I going to try and not use this post to debate the merits of whether lobster crane machines are cruel to the animals but it was only a matter of time before someone, somewhere lodged a protest against the machines, which we have discussed previously. This particular case comes from New Zealand, where The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals “sealed up the three controversial Catcha Cray machines operating in Auckland pubs” recently. The SPCA brought in a “crustacean expert” who said that in their expert opinion the game was harmful to the animals and apparently this society has the legal authority to shut the machines down, which they are doing where ever they can be found. All this is despite the fact that the SPCA and Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry approved the game in the past. The owner of the machines will be fighting this in court so we will have to wait and see what happens but it’s no secret that the government in neighboring Australia has the habit of playing the nanny and banning all sorts of games they feel are inappropriate for whatever reason. I haven’t really heard of that happening in New Zealand however. We’ll have to wait and see as to whether this sort of haggling over whether the game is suitable or not will spread to other countries or not (these machines can be found in Asia and the US, not sure if they’ve been spotted in Europe yet) but if so it will prove to be a hassle for people who operate them.
Namco has revealed some of the content that they will be showing off at AOU, which includes a new Gundam VS. title and Midnight Maximum Tune 3 DX + (which I am pretty sure we have heard of before). Games we have seen/played previously which will also be at the show include Dead Storm Pirates and Tank! Tank! Tank!; no word on if Go Go Grand Prix will be making an appearance or not but that is one game I am looking forward to seeing mroe of (it will be at the Amusement Expo in Vegas next month).
For more on Namco’s AOU pre-show annoucements, go here. For a countdown page on the new Gundam VS. title, go here.
It’s been a while since there was a new Pump It Up Pro to talk about – three years in fact. But at the 2010 Amusement Expo in Las Vegas (next month), Andamiro will be showing off the new Pump It Up Pro 2 in all of it’s glory for everyone to see. No other details beyond that and the screenshot above have been revealed but in case you were wondering what new content would be appearing at the show, this is a good start.
Continuing with the pre-AOU hype, Taito revealed their AOU website today. It’s not as descriptive as AOU sites by other companies that we have seen so far and it appears that they will be filling information in as to what games will be there as the show approaches. From the image on the site it looks like Music Gun Gun will be there and I have to imagine that their new table flipping game and Cyber Diver will be there as well. I wonder if Taito will be revealing any remakes/reboots at the show, as they have done in recent AOU shows with Elevator Action: Death Parade.
With AOU in Japan just a week or two away, companies are revealing what they will be bringing to the show – first with Konami and now with Sega. There is nothing on the list that we haven’t really heard of yet – Project DIVA Arcade, a new version of Virtua Fighter 5R, Border Break and Shining Force Cross. They also have another UFO Catcher machine ready to go called UFO Catcher Double. Perhaps there will be a surprise by Sega at the show but this is what we have to look forward to in the video realm for now.
Kevin Williams and I discussed the new “digital toy hybrid racer” Go Go Grand Prix in the latest podcast and now Namco has issued a press release discussing the success of the game at the EAG show. If you want to see this game in action, I posted a video of it a couple of posts below and it certainly is an interesting concept – it’s one kind of arcade racer I can get behind. The game will also be at the 2010 AAMA/AMOA Amusement Expo (let’s just call it the Big “A” Expo ) at Las Vegas in March. The details can be found int he press release after the break.
At IAAPA I had a chance to play Taito’s huge, theater style light-gun game, Panic Museum. The setup is impressive, with a large projected screen and theater quality sound, but obviously this does not work for many venues where space is an issue. So distributors have come up with a solution, giving the game a more traditional setup with an LCD cabinet. While we are not sure what the screen size is, as you can see from above the cabinet is attractive. This particular version is by ICE for release in the US and it differs slightly from what was shown at EAG. After looking over several distributor websites, I have only found one selling the deluxe version for almost $14,000 and no one has listed the standard version yet. ICE doesn’t even have the deluxe version of the game listed on their website at the moment so we will have to wait to hear more.
Posted February 4, 2010 by Shaggy Categories:Arcade Games
You know it’s always a little slow when we start posting arcade-related merchandise for posts. So here we go:
I think of these as psuedo-arcade mugs as these don’t use licensed content – just cloned versions of Pac-Man and Space Invaders, labeled as “Pac-Boy” and “Space Intruders”, respectively. Once you pour in a hot drink, , certain designs appear, such as the pills and ghosts in Pac-Boy or the invaders in Space Intruders. You can find out more about these here.
It’s that time where we start to receive news about different public companies and their profit or loss over a certain period of time. These glimpes generally mention the arcade division of said companies in case they have them and that is the case with both Capcom and Namco, who we will discuss here. So how have their arcade divisions fared over the past nine months?
First off Capcom, who posted gains that were partly attributed to tax credits that the company was able to secure. One the arcade side: “Capcom’s arcade operations saw sales fall 11% but operating income was up more than 295% thanks to a “profitability improvement strategy.” This is talking about Capcom owned arcades and not Capcom-made and sold arcade titles. The jump in income happened despite the (paraphrasing slightly here) “Japanese economy not really seeing any recovery during the nine-month period, and consumer spending seemed to be in a slump…” Probably one of the more interesting things I find about Capcom’s report is how terrible their Wii game sales are, which is leading the company to scale back on developments for that system. This isn’t the first third-party developer I have heard of not making what they expected to off of Nintendo’s cash cow.
Next up is Namco, which doesn’t appear to be doing too well over these past nine months. The company saw a 76% drop in operating income during that time, loosing nearly $130million overall and they are expecting a full year loss of nearly $342 million. They have also announced that they will be laying off 630 employees. Whether this will affect their arcade divisions remains to be seen – according to the company, arcade game machines achieved “steady results” for the company along with their character toy sales. On the flipside however, Namco has two divisions dedicated to arcades – one to develop and sale games and another to operate arcade locations. According to the official report, “both the Visual and Music Content business and the Amusement Facility business posted sluggish results; the former owing to the downsizing of the visual package software market and the latter reflecting the significant effects of a slump in personal consumption.” That slump in consumption I believe is by Japanese consumers (as indicated by the first link above which mentions that specifically) but that might also include international market since I don’t know of consumption going up in most places. Either way it appears that Namco’s consumer (i.e. game console) division is where most of the trouble lays right now, with the only game showing strong results is the arcade port of Tekken 6. Interesting how that works in a world where arcades are “dead” ,eh? With that in mind I really hope that they don’t go back to their ways of porting an arcade title over within a few short months of the arcade release however.
While we’re speaking of Namco, I did find that there is a new account on Youtube called NamcoAmerica that currently features a promo video of Tank! Tank! Tank! and Go Go Grand Prix. I can’t seem to access their main site at the moment but it looks like they are jumping on the Youtube bandwagon, which is a good thing. here’s Go Go GrandPrix in case you missed that in our EAG coverage.
Here’s our 12th podcast – I know I haven’t been keeping up with these on a weekly basis as I had wanted to originally but we’re still getting them done when there is enough to talk about. On this podcast, Kevin Williams of The Stinger Report and myself discuss:
-EAG and ATEI 2010 in London, along with the new games shown off at each show
-The upcoming AOU show in Japan and what we might see there
-The latest developments in pinball
-I rant a little about the parts side of the business
And more to total almost two hours of talk, which we try to keep entertaining where we can.
) at Las Vegas in March. The details can be found int he press release after the break.
Latest Comments