Tomorrow I head off for Las Vegas to attend the annual amusement industry tradeshow IAAPA. This will be the first time I will have a chance to visit this particular show – I have previously visited other arcade-related shows such as AMOA and ASI but from what I have always heard, IAAPA is much larger than either of those two shows. I will be capturing pictures and videos from the event and I also hope to record a podcast at the show with Kevin Williams of The Stinger Report (which is one reason why I’ve been waiting to do another podcast).
UPDATE: I am updating a few things here with what I have seen so far. No videos or pictures to upload yet as I don’t have the right USB cable to plug my camera into at the moment. I have seen some VERY interesting things so far however.
As for what I expect to see at the show, here is a rundown of that in alphabetical order:
Andamiro
I did see a press release that made a brief mention of Andamiro launching a new Pump It Up Jump (PIU for kids) at the show so I expect to see this and some of their redemption items here.
GlobalVR
I don’t see GlobalVR listed in the exhibitors so then must have decided to sit this one out for some reason.
GlobalVR has a booth after all, most of it is dominated by their new Twisted racer which I haven’t had a chance to play yet but graphically it looks really good.
Konami
While Konami will be at the show sharing a booth with Betson, I have not heard anything about the line-up of games that will be there. DDRX is something I expect and if we are lucky perhaps Metal Gear Arcade will be making an appearance as well but my hopes may be too high for that to be showing up already (even though the cabinet has been revealed and screenshots seen).
UPDATE: Konami is not showing off anything new – not even DDRX this time around.
Incredible Technologies
IT doesn’t have a large booth from what I can see on the map but I do expect them to be showing off all the games they have produced this year including the new Golden Tee and perhaps we’ll see or hear something more about the new Silver Strike LIVE.
UPDATE: I haven’t had a chance to visit the IT booth yet.
Namco
We should definitely see Tank! Tank! Tank! making an appearance at the show and perhaps some of their other 2009 releases such as Razing Storm and Nirin. Whether we will see any other products like Dead Storm Pirates or another rumored racer from them, I’ll know tomorrow.
UPDATE: Namco’s was the first booth I saw as it’s right there when you walk in. They have four Tank!Tank!Tank! units and I got to play a round of free-for-all on this one. It is a lot of fun, the forcefeed back is pretty cool and the generous destruction make this a really good game. Not crazy about the price though.
Namco also decided to bring Dead Storm Pirates over which I haven’t played yet but I did watch some people play through some of the wheel turning scenes and it looks like they implemented that idea very well. It’s also a very colorful game, should turn some heads.
Raw Thrills
We already know that Terminator Salvation will be at the show and I also expect to see the new Big Buck Hunter Open Season there and H2Overdrive. Hopefully we’ll also see something else that is new that we haven’t heard about recently (last year they showed off American Idol at IAAPA which was canceled a couple months later).
UPDATE:The main attraction of this booth is Terminator Salvation, with four cabinets setup. They even have a full-size Terminator robot there which is a nice touch. The marquee topper to the game is very cool and should look even better in a differently lit room. The software on this is still in beta form but what they are offering gives you plenty of gameplay. It’s a sleek game and the best part about it is that you have A LOT of robots to blast. It almost feels like a Dynasty Warriors game simply due to the number of targets you have to mow down at certain points.
They also have BBH Open Season there, which I haven’t played yet but I was told that some people from the LA Zoo played the game and were horrified by Safari in particular. They also have Guitar Hero Arcade (with updated software) and H2Overdrive available.
Sega
I have heard that Sega Racing Classic will be at the show and if we are lucky I’ll be able to find out more about what Sega’s plans are for the game formerly-known-as-Daytona in arcades. I haven’t heard if anything else that is new will be there but I expect to check out Sega Card Gen (which was at AMOA) and Hummer std and some of the other games we have seen at other shows.
UPDATE: I didn’t see Sega Card Gen at the booth but they have plenty of other games there including a setup of four Sega Racing Classic machines, a Tetris Giant (not sure why it’s not being called Giant Tetris), Hummer standard, Hummer Deluxe, SR3 standard and deluxe and some video redemption.
Stern Pinball
I can’t find Stern on the interactive exhibitor’s list I’ve been looking through so I am not sure if they will be there or not. If they are, then hopefully it will be the first time they will have shown their Big Buck Hunter pinball to the public.
