At the end of last year, it was announced that the legendary a-cho amusement arcade in Kyoto would be closing its doors on January 31st, 2025, marking another devastating blow for the Japanese arcade scene, which has been struggling following the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
But it seems that the venue closing isn't the only negative consequence to come from this turn of events, as it now appears that it could also take decades worth of fighting game history with it, in the form of several YouTube channels that were previously operated by members of A-Cho's staff.
Since 2007, as noted by the fighting game website Eventhubs, a-cho has posted countless videos of fighting game matches and tournaments from the arcade across multiple dedicated YouTube channels (a-cho GAME, a-cho battle movie, and a-cho staff). This includes a ton of footage of matches captured from games like Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike, The King of Fighters '98, Garou: Mark of the Wolves, and more, which featured various figures from the Japanese fighting game community taking part.
It isn't just fighting games either, with the channels also containing some footage of classic shoot 'em ups and puzzle games, among other genres.
It seems the future of these videos is now in question, however, with an a-cho employee named @chibax7jp recently taking to Twitter / X to state that the a-cho Game channel will be deleted on February 28th, and many other videos erased, as a result. They didn't provide a reason for why these videos need to be deleted (though Eventhubs speculates it could have something to do with Japan's stricter copyright laws).
@chibax7jp issued the following statement in English:
"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"
Because of this, it looks like it could fall to members of the fighting game community to archive much of this material, as it doesn't look likely that there will be any official effort to relocate the videos to a non-a-cho affiliated account before their deletion.