More ASI goodness: Pictures from The Stinger Report

We are not done with our ASI coverage just yet – in addition to this post I still have more videos to upload but I am currently waiting on receiving those from my friend and business partner, then I’ll work on getting those uploaded. We spent more time taking videos than taking pictures so fortunately, Kevin Williams of The Stinger Report was there at the show after us to grab a bunch of shots of what was there. Click on the thumbnails below to enlarge and they are presented in the order that we were sent them.

Andamiro

This is one place where I did not get any video, as most everything at the booth we have seen before, except for the new NX Absolute. Arcana Heart 2 was not at the booth this time unfortunately, from what I have heard they did not bring many AH2 kits over to the US afterall, which is too bad.

PentaVision

I did get a video of this which I’ll get online soon. I didn’t do too great at it but it was a lot of fun and it has some really cool features. I’m still not sure that all those features are worth the price tag of the game but I was impressed with it.

ICE

This is where they had the Game Gate VU (let’s you use an Xbox 360 or PS3 as an arcade cabinet), Ballistics which is the ball throwing game.I didn’t get a chance to play the Photo Finish Racing game at the end although it’s a cool looking cabinet. It almost seemed like skee-ball from what I saw.

Betson/Raw Thrills

Another look at the Betson booth which I showed in a video in a post below. I’d love to have some of those banners. BTW, there’s AH reader Dasbacon playing DDRX.

Stern

Stern had more at the booth than just 24. To be honest I have become less and less impressed with 24 as I have thought about. They didn’t even bother to put in real toys in the cases of the helicopter and the jet and it felt like there was a little too much open space in the game.It was hard to tell at the show but the sound bites didn’t sound like they used the actual actors from the show but I will need to play the game in a better environment to get a better idea of that point. There were constantly quite a few people at the booth however so the interest in pinball is still there.

Fun Company

Here are some of those cabinets we have mentioned previously from Fun Company, you can see the new Sega Bass Fishing Challenge on the left there and it looked pretty good on that cabinet.

Sega

I wonder how the Sega Bass Fishing Challenge tournament went, as you can see here it was in three different cabs, two from Fun Co., one from a very official looking cab instead of just a kit conversion. Pigs Might Fly is Sega’s new video redemption game that reminds me of a flash game I’ve played once but it looked good and it was fun on top of that. Sega also had a new SWP game that is like Shoot This Win This called Code Red on hand; it has nothing to do with Mountain Dew however. 😉

Namco

Razing Storm and Nirin were at the front of the Namco booth as we have mentioned and both games were very loud and garnered quite a bit of attention. In addition to those games they had several titles on hand that we have seen previously, such as MaxiTune 3, Pac-Man, Rockin’ Bowl-A-Rama and Flamin’ Finger. They also had a new crane concept called Barber Cut, where you win prizes by attempting to cut a thread with scissor-like apparatus.

GlobalVR

Justice League was naturally the showcase game for GlobalVR this time around, where they had four cabinets on hand to play, including two deluxe, one standard and one conversion kit. The deluxe cabs are actually the same cabinets used for Aliens: Extermination and Paradise Lost with a few minor changes. They also had Need For Speed: Carbon deluxe, NASCAR Deluxe, Blazing Angels and GlobalVR classics on hand.

Coastal Amusments

All of the versions of the new Sea Wolf were on hand here and they even had a pretty good show special for one of the versions of the game running at about $4000. I have a video of this in action that will be part of my next ASI update.

Mountain Coin

These guys are my local distributor and they had a cool new cotton candy machine on the floor that makes cotton candy without the need for an attendant. I saw this here in Salt Lake prior to the show and it’s pretty cool to watch as it make a production out of creating the snack. One great thing about it is that it only costs the operator 10¢ for every stick sold whereas it costs the customer $2 to purchase. The bad side is that it’s about $9000 for the machine.

TrioTech

They didn’t have much going on this year, with just a couple of their new Typhoon simulators and UFO Stomper.

Virtual Backgrounds

I didn’t play this (although every time I passed by someone was giving it a play) but Kevin says: “Game Theater was a retro-reflected screen system from a start up called Virtual Backgrounds (hardware for displaying video games on a large screen using no more space than a standard arcade cabinet). I played it, was not impressed but the concept was different.”

That should do it for now, until I can get those videos online. I do have one recommendation in the future for ASI/AMOA or other trade events like these – put together a free play arcade of some classics, like they have at various arcade collector expos around the year. It wouldn’t need to be as large but it would be kind of cool to have that in addition to games brought by game companies. Also, kudos for planning to do this with the International Pizza Expo, that should be done every time. 🙂

[Thanks to Kevin Williams of The Stinger Report for the pics] [Discuss on the Forum]