Amusement Expo 2010: Namco booth wrap-up

Shaggy March 13, 2010 0

As I wasn’t able to finish uploading these video last night, I saved them for today along with this post. Namco had a strong presence at Amusement Expo and that was obviously dominated by the new Pac-Man Battle Royale (which you can see here if you haven’t already). But there was more at the booth than Pac-Man, which I’ll get into here.

As you can see with the video below, they had some recent games there which are already available for arcades to pick up, such as Nirin and Razing Storm. But Nirin has new software, which modified how the game works by shortening tracks and changing a few other things such as boosting and handling so the game is easier for your average player. Also with Razing Storm, while they didn’t update the software, they have a new 42″ cabinet that the game can come in at a much lower price than the deluxe edition. Another update was to Tank! Tank! Tank! – this actually wasn’t released to the US last December as originally planned as they have been tweaking the game for release and the improvements made to the game are all positive. One interesting feature is for the team-up-against-monsters mode. The game will switch off the enemies you battle on a monthly basis, i.e. one month the first level features spiders and the next it features bees and the month after that it flips back to spiders. The second level had the three-headed dragon and now it will flip between that and a huge octopus monster which can morph you tank into a small ink-spurting octo-tank. In addition to that there are new pic overlays that fit the tastes of the American market, and more importantly, new weapons such as the flamethrower. Apologies for not capturing these new features on film – I had fully charged my camera before the show but once I got there it suddenly dropped bars and it finally died while I was filming the Namco booth. (my apologies to anyone at the show where I wasn’t able to get video of your product, such as Incredible Technologies and PM studios).

First here is the overview of the booth where my camera died while filming Go Go Grand Prix. This is a very cool game that will be a great attraction for large locations.

Here is the ending of Deadstorm Pirates. I was walking by this while the girls playing were battling the end boss but I didn’t realize that until one of the Namco reps said they were on a special stage so I grabbed the footage. This game will be released in May and it featured the latest software build at the show, which not only included all of the levels but improved graphics as well.

Also a word on Dead Heat Street Racing. I talked with one of the developers about the game and I was able to get a pretty good idea about what the game will be like without seeing it. As I had mentioned on my Twitter, the game is going to be sort of like MaxiTune 3 in the US, with certain US city streets replicated for racing(Chicago was mentioned specifically). The game will let the player keep track of their stats on the machine along with a ghost racer that you can race later on. An interesting feature with the ghosting is that the game will record ghosts from everyone that plays the machine and then throw those into the game at random as the drones you race against. The game uses a modified version of the PC-based ES1 hardware, featuring a more powerful graphics card than the other Es1 games like Nirin and Tank! Tank! Tank! We’ll most likely be seeing more of this game in September, which is about the same time Pac-Man Battle Royale will be released.

Thanks to the guys at Namco for giving me the detailed rundown on all of these projects!