Funny / Retro Game Master

Given that Arino's a comedian, funny cmoments are to be highly expected.

• In the first attempt at playing the ludicrously hard Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels, Arino makes it past level 8-2's "Triangle Paratrooper Jump" (Where you need to time a jump on a Paratrooper just right such that you hit a block to open a way to the last part of the level (in the form of a vine), needless to say, this took up a fairly large chunk of the challenge) only to miss the last jump, just centimetres away from the end level flag. The pure inhuman scream that Arino emits is hilarious.
  • Before starting on Lost Levels, however, he's shown attempting the original game, and failing to do the infinite 1-ups trick. After repeated failures of it, the episode cuts to two-and-a-half hours later where...he's still trying to get infinite 1-ups.
  • During the second attempt at The Lost Levels, a young genius gamer named Kazuki Akita, along with his father and younger brother, visit the show to help Arino clear the game.^note (Kazuki had also sent the show a videotape showing the GameCenter CX crew an easier way to clearing the Triangle Paratoopa Jump) The funniest part comes upon reaching World 8-4, when Kazuki asks Arino if he used any warps. When the Kacho admits that he had, the genius gamer immediately hit the reset button, much to Arino's shock.
• During Yuuyu's Quiz de GO! GO!, Noda got a little too excited in saying "GO! GO!". Arino's reaction shows that the comedian himself didn't expect that to happen.
  Arino: Now I'm pissed off! He's trying to take control from me!
• In Lemmings, after figuring out that you can't save all of the Lemmings if you use some as blockers, he starts naming the unfortunate lemmings after ADs. This got silly right about the time he was screaming "TOJIMA!"
  • Then, at the end, he started extending the challenge past what was called his "Last Lemmings." The name evolved into stuff like "True Last Lemmings" before finally winning on "Return of Last Lemmings."
  • Arino himself wasn't letting go of Lemmings, to the point he was a little bit too eager to continue and really wanted to do it.
  Arino: Aw man, this is too much! I wanna do it! I wanna do it! I haven't said that this much since I got married. I wanna do it!
• While playing Balloon Fight as Satoru Iwata watches, the Nintendo president explains to him how things in the game work, such as the fish who is always moving around the screen and so may or may not appear when the player goes too low. He then says he knows those things because he programmed the game.
  • Iwata later tries to catch 20 balloons in a row. He does well but fails, and thus Arino is the one doing snarky praises to the game's maker: "Well done, sir! You need luck to stay up. Nice! That was very clever."
• In the Parappa The Rapper episode, Arino dons some hip hop style clothes◊ for the final stage.
  • Made funnier when Arino and the AD awkwardly end up trying to rap a conversation.
  Arino rapping: Famicom Wars in stores soon! Famicom Wars...!
• During the Dig Dug II episode, Arino goes to a toy store in which he plays slot car racing with the staff. Near the end, his car flips over and... is pushed to victory by the second car. The third car then also jumps over to push them.
• In the Punch-Out!! episode, AD Emoto offers to fight Soda Popinski, with Arino serving as his "second". Every time Mac gets knocked down, Arino throws in the towel (an actual towel that at one point covers the TV). Emoyan ultimately loses by TKO, and just to further rub it in, Arino laughs like Popinski.
• Ghouls 'N Ghosts: Arino makes it to the stage 1 boss much sooner than previously (contrast to Ghosts 'N Goblins, where it took him 5 hours to do the same), and cheers that he's about to clear the stage... only to get a glimpse of the huge boss and immediately run away screaming.
• The live Takeshi's Challenge challenge featured Inoue repeatedly doing an impression of Takeshi himself, much to everyone's chagrin. Then, during the karaoke part, Nakayama tells Inoue and Arino that all they have to do is sing really loudly. You can guess the result.
