I’ve pretty much covered everything that I experienced at AMOA 2008 and overall I came away satisfied, much happier than I was with ASI (no offense to those who worked hard on bringing ASI together – I had just hoped for more new stuff at ASI and there was little whereas there were several things at AMOA that caught my attention). But now it has passed and before long we’ll probably hear a little more news from the companies and their reaction to the reactions they got at the show. But before then let me cover two more things that I came across down in Vegas.
First was the Spiderman redemption game by Stern Pinball. I don’t know if Stern has produced redemption titles in the past (it seems like they might have done one or two but I might be confusing them with someone else) but either way this caught me off guard. Now if you read AH regularly you know that I’m not a big fan of redemption which is unusual for anyone involved in the industry, especially operators but either way I figured that people would be interested to know that Stern has done something outside of the sphere of pinball here and at least the presentation is great, I didn’t give it a spin though so I can’t say how it plays. BTW- there was always someone playing on Batman or Indiana Jones pinball, those were very popular. A Stern rep even told me how there was one location in the Midwest at an arcade/pizza parlor where their Indiana Jones pinball machine paid itself off in only two months. That is insane for a pinball game and I’m happy for Stern to have a success like this.
Next is Jet Ball by Aerr Technologies. I came across this while wandering around the floor towards the end of my stay and I almost overlooked them as they were tucked away in the corner but someone playing on the table called my attention to the game. It’s like air foosball where there are a number of colored dots on the playfield, each with a little hole on it that fires a jet of air when you light it up and pull the trigger. You light up the dots by moving the joystick around which admittedly is a little difficult to handle without practice and it was even more difficult under the bright lights of the show (the game was made for darker venues and even has a black light to light up the playfield better). It’s best explained in the video below by it was a pleasant surprise to find something unique like this, later on I’ll scan in the brochures so you can find out more.
Spiderman Redemption (UPDATE: This was never released)
Jet Ball
