Revisiting Subsino’s Kung Fu Ball

When I was at IAAPA last November, I came across a booth that had several head-to-head cocktail cabinets setup there which featured a new game I hadn’t heard of before called Kung Fu Ball. I hadn’t heard of the makers of this game either, Subsino Game Technologies but jsut the simple fact that they had a table top cabinet there was enough to pull me in. I recorded a video of the game in action but it didn’t get a lot of attention at the time – I’m bringing it up again today as I came across a US distribution company(BMI Gaming) that is listing the game as shipping in April.

In case you missed this in the IAAPA coverage, the game is essentially a glorified version of Pong. Instead of paddles you have blocks that work out like punching gloves to hit the ball back and forth on the screen. There are five buttons, each one covering a small area of the player’s goal. The longer you wait to hit the ball the harder it will smack it and faster the ball goes but if you wait too long, it will get past your goal. Come to think of it, the game also sort of reminds me of how Sega’s Flash Beats works, minus the musical mechanics involved, but both games have five buttons and both involve punching the ball at the other opponent. You can see the game in action in the two clips below, the first one is an official preview of the game, the second is what I captured at IAAPA last year.

[Subsino website]