• During the journey for the northernmost arcade game in Japan, we're told they didn't find any games in one town, so they'll keep moving north. Arino has this silly yet sympathetic look of great despair, which is how anyone would feel when visiting malls and stores in search of arcades and game kiosks, only to find none.
• Arino plays an assorted set of challenges from NES Remix with three children, showing how exhilarating that kind of multiplayer can be (such as when he taunts the kids when they lose) while also serving as an effective advertisement for it.
• The Game Center CX in Asia episode features Super Mario Kart for the challenge. He isn't able to clear the objective of finishing every course, so he plays the usual 5-round match against the staff. The last match is against now-director Inoue, who is on par with his skill (read: low), on Rainbow Road. Even the narrator foreshadows the chaos that predictably ensues.
• The Game Center CX in the USA special features the Musée Mécanique, an arcade in San Francisco full of antique arcade machines, some of which, are quite strange to foreigners like Arino and the staff. One of them is called "Laffin' Sal", which, true to her name, laughs when you put a coin in. Another machine depicts a war-torn desert that, when a coin is inserted, starts a small fan that blows on a tattered station wagon inside the case. This completely baffles Arino and he makes a request to the owner to increase the wind speed.
  • Later on, when Arino reaches Los Angeles, the narrator makes a big deal about The City of Angels, calling it "a city that represents the entire country" and questions what kind of arcades/game centers they have. Where do Arino and the staff go to? Maytag Coin Laundry. A laundromat.
• On the DVD cut of the Ninja Gaiden episode, as time runs short on the first day of the challenge, Toujima warns Arino that "this is no laughing matter," to remind him of his schedule. Arino answers by making a fart sound, instantly destroying the serious mood Toujima was trying to set.
• The Super Mario Land challenge. Kibe forgets the script for the episode, and the first part of the episode is a massive running gag about it. Later, Arino decides to call Kibe, who reveals that he completely forgot it because Takahashi was distracted during their meeting. In addition, Kibe spoils the length of the game to Arino, followed by a blunt "Wait. Was I not supposed to say that?" Everyone's reaction is priceless.
  • He did finish writing the script (or so he claims) on the second time Arino called him, then is asked why it hasn't reached him yet. Kibe's answer? He was looking for a fax machine to send the script through. Of course, not believing in Kibe, Arino asks the crew how he usually sends the script, and they say it's via e-mail. Arino calls Kibe out on using such an excuse and expecting it to work on him. And what is the icing on the cake? The script DOES arrive, but at the end of the episode, they offer to re-shoot the opening.
• In the The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido, AD Tsuruoka sings lyrics set to the melody of the stage's music. When he gets to a certain line, he starts singing a little too high. Arino stops him and mocks him with the same high pitched line and as a result the staff won't let him live this one down.
  • The story doesn't end up stopping there. When doing challenges at the Budokan nearly six years, Arino is promised big surprises for each cleared challenge. Upon defeating the first Red Arremer in Ghosts 'n Goblins, Tsuruoka appears on stage and starts singing the song again, this time much improved.
• In the Super Spy Hunter challenge, Arino is struggling near the end of the game, so Takahashi informs him of a code that nets him 20 lives. What he doesn't tell him is that he has to earn them by playing a Pong clone called Hyper Tennis. Beating the computer gives him the 20 lives, failing the minigame changes his life count to zero.
• During the Super Mario Bros 30th Anniversary Special at NicoNico Chokaigi 2015, Arino challenges two Japanese Let's Players to Super Mario Maker levels he made himself. When they sit down, Arino questions them as to why they're both wearing masks, despite the fact they're not actually sick. He adds an additional bet saying if they lost, he could unmask them. He then decides to join them by putting on a mask as well, only to reveal it's a Captain America mask.
• When Arino calls for an extension in the Intelligent Qube episode, he also states he'd take the game home to practice for the next two weeks in-between recording sessions. Come two weeks later, he has quite the story. First, he misplaces his PS1 so he ends up downloading the game from the PSN Store on his PSP. Then, after taking a nap, he accidentally knocks it off a table and onto the floor, effectively breaking it. He ends up buying a second PSP and purchases the game again. All of this just to beat a 20-year-old puzzle game.
