First revealed to us at IAAPA, and later seen at Amusement Expo 2010, GlobalVR has released their latest update to their arcade exclusive NASCAR Racing title called NASCAR Team Racing. If you missed out on the features that this update brings to the table you can check out the post & video from Amusement Expo 2010. The most significant addition to the game of course is the online play, which will allow games connected across the US to race against each other. The online features weren’t available at the show but from what information I have received, it sounds like it will work out similar to matchmaking on something like XBL or other online services that find the best pings available and matches those players up in a lobby. The game will also feature voice chat, which can be activated by pushing a button to talk (you might recall that Taito’s yet-to-be-released racer Top Speed was also bragging about using such an option).
NTR is available in four different forms, a 32″ standard, 42″ deluxe, 42″ motion platform and a kit for converting older NASCAR’s over to the new software. At least one distributor has posted pricing for these models, with the kit coming in for less than $1600 which is surprising. The kit will be made available tomorrow and the full cabinet versions will be released on different I’m not sure how much a used NASCAR is going for at the moment but a kit at that price means it should be a no-brainer conversion. The real question is how many locations have decent enough internet available to make good use of the kit? That can certainly vary upon the area, when I first opened my place I was stuck with crappy 512k DSL for a while and when I moved the standard options could only give me dial-up. Fortunately I came across an ISP that uses antennas and we’ve been cruising online ever since. I am quite interested to see how this does in the US, while online arcades aren’t anything new, it has been a while since those features have extended beyond posting high scores to leaderboards. Online racing is going to be in play in Japan, with the aforementioned Top Speed, UNIS’s Crazy Speed and also with Konami’s upcoming Road Fighters 3D.
Of course the drawback to this is if for some reason support is ever pulled for the servers in the future, then you loose that functionality. That it unless GVR came up with a clever way to avoid that, which is unlikely. Sadly that is the story of all online games one one level or another (and something that fans of playing Halo 2 online have had heartache over recently) but I don’t think that has kept the masses from playing online.
NASCAR Team Racing’s online features will go live on June 15th.
[GlobalVR’s website] [NASCAR Team Racing @ BHMVending / Weiner Distributing]