As expected Sega has unveiled more games which will be making an appearance at their AOU2011 show next week. Among those games includes a 2D fighter that runs on Ringwide hardware called Chaos Code; a new Mahjong game, Sega Network Mahjong MJ5; and most surprisingly, Let’s Go Island 3D. The most significant aspect Sega has revealed about LGI3D is that it does not require glasses for the 3D effect to be perceived. While this may not be the first arcade game to do so, it’s certainly going to be the first major arcade release to use this particular technology. The hardware has been upgraded to Ringedge to handle the effects but it is not known at the moment which non-glasses 3D display they are using. There are those 20″ Toshiba 3DTV’s which are selling quite slowly in Japan but the screen size is a bit small for an arcade game. Taito and SIE Electronics have shown off their own glasses free displays so Sega R&D could have cooked up their own as well, we will just have to wait and see. We at least have a look at the cabinet, which goes back to the “theater style” cabinet as seen above.
The site for the game also indicates that the game will have air blowers installed for that extra “4D” touch, so when specific game events occur in the game players will have a short burst of air in their face. I experienced that with Simuline’s Aquarace Extreme and I thought it was a neat feature.
Let’s Go Island 3D will be released this Summer in Japan (just in time to compete with Namco’s Deadstorm Pirates 3D). We won’t know for a while if the game will be made available outside of Japan yet – one problem with non-glasses 3D technology is the cost and that can limit the game’s availability depending upon what the final price is.
Oh well, still no announcement of a new coin-op Virtual On. Either way, this looks like the coolest light-gun title since The Ocean Hunter now that 3D has been added. A 3D Ocean Hunter remake would be killer but it’s probably too recent a game to garner remakes, sadly.