• The Quiz Nanairo Dreams challenge starts out as "Quiz Game meets Tokimeki Memorial" but eventually turns into "Arino and the staff looking at girls in swimsuits".
  • Later, former ADs Matsui, Nakayama, and Emoto show up to give their support. Arino asks them who their favorite girl is, with Emoto responding with a girl who isn't in the game, revealing he recently got married. The nice tender moment is immediately shattered with Arino saying "Never mind that, pick one of these [girls]!"
  • Near the start of the game, he comes across a little boy who works with one of the girls, Saki, at the Earth Defense Squad. Arino mocks the boy's runny nose, followed by his game character doing the same thing. Arino claims he and Capcom, who developed the game, have the same sense of humor. The fact that it happens twice while meeting the same boy makes it even more hilarious.
• In the Gradius episode, after having difficulties on stage three, AD Takahashi informs him of the game's continue code (down, up, B, A, B, A, B, A, B, A). Upon his next death, Arino forgets the code, forcing him to look at it written on the whiteboard behind him, missing the six second time limit to enter it.
  • Upon the next death after that, he puts in the code as normal... but then adds an extra "B A", thinking he was off by two button presses. The game promptly kicks him back to the title screen.
  • Later on, Takahashi somberly informs Arino that this would be his last time assisting him as AD, as the episode is the season finale. Arino replies "Yessss!" under his breath.
    • Come a week later after Arino is given an extension, along with forgetting how to activate Vic Viper's shields, he forgets that it will be Takahashi's last episode.
• In the Vietnam special, Arino visits a Vietnamese family at their house, a series first. The two brothers, Xuan and Minh, show them their computers, where Xuan begins to play a Chinese FPS. Arino then takes a turn and gets sniped over and over by another player. This causes Xuan to facepalm.
  • During the challenge portion, playing The Return Of Ishtar, he accidentally starts a new game two hours in. This causes AD Yanai to step in and assist Arino in getting back to his original spot. Due to the unusual play style (you control two characters using the D-Pad and the buttons separately), Yanai controls one of the characters while sharing Arino's controller, which starts a whole slew of Ho Yay moments between the two, usually started by Arino.
  • After having difficulty with a room for over an hour, Arino decides to call up the game's creator, Masanobu Endou, to complain about the difficulty. After greeting him and revealing who he is, a crowd of people can be heard laughing on the other end of the phone. Turns out Arino interrupted the class he teaches at a university. After giving him some tips, he leads his class in saying "Hang in there Chief Arino!" Arino then complains that there's too many male voices in his class.
    • He then makes his way to a room Endou claimed would help him get to a shortcut, a room labeled "Dead End". When he arrives in the room, a small hallway leads to a man at a work desk slouched over, dead, with no way out. He then calls up Endou again to confront him about the room. Turns out that man is Endou himself and using Ki's magic on the body warps him to another room. He then tells him he chose the name "Dead End" not just because it's a seemingly dead end, but because there's also a "Dead Endou" in the room. That's right, the room doubles as a pun.
• In the Kung Fu Heroes challenge, Arino finds a warp room not long after he begins playing, which is followed up by him finding another warp room a few stages later. Taking the second warp lands him about halfway through the entire game, to which Arino claims this could be the fastest completion of a game ever and notices that "Inoue's looking a bit pale" at the revelation. This ends up biting him in the butt later due to the sharp increase in difficulty when taking such long warps, eventually causing him to run out of time, labeling the challenge a failure.
  • Realizing Arino might beat the game that quickly, the crew decide to film them eating an authentic Chinese cuisine for lunch just in case they need to pad out the rest of the episode, like they did with the Ninja Spirit challenge. After they realize that not much is happening as they eat, they nix the idea and they cut ahead to Arino returning to the game.
