Morning round-up: Taito opens new store, UK chain Gamegrid liquidates, arcades as social hang-outs and Chuck E. Cheese launches a Nintendo DS game

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Here are a couple of brief location related stories to chew on for today. I am going to take four different Stinger Report newsfeeds and combine them into one due to the brevity of each. That or I am being too laid back this morning to really break each story down.

First off, Taito is going to open five more stores in Japan. It’s great to see some solid growth there, especially considering the hubbub that store closures by various companies in Japan created a couple of years ago. You can see when and where they will be opening the new places here.

On the other side of the globe, UK company Gamegrid (which is not affiliated with my own company in any way, The Game Grid Arcade) is in the process of liquidating their holdings. They own 14 routes across the UK and France, several of which are located in airports according to the story. Three of the airport locations have been sold to new owners already and it probably won’t be long before they take care of others as well. I wish any of the airports I generally frequent would have arcades, that would be far more entertaining to go to than to sit there and watch some boring news channel. I usually like to read something but on the long layovers some coin-op entertainment would be nice. Anyways, you can read about the liquidation here @ intergameonline.com.

Here is something that is sort of arcade related: Chuck E. Cheese is bringing some of the redemption content they are well-known for to the video game world with Chuck E. Cheese’s Party Games for the Nintendo DS. These include the likes of Whack-A-Mole, Skeeball, those squirt gun games where you shoot the ducks, a Sprint-like racing game, a Space Invaders style game, a Beatmania style game and even a mini-game where you make your own virtual pizza. If we only had replicators that you could connect the DS to, that would be great. A parent brawling game is absent but I should lay off completely as I know they are doing what they can to curtail something that is sort of out of their control. You can read more about Chuck E. Cheese’s Party Games here @ Siliconera.

Here is an article going over one of the selling points to consumers for going to an arcade: the social gaming atmosphere. The writer interviews a couple of operators in British Columbia to discuss what it is about arcades that players can find appealing in a world full of easily accessible online games. It all comes down to how arcades foster people, whether they be friends or strangers to play against or with each other, while making a good point about the lack of co-op games in the arcade industry compared to competitive titles. At the moment I think it would be great if we saw more co-op games in the arcade again as right now such games are all the rage. It’s not just on Facebook but on other services as well, such as XBLA games. Some of my most popular games on my PC LAN involve co-op play. Original pioneers of co-op gaming can be found in arcades, such as games like Rip-Off, Gauntlet and a plethora of beat ’em ups that came along in the 90’s but competitive games have always dominated the scene. We do have a couple of new games out there that focus on co-op: Tank! Tank! Tank! by Namco has a couple of co-op modes and light-gun shooters such as the upcoming Deadstorm Pirates and Let’s Go Island are also bringing that out. You can read the article here at TheSheaf.com