When I caught the news about a product called SlamBots on the latest Stinger Report, I was intrigued. I have personally thought about the application of robotics in coin-op games before but this is the first time I had heard of someone actually trying such an idea. To my astonishment, SlamBots (which made an appearance at this year’s IAAPA 07 event) has actually been available as a coin-op title for more than a year already although I have not found it on any distributor sites yet. Here is a video of the game in action by the company, posted to Youtube. Perhaps by them showing the game at IAAPA again (it washown at last years IAAPA as well, according to the website) it will garner more attention. The sites description of the game is fairly simple:
The goal of SlamBot is simple- SLAM your robot into the targets when they light up! Play solo or head-to-head! SlamBot can be enjoyed by up to 4 players simultaneously (or more on custom systems).
Players can earn points for slamming targets (playing offense) or they can prevent their opponents from scoring by bashing into their robot (playing defense).
You must be reading our minds – the Stinger has a big feature on robotic arcade systems in next months feature. There are a lot of systems that don’t get a lot of coverage.
Which is too bad – I think robotics is a huge uptapped market for coin-op – there is simply no way to get the same experience at home. Yeah there are plenty of robot competitions but if this became wide spread in arcades that would create a very interesting angle on the whole issue. I think it could be the next “DDR” for the industry along with foot controlled games like UFO Stomper and certain ideas like Primeval Hunt.