• Arino's odds were stacked against him for the Wizards & Warriors challenge. To start off, Arino had to start the challenge a few minutes past noon due to a prior engagement. Then he's told the person who playtested the game, a female staffer who didn't play games that much, managed to beat the game in 6 hours. Arino, wanting to best her, tries to beat the game in less than 6 hours instead of his normal 12 hours.
• During the arcade trip in the Crazy Climber challenge, Arino and crew visit a cafe with tabletop arcade machines as tables. Unfortunately, only one of them is turned on, Tetris. When Arino finishes playing, he's told that they don't have enough footage for the segment. Hoping to pad for time, he has Kibe play a round, and even then, they still don't have enough footage.
  • During the challenge proper, he discovers a pair of joysticks that come with the game after he complains about his thumbs hurting due to the weird control scheme (using the D-Pads of both controllers for each arm). He initially does well with them, but they come off rather easily, causing him to abandon them.
    • Much later, he decides to try them again, this time taping the controllers to the table so the peripherals stay in place. He manages to do much better, but once he reaches the mandatory bonus stage, he can't remove the controllers from the table due to the bonus stage changing the control scheme to that of a standard platformer. This forces Arino to play the bonus stage at an awkward angle, causing him to get a game over.
  • When Arino reaches stage five, he gets a special unexpected visitor; the building's window washer! When he attempts to show him the game he's playing, the window washer cracks up, Arino saying "This is you right now!"
• During the Shikoku special, Arino comes across a unique vending machine that has a chance to dispense some really valuable prizes, from consoles to HD cameras. Arino tries it out and is rewarded with what looks like a brand new iPhone. In reality, it's a gag prize; attempting to turn on the phone gives you an electric shock, much to Arino's amusement when he goads Inoue and Kibe to turn it on. The fact Arino himself was mostly unfazed by it when he tried it only added to the hilarity. Later on during the challenge portion, Arino tries it on a staff member who didn't attend the trip and former AD Toujima, who was visiting the set that day.
  • Later during the Shikoku special he gets yet another of those prank iPhone, Arino asks Inoue to try it out, showing it is not the same because it's actually a led light. Inoue fiddles around with it for a bit and learns the hard way that it does deliver a shocking surprise if you press a certain button, causing him to almost fall off.
  • Turns out Kibe is a bit of a germophobe, as a trip to an aquarium turns into a laugh riot for Arino when he tries to get Kibe to join him at the touching pool, who is grossed out at touching a sea urchin and a sea cucumber, with Kibe claiming it looked like something out of Resident Evil.
  • On the way to said aquarium, Arino passes by a random group of middle school girls, who squee very loudly upon seeing him. One of them even tries to run over to him, which Arino immediately responds with a command to stay put. When she obeys, he comments that they've been raised well.
• In the special Gamecenter CX - Arino's Challenge episode, one of the challenges out of the many that the staff and the IndiesZero team gave him was to make a pact with GameGuadia. Turns out he has already completed that challenge in Story Mode, and was far into the game on freeplay mode, but just enough so he could clear this challenge a second time. Arino felt a bit embarrassed that they found out he got hooked so easily on RPGs.
  • Another challenge was to beat Rally King SP's challenges in the story mode using the challenger's game card, because the challenger couldn't do it himself and really wanted to play the next game. To put this in perspective: it's like an AD challenges Arino to beat a game that they couldn't beat it by themselves, only for Arino to show them why he is the "Retro Game Master".
• Arino clears Densha de Go! 64 with just 4 in-game seconds to spare and is asked to use them to promote TomoShibi: Choshi Steam Train, a film he's played a role in. The result:
  "The movie, TomoShibi: Choshi Steam Train - The 6.4km Miracle, be sure—"
  PROMOTION TIME OVER
• As Arino plays Super Godzilla, he tries to finish off the fights in a flashy way like a flame breath or Super Beam and, much to his disappointment, the game instead gives him common, less-flashy attacks like a headbutt, body slam or a tail thwack.
