Hirakata had another maze/game attraction which was a sequel of some sort? It was a colorful, lively affair – that I remember – with a lot of moving around and doing stuff.
The one great thing about these Japanese amusement park maze/games was that, win or lose, you almost always ended up getting some help from a very cute Japanese game hostess who guided you through the process of redeeming your points, or whatever. That's a win right there.
The really awesome news is that Hirakata has THREE proper dark rides: a totally charming one for the tiniest of patrons, a sci-fi shooter for the gamers, and then the dark ride I'm going to recreate, to the last detail, at my own personal mini-park some day.
The kiddie dark ride was circus-themed, and we almost missed it; Steve discovered it as we were on the way out (note the entrance pictured above; it's not far from Dolphin Paradise). I would imagine that the budget for this ride was about $10,000 American, but that's what made it so charming, in its humble, silly way.
Return of the Garg is the sci-fi/fantasy shooter, which offers alternating forms of targets. You pass through a room full of big, moving figures to bust a cap in, and them glide past a video screen and do battle with CG monsters, then another room of animatronics, then another video screen and so on. That was novel.
Is this guy above a Garg? Is he THE Garg? Where did he go and why did he return? So many unanswered questions. Anyway, RotG was filled with all kinds of weirdo Japanese-flavored alien beasts and bugs and mutant critters, so it wasn't bad at all.
Finally, we come to the ride that you cannot miss at Hirakata, a hallucinatory journey into some of the darker corners of Japan's collective psyche, or just some random meaningless crap, I don't know, anyway, let me say it again: CANNOT MISS.
These wacky characters on display above the entrance only hint at the copious what-the-effery waiting inside. I would guess that the details of these icons – the winking blue flame ghost, the one-eyed parasol guy, the cat geisha (or whatever they are supposed to be) – are culturally significant, but to uneducated gaijin like myself, they are wonderfully mystifying, as are so many of the details of the ride itself.
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