Once again thanks to Kevin Williams of The Stinger Report for getting us this information. I will be talking with Kevin directly later tonight to get some extra details on all the things we are seeing here so that we will fill in the rest of the gaps. Either way, I think it’s clear that for an industry many love to call “dead” there is quite a bit of new content to go around, a little bit more than we’ve seen in previous years. As always, click on the thumbnails for a full view of the picture.
POST UPDATED – New info below
First off, a little extra detail on two games we’ve seen get a lot of attention: Guitar Hero and American Idol. In another surprise for Konami’s part, their name is also on American Idol and not just GH (there had been a rumor to that effect but it hadn’t been confirmed). According to the GH flyer, it will have over 50 songs, 11 playable characters in 8 venues and “Enduro-Ax Industrial Strength Controllers”. UPDATE: Apparently the build at the show is only 60-70% complete – the final songlist is not complete and the cabinet will be changed for the final release. Here are what the flyers for the games will look like, just poster size. Also pictured is sort of a close up of the guitars, it sounds like GH has been a major hit at the show. Kevin even got Guitar Hero 3 tattooed onto his arm (fake or not Kevin? :P)
Stern was showing CSI pinball at the show and they also had their Spiderman redemption game there, which we first saw at AMOA. My local distributor tells me that they are expecting to receive a couple of CSI machines within the next few days so I’ll get to check it out soon.
Incredible Technologies wasn’t showing any product we hadn’t heard of before there but they had their full line-up of games running on their new pedestal cabinet that looked nice.
We mentioned Andamiro’s NX Absolute yesterday and today we have pictures of it. There were two versions of it there, a standard and deluxe. Not much else on this one though.
Next up, something from Tecway Developments. They are bringing Go Go Jockey to the US which is another game they showed off at the GTI Expo 2008 in Taiwan. This is a horse racing/riding game where you sit on a horse controller. I also believe that the next two pictures are from some redemption product in the Tecway area.
This next game is IGS’s answer to Sea Wolf called Battle Stations. It has what looks to be a periscope kind of controller and at least in the picture below it seems like the graphics are pretty nice. The game is polished and even includes boss battles at the end of each level, it also uses a different torpedo system than Sea Wolf does. While IGS generally releases some product to the US through their company American Alpha, this was found at the Smart Industries booth.
We also got two new shots of Trans-Force in action. It reminds me of Galaxian 3 by Namco with the multiplayer space shooter theme. It can house up to six players, each with their own contoller that moves gun turrets around on a space ship. On top of it having great graphics, the game also uses a motion base to enhance the experience further. This is being made by a Russian company who specializes in simulators.
