A family in Rapid City, SD opens a NASCAR themed arcade

Shaggy December 18, 2007 4

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(Photo credit: Dick Kettlewell of the Rapid City Journal)

I came across this new article today detailing the opening of a new arcade in Rapid City South Dakota USA that discusses a family switching from a retail cell phone business to an arcade. It will be an FEC (called the Heartland Arcade) but it sounds like it will be pretty good and will include pool tables, 70 arcade games, a food court, a NASCAR memoriblia store and on top of it all, a NASCAR simulator that features 4 NASCAR vehicles that are 80% the size of the real thing hooked up to a game that is apparently different than the one released by GlobalVR. It sounds like a “NASCAR Special”, somewhat similar to Sega’s special games that feature a large cabinet (this sounds like Outrun 2 Super Deluxe). It appears that they have these at The Mall of America and a few other venues (about 10 thanks to The Stinger Report for that info). Here’s the details of the game from the news article:

From behind the wheel, you have a 135-degree view of the racetrack projected onto three screens. You also have a gear shifter, gas pedal, brake pedal and a small monitor.

Each of the four cars is mounted on a hydraulic system, so when another virtual driver bumps your car, it shakes and shudders as if it were really hit.

It sounds pretty cool and if any of you get a chance to drop by there when it opened, let us know about it.

[Via Rapid City Journal] [Discuss on the Forum]

4 Comments »

  1. editor December 18, 2007 at 2:35 am - Reply

    Its the system from Silicon Motor Speedway – was at IAAPA, and in our coverage.

    We think they have 10-sites US. Though the software is post-90’s.

  2. Shaggy December 18, 2007 at 3:20 am - Reply

    Thanks, I was mostly curious about the software they were using on this one.

  3. SaraAB87 December 18, 2007 at 5:29 pm - Reply

    Yeah, I think the simulators were made in 1999 or maybe even earlier. They were probably able to purchase them cheaply because of the age of them. The sites that run the actual silicon motor speedway still charge an arm and a leg for one session on the simulators even though the software and simulators are very old.

  4. editor December 18, 2007 at 6:01 pm - Reply

    Some facts about the company, SMS started by ex-Atari arcade software and firmware that worked on Hard Drivin. The company was saved from financial problems by RacePrep (sports wear). The company has s small version of the system (single), while the standard system runs 1998 software still to this day with only slight updates.

    The concept has two riders in the car (one drives, other monitors), though most races are single player. I have reviewed the Universal venue since it opened in the 90’s, still open, still popular. Though there is also the Las Vegas CyberSpeedway venue franchise that is still there. Now we have the GVR NASCAR Racing that can do all this in a new package – wonder which one will win?

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