If you have been following gaming news since last December, then you know that stereoscopic 3D gaming is starting to gain some steam. If you have been following us since February, then you also know that stereoscopic 3D arcade games are on their way from China. The most prominent of those games would most certainly be the new Disney 3D Ping Pong, which we first covered two months ago. Now more details have been unveiled about this official Disney game, which not only include a new shot of the cabinet(I am amused that they don’t have a happy Mickey and Donald facing each other off on the marquee), but also of details on how the game works. According to CoinOpExpress:
Disney 3D Ping Pong arcade machine is a latest type table tennis game with 21 inch LCD screen, it adopted the most advanced 3D effect technology and the player not require to wear special glasses but can “see” the amusing 3D pictures.
There are 3 famous Disney characters on this game: Micky Mouse, Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, the player complete with those classic characters, higher scores player reward a certain amount’s ticket.
Game speed, score system, ticket output and credit amount can be setup by operator. Total three difficulty level on this game: Easy, Normal, Difficulty; also 2 scores system: 6 scores and 12 scores.
When player score more than Disney characters, the player win redemption tickets. This table tennis game suitable for adult and kids to play together.
Emphasis was mine there. There has been an awful lot of hype out there about the new Nintendo 3DS handheld console “introducing” 3D gaming sans glasses to the video game market but here is a case of the technology becoming public in arcades before it reaches home. This Disney game isn’t the only game to employ this tech in arcades as this same company has produced some other titles that are already available for ordering on Coinopexpress. A couple of those employ 3D touch screens as well(such as Star Puzzle), which has to be quite the effect. Disney 3D Ping Pong is listed for release on May 20th, 2010.
I’d love to see this technology in person to know how effective it is in an arcade environment. The only way I see the whole 3D fad staying on as mainstream way of rendering things is to use screens which don’t require 3D glasses (especially those stupidly expensive “active shutter” systems) and provide a good viewing angle so as long as 3D Group’s technology has achieved those two points I think they will have a good foothold in the industry.I don’t think it’d be great if every new arcade game came in stereoscopic 3D but if there was an option for some to come like that, it could prove to be a useful way to make use of this technology.
UPDATE: I just caught this while prowling around the 3D Group website, looks like there was a press event back in March about this game that we missed (probably because it was around Amusement Expo time).From the pic below, it looks like they might have two versions of this cabinet, a single-screen and a dual-screen version. The screenshots provided fortunately are not in the nauseating stereoscopic 3D view. Here’s the translated press release.
UPDATE#2: CoinopExpress has added some pics of the actual cabinet as opposed to the rendered one above.