UPDATE: Stern has a very small booth with an NBA and Shrek pinball setup there. Haven’t heard anything yet about Big Buck Pinball
Taito
While Taito won’t have a booth at IAAPA they will have at least one game represented there at the ICE booth which we discussed the other day, Panic Museum. If something like Elevator Action: Death Parade just so happened to be there, I’d be happy to see that as well.
UPDATE – UNIVERSAL SPACE
One company that surprised me at the show is UNIS or Universal Space. They are a Chinese company that has an impressive offering of games at great prices and they have introduced a coin-op version of Cooking Mama at the show. It’s a touch screen fare that’s for kids but it’s in an attractive cabinet. They also have a very interesting game that controls exactly like Namco’s Panic Park but it’s in a sleek cabinet with a 46″ monitor for $4600. They also have an IGS game party game involving pandas but the name escapes me right at the moment. I caught a video of the booth and will be posting it as soon as I can.
I will be adding more later as soon as I can start uploading videos/pictures so stay tuned!
Thanks for the update. I can’t wait to see some pictures and video.
I was hoping for Sega to localize Dekaris into something equally punny, like Gigantris or something. Oh, well!
I’m likewise looking forward to photo/video coverage. 🙂
well i think its pretty clear that DDR X bombed.
i was holding my breath for Jukebeat aka Ubeat aka jubeat to be shown since it was just found with a some what recent version build in socal, but i guess i was too optimistic again.
was DJ MAX Techinika there?
PM Studios is at IAAPA with a booth (it’s a stone’s throw away from Global VR), so they should have Technika there.
Shaggy, any news of the “Dayclona” game from Raw Thrills, or are they not speaking about it yet?
And, um, any news on Target Terror 2? I know that Eugene Jarvis was teasing something about it a while back…
Updated GH Arcade software? PLEASE tell me this means they’re adding the online features and ability to add songs they promised would come soon after release!
i think they would have reported if the online features were added..
i don’t understand why this is taking so long to implement. since it was said the CoinUP network was to be used, thats already well established with other games so I don’t see why that would be holding things up, only development for making GHAC compatible.
i’m assuming its politics of some sort keeping this from rolling out.
A rep at Betson I talked to said that one of the reps at Raw Thrills told him that Activision won’t approve anything. Not exactly first hand information, to be sure, but the best I have.
I do know for sure that earnings for my machine and for the two owned by a friend has dropped steadily, and the main reason most players we’ve talked to has given is no new songs. The game has not turned out to be as good an investment as it should have been.
do you really see that many repeat players coming back to play to have that great of a decline in revenue?
i only really foresee steady repeat players coming back when the online option is available with the inclusion of prizes.
Shaggy, can you tell me if Sega Racing Classic has a similar gearstick to Daytona USA or whether it’s a generic ‘up-down’ model?
Thanks
Anything to update on IR Robot’s offerings?
Same same or something new?
IRRobot’s MaruBot Football League
https://arcadeheroes.com/2009/03/24/irrobots-marubot-
To answer everyone’s questions:
Yes DJ Max Technika was there. I didn’t take a long look at it though. Chinese company Tecway/Belrare had a Technika clone called Magic DJ that is the same thing but it is a two player cabinet.
There are some interesting things coming along for Guitar Hero but I’m not allowed to say anything yet.
SRC has a gearstick like the older game.
Nothing on Target Terror 2 or anything after Terminator.
MaruBot football was there, I played it a little but it wasn’t very easy to control. I wasn’t able to get any video of it, they weren’t very into letting people take pictures, at least when I was there (Kevin got some pics)
I am working on uploading pics and video right now but I am running into some minor issues so I will probably start getting things up much later today, sorry about the delay
Thanks for confirming that Shaggy, a generic gearstick would have killed that game for a dedicated player like myself. Was there anything about a tournament mode (touched on by Editor in a previous post)?
The panda game from Universal Space is simply called Panda Family. It’s pretty interesting too.
I thought people would be talking more about XBall at the expo, but it was mostly unnoticed. Also, Cooking Mama managed to emulate the original title’s mechanics pretty well, but we’ll se how it’ll work at the arcades.
I didn’t hear anything about a tournament mode for SRC although I did ask about their plans for ALL.NET since that was in that recent report from Sega. It still sounds like they are holding off on really rolling ALL.NET features except for Sega Card Gen (which wasn’t at the show unfortunately)
I like Universal Space’s booth overall. Cooking Mama is neat and while I was uploading the pics of it I had a young girl ask if we would get it. Panda Family is a lot of fun and Ultimate was a decent Panic Park clone.