According to my local distributor, GlobalVR’s Justice League arcade title should now be available at a variety of distributors across the country and that means that it won’t be long before it will start making appearances at different locations. I was also told that they should have one on their show floor today so when I stop by later this afternoon I am going to check it out. Once again, this marks the first brawler we have seen in arcades since Sega released Asian Dynamite a couple of years ago for the Naomi hardware and it will be interesting to witness how players take to seeing the genre again. JL has already received a round of criticism from people seeing the screenshots on the net but according to TwistedSupreme and HeavyElectricty who played the game at ATEI, it looks much better in person on the HD screen than in the screenshots. As far as brawlers themselves go, they really work best in arcades anyways so if we see more here in the near future then I won’t be one to complain.
Justice League: Heroes United is now listed as “Already Released” on our arcade release list for 2009. Also, in case you missed previous coverage of the game, we have video of it in action here by AH owner and writer TwistedSupreme and some more comments on it by AH writer HeavyElectricty here.
As a side note, this now makes 8 games we have listed as released for the US for the year of 2009. No that’s not amazing when compared to console releases but it’s a good trend for arcades to be hitting when we only have a handful of companies out there making games. It’s certainly far overdue for the naysayers out there to stop propigating the whole “arcades are totally dead” myth (which has always been ridiculous from the start as it doesn’t help the business of arcade operators like myself for people to go around chanting that on their news blogs, forums, etc. since there are still thousands of us around and it’s hard enough to get people in the door without them with a notion in their heads that there can’t be anything new at our locations).
/rant
I had the opportunity to try this out at some local bowling ally and while I’m finally happy they got a game like this, I was rather disappointed. Far as brawlers go, it was much more enjoyable playing either Captain America and the Avengers or X-men, this one feels like a rather shoddy attempt at Gauntlet Legends then getting the feel of a real brawler.