The AM show (JAMMA) Mega Preview Post : Elevator Action, Razing Storm, KOFXII, Harley Davidson, CastleVania & more

There is another arcade event about to take place next week and this time it’s in Japan. Known as the AM Show, also called the JAMMA show, it brings with it a lot of information on games we’ve been hearing about for a while along with new games. It should be interesting to see what comes along over the next week but at the moment here is what we have for you as a preview of what to expect.

BTW – For interest of space, I’m just using thumbnails on this post. Click on them to expand and images taken from various sources I’ll credit at the end.

New games:

Holy frak, Taito is bringing Elevator Action back. Labeled as “Elevator Action: Death Parade” we currently have a picture of the cabinet and nothing else. Of course the cabinet has to have something which looks like an elevator door covering the screen so no clue what the game looks like but it’s not longer a joystick game but a light-gun title. The cabinet has a Too Spicy feel to it, I wonder if the game will mimick that or not.  Notice that it also has a surround sound system on it, much like those Konami cabinets are using (ex. Silent Hill, CastleVania). If this plays elevator music at certain points then this is going to be one of the coolest cabinets ever.

Taito also was showing off a new mini-game party title (I’m surprised that there aren’t more of these after the Wii came out) called Senor: The Nippon (?) and Hoppingurodo, which apparently has something to do with simulating jumping on pogo sticks.

Konami will not be at the show but they are still exhibiting games on location tests so I am sure that people will be talking about these games and they have what I think is a new fighter but the cabinet pictured shows a control scheme that is unfamiliar so it’s hard to say exactly what Brave Heroes is going to be. The game has something to do with the War of the Three Kingdoms – perhaps it’s a Dynasty Warriors style fighter (which I have always thought would make a perfect arcade title, which would have been done with the War of the Grail).

Namco has also shown off a new light-gun not based on Time Crisis (it appears) called Razing Storm. From the flyer the graphics look pretty good and it looks like it uses a bit of destructive environment geometry as well. The game is powered by System 357 (which I believe is the PlayStation 3 based hardware) and it uses a 62″ screen along with a cabinet design that sort of reminds me of Rambo.  Whether this will make it to the States or not is beyond me, I was pretty disappointed with Namco’s lack of games at AMOA but maybe as they see others gearing up they will too.

Now for some more info on games we knew about already – hit the jump or this will take up too much space on the main page 🙂 But we’ve got a look at Sega’s Harley Davidson, KOFXII, a new look at the CastleVania Arcade cabinet, first screens of Hummer Extreme and more.

KOFXII has a new flyer available and it is being demonstrated at the show in probably what is a close to final cabinet. I found one page that has a link to a video of the game in action but I click on the link and it takes me to a page asking for info and it’s in Japanese.  Oh well, maybe later. According to that same page the game is 60% complete. We still know that this game looks amazing and with the renewed interest in fighters I would not be surprised to see this game making the rounds internationally. I’ve considered getting this for my arcade since I have a small but loyal group of KOF players who come in and play a couple of times a week.

Tekken 6 also has a new flyer and I am guessing that this has to do with the new Bloodline Rebellion update. Fingers crossed that this update will help the game stand out from the upcoming console version. I know that T6 still has received an official blessing in the UK or US but my distributor is carrying the game.

Arcana Heart 2 also has some fliers about, it looks like this is the updated version of the game everyone is talking about though as some of the screens look different from the version I played at AMOA. From what they said at the show however, it seems that Andamiro is set on bringing over the previous version but who knows, maybe they’ll change their minds at the last minute.

I’ve been waiting to see something on Sega’s new Harley Davidson game and it’s finally here in form of the flyer. It’s hard to say right now but it looks good from the micro-pictures we’re getting from these fliers and it’s better than nothing. There will be two cabinet designs, standard and deluxe which are probably prototypes but it doesn’t appear to stray too far away from the original Harley game design. Now that I think about it, I should have asked the Sega rep at AMOA if they had heard anything about this one – I knew that I forgot to ask about something (as the old cartoon villian might say, “CURSES!”).

Here is a new picture of the CastleVania arcade cabinet. It’s not much but it’s a little better than the only other pic of it out there. You can see the motion whip controller and the LED candles but the screen is once again covered up by the curtains. Hopefully we’ll actually be seeing some screenshots of this one shortly since the hands on report said that it looked really good and I doubt it will take much longer for them to keep what it looks like under wraps.

Touch Striker has a flyer now and it is as I thought, a soccer/football touch screen game. As usual I don’t expect to see this in the US (although I recently had some people asking me to get a soccer arcade game) but I’m sure it will be showing up in Europe before too long.

Sega’s Hummer Extreme finally has a website up now with nice screen shots of the game in action and a prototype design of the cabinet. At AMOA I was told by the Sega rep that it uses a motion base and you can see that in the designs (it wasn’t noticeable with the blurry pics we had before). The game uses Lindbergh hardware but it certainly looks nice and it’s one of the few games on this list where we are sure that it’s coming to the States as the game was already tested in Chicago and from AMOA it sounded like it was still on track.

Namco’s answer to Raw Thrills’ Super Bikes, Nirin has a four page flyer out and about now and it’s looking good – it definently has that street racing theme to it but I’m not sure what else to say at this point until we get to see it in action.

Sources: AM-Net, Kobayan and Dengeki Online