  • It's taken to ridiculous levels when he finishes off Bagan with a headbutt. While he beats the game, he's thoroughly disappointed with how he succeeded. The AD makes a bonus video at the end to show off the Super Beam attack he wanted to end the game with.
• Gamecenter CX: The Movie, despite being a movie with typical school romance drama and recycling clips from the show and specials here and there, but even then it has moments to evoke laughter. Plenty of them. A few ones are:
  • Daisuke's numerous Imagine Spot, all of which involves him looking like a hero straight out of Dragon Quest.
  • The reason Daisuke falls in love is because of a girl who's familiar with games who has been looking for a certain game about bombs and avoiding enemies in narrow hallways, and she couldn't remember the name. Daisuke assumes it is Mighty Bomb Jack and she rolls with it. Turns out that no, it's not that, it is Bomberman.
  • The Imagine Spot of Delinquent Abe makes him look like a hot-blooded yakuza or Riki.
  • When confronting Abe to get his Mighty Bomb Jack cassette back, Daisuke imagines beating everyone up like a kung-fu master, before beckoning Abe to fight him. Then calls himself out on not only the sheer absurdity of that but also that he doesn't know kung-fu.
  • Abe pausing the game to gesture Daisuke to take over:
  Abe: PAAAAUSEEE...
  • During the post-credits scene, Daisuke is walking alone in a street, until Arino comes out of the same mysterious store that earlier took Daisuke into the future to play Mighty Bomb Jack with Arino in a special event, and gives the boy a bouquet for his participation, much to his confusion.
• In early 2017 Arino challenged Marchen Maze, and surely mentioned trump^note the Japanese term for Playing Cards, which was a kind of enemy he encountered often through this "Alice in Wonderland"-inspired game a lot and became a running gag given the political state of the United States at the time. Then it culminated with one line:
  Arino: I HATE TRUMP! No, no, I don't mean that!
• During the Captain Tsubasa 2 challenge, Arino has Wakashimazu as the goalkeeper on his team, and at one point, he does his infamous Triangle Jump technique to catch a ball...only for it to go the other way. Arino ends up lampshading this moment.
  Arino: KIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEE—oh, no, wrong side.
• The segment 2P Play Without Humanity & Honor yields this from whoever loses in this AD VS Arino in Mario Bros., as they are required to pretend suicide with a toy gun that gives a shock. This works with everyone, except Nakayama, who held the trigger down with the toy gun still zapping loudly against his head but he didn't react at all. When Arino tests on himself, thinking it ran out of juice, he gets to be the one providing the reaction for the segment.
• During Wing of Madoola, Arino decides to call Kibe and asks him where he thinks he is. By deducing Arino's skill level, and the difficulty of the game, he assumes Arino was at Stage 3, 4 hours in. Arino calls him out on his faith in him and hangs up right away.
  • In the same challenge, due to a continue fail, Nakayama gives him a sticky note to remind himself to hold Select then press Start to continue. Arino proceeds to write a note to Nakayama and stick it to the back of the TV.
  "You are dead meat, Nakayama!"
  • After yet another continue fail, Nakayama comes and sticks a "Continue Check" order to the whiteboard. So whenever he's about to continue:
  Nakayama: Continue check.
  Abe: Hold Select.
  Arino: Start.
  Nakayama: Stage Select.
  Arino: Going up.
  • After many Continue Checks, Nakayama gets so exhausted that he stutters "Stage Sel...ect."
  • When it seemed Arino got the hang of it (and they stopped doing Continue Checks), he just then says that he almost forgot to hold Select, prompting the Continue Check to be started again.
  • Once the challenge is over, Nakayama randomly calls a "Continue Check.", Arino plays along until he realizes he doesn't need to do it anymore and questions the point of that.