The crane machine—also known as claw machines, crane games and, in Japan, as “UFO catchers” due to their proclivity for aerial abductions—first gripped the public imagination in the early 1900s. Even ...

Crane games are so ubiquitous in Japan that they feel like something that’s always been a part of the country, like the arcade landscape equivalent of Mount Fuji. But much like how there was no Mount ...