so they’ll both be under Daiichi Bussan that operated the arcade (and hopefully means they’re here to stay for good as an archive of a different era).
Although they hadn’t posted regular videos in years, the Battle Movie page still streamed on the regular tournaments of Garou: Mark of the Wolves, Melty Blood, Chaos Breaker, and more until the arcade closed.
Those a-cho pages also serve as a hub of classic fighting game history where almost any major game new or old has been featured as well as probably most big Japanese players at one point or another.
— へらちょんぺ (@chibax7jp) February 6, 2025
Whether it be classic Street Fighter, Tekken, Dead or Alive, Melty Blood, Fist of the North Star, Guilty Gear, King of Fighters or even Jackie Chan: Fists of Fire, fans all around the world have continued watching and discovering these videos, events and matches.
And hopefully it’ll stay that way for years to come.
The arcade of a-cho itself may be gone, but it leaves behind a legacy that can never really be matched, especially when it comes to the content they’ve thankfully been able to preserve for decades in some cases.
So let’s pour one out for a-cho one last time and relive some of their best moments together.
Source: Event Hubs
