Explore Japan's Gaming Tourism With This Interactive Website

As an ode to Japan's 40-year history of gaming, All Nippon Airways has created a fun video game website where viewers can take a character through the ages, exploring new environments, obstacles, and collecting gaming info nuggets along the way.

'Game Chronicle' is a sweet yet polished production that combines antiquated Japanese cultural icons like Mt Fuji and the deer of Nara with its newer heritage of being the creative wellspring of the gaming world. The experience takes you from the 1980s to the 2010s, with the graphics quality changing according to the era. As you run through cities and landscapes, the objective is to collect coins and special tokens that will unlock elements of a gaming timeline and allot you points. The timeline itself, once completed, is a crash course in gaming trivia that covers major gaming classics, technology (controllers, consoles, etc), milestones and the people behind them. Examples include legendary games like Street Fighter, Tekken, Mario Bros; developers like Tomohiro Nishikado who created Space Invaders; and professional gamers such as Daigo Umehara, a Guinness World Record holder. You can score extra points for watching videos linked to each gaming pioneer, whose likenesses are spread across the different levels alongside floating YouTube 'play' buttons.

The interactive website is a youthful educational resource for all those interested in Japan's gaming industry and the potential it holds for gaming tourism. It was launched by All Nippon Airways as part of its 'Is Japan Cool?' campaign. Like we didn't know the answer!