Happy Saturday everyone. Just a couple of news blurbs here to share as everyone experiences the weekend.
Some big location test news out of Japan for the new Guilty Gear Xrd Sign by Arc System Works. I do not believe that a lot of advance notice was given of the test but either way interest in the game seems plenty high as evidenced by a few pictures on 4Gamer.net that shows a huge line waiting to play the game. While not every loctest is guaranteed to get this effect, it certainly shows the value in hyping a game in advance. It was a similar effect for Taito’s Dariusburst Another Chronicle which was tested about this same time in Japan back in 2010. Shoryuken.com has a complete rundown of the game based on this test and from the sounds of it, Guilty Gear fans are going to be quite happy about it. This may possibly win a few new fans too. Sega certainly has something to be happy about; even though its not their game it is being released via their ALL.NET Pras- Multi Ver. 2 network (which if you are unfamiliar, is basically Steam for arcades in Japan and a rival to Taito’s NESiCAxLIVE service) and looks like it will become a killer app ALL.NET+. Here’s a video from the loctest, graphically it looks really good and it should also please fans of fast=paced fighting play.
In other news the AAMA Gala was held this week in Illinois and almost all of the news I have read about it so far is mostly important to members of that organization. Most of that has been posted to the AAMA site. I’ve been hoping for some pictures or video to make their way out of the event as I was unable to attend and so far what has been shown is very little. Fortunately one company hasn’t been shy about sharing what they had at one of the events, Barron Games with their new version of the Quad Air called Galaxy Collision (pictured below with Paul Williams of Sega, Anna and Greg Bacorn of Barron Games). This replaces the Pirate King design with a space theme and also adds a new overhead light bar to light-up the darker table. As far as I know, the other features of this are the same with scoring built right into the playfield and electronic sounds for when the puck hits the sides. It is available now and a location called the Funway Ultimate Entertainment Center in Batavia, IL is the first location to get one.
I know for sure that Raw Thrills had Batmobile and Sega had Transformers Human Alliance there; so far no luck on pictures of Batmobile but there is a snippet of Transformers Human Alliance to be seen – in the first picture above to the back right. From that we can see it has a yellow cabinet with some multi-color LED lighting directly on the sides of the monitor. It also appears to be a 42″ screen but it’s hard to see much else from that.
From a few of the other Barron pictures show that a few other games were there but its impossible to identify the newest ones without a closer look (one example in this image). Either way, we’ll probably hear more about them soon or if all else fails at IAAPA 2013 in November.
