Next up from the IAAPA floor today, Sega and Namco. As always, click on the thumbnails for a full view, thanks to Kevin Williams of The Stinger Report for sending us these pics. One big surprise from Sega is the game Brick People, which we first showed you a few weeks ago where it was testing in Japan. I didn’t expect to see this one brought over to the US so it’s a pleasant surprise. The object of the game is to get the brick people to the food by placing the bricks down in front of the screen, which they then climb up on. It does have enemies which try to block your path but I’m not sure how you get rid of them, it will be interesting to see this one in action.
Next up, Hummer Extreme. Hummer has a motion base and uses a setup similar to Outrun2 Super Deluxe where two people can play with the game switching between the two as they navigate an obstacle course.
Below: Sega Rally 3 and Harley Davidson. We had figured that HD would make it to the States when it was shown in Japan recently although there hadn’t been any official confirmation of that until now. As you can see below, there are two deluxe cabs of the game there, not sure if a standard cabinet was shown and they also changed the SR3 cabinet from AMOA (which they had told me would happen). It looks like the screens are bigger in this cab then they were at AMOA. Also several deluxe Rambo models were at the show.
Finally for Sega today, R-Tuned Street Racing was there, no word yet on how it plays but it rounds out Sega’s diverse line-up of racing games overall.
Now onto Namco. I had hoped that they would be showing some new product and they have. It’s now confirmed that both Razing Storm and Nirin will be available in the US. No word on how soon though, just sometime in 2009. We’ve covered a little bit about both games previously, Razing Storm is a sort of spiritual successor to Crisis Zone, Nirin is a street racing motorcycle game.
The good: Harley Davidson, Razing Storm, Hummer Extreme, and the fact that they’re coming to the US.
The bad: Sega and Namco won’t make anything other than driving and shooting games.
The ugly: Brick People, which looks like an 18th century Tetris. And that horrible marquee for Sega Rally.
Agreed except for maybe Brick People. I’m happy to see Sega bringing the sort of thing over that usually Japan gets and maybe Europe on occasion – it’s not a driving/shooting game so it has that going for it. I still wonder about replacement costs for the blocks and I’d like to see it in motion but I give them a thumbs up for making the effort to do something new.
And paint me very excited about Razing Storm. I went crazy with Crisis Zone years back, if this builds on that in positive ways then count me in.
I also loved Crises zone but I wished it had 2 player mode. From the Pictures it seems that it will have 2 player co-op. Even if its still on one screen and not like Time crisis 2 & above it is still is exciting. Hopefully it will have the crazy environmental damage of crisis zone.
Badoor:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ja&tl=en&u=http://www.bandainamcogames.co.jp/aa/am/vg/razingstorm/main.php
This shows that RS is supposed to have way more environmental damage going on than Crisis Zone did, I’m not sure but I think pretty much everything is destructible. We’ll see, Kevin told me that the game was still a ways from completion at the show so it’s hard to say what the final product will be like but at least we have an idea.
Brick People looks amazing, there are now tons of vids on youtube on it!
Raizing Storm looks great and Crisis Zone was my favorite Namco Gunner for sure, so i’m really looking forward to this! The tech looks amazing and the destruction is incredible.
To me there is so much excitement in the arcade, so many new ideas and polished traditional ideas it’s a shame it’s overlooked by the masses. maybe this looming economic downturn will actually increase arcade attendance as people look for cheap thrills to get them through the day… i know it’s a long shot but i can hold on to hope that gameplay is still king!