Taito shows off some new games for Japan

Taito sure knows how to hold a “business meeting”. Of course this isn’t the typical business meeting where people sit around a conference table listening to some blather about why things suck at work without anyone directly saying such. At this Taito business meeting, the whole point was to show off some of their upcoming games for release in the near future. Here’s what they had going on.

They have a new table flipping game as seen above called Super Chabu Back or something to that effect. If you are unfamiliar with Taito’s line of table flipping games, it started out as a game where you are the head of a household trying to get your family to pay attention to you by pounding on the table. You do this by actually pounding on a table device in front of the game cabinet. Eventually when your anger reaches it’s climax, you can throw the table up (which is hinged to the cabinet) and it causes mayhem on the screen and you get points for it, depending upon the destruction. This new one has a baseball aspect to it, and is related to the popular anime series Star of the Giants.It’s slated for a Japanese release this December.

As I looked at pictures of this new game it dawned on me how the concept could be made palpable to Western audiences. In particular, if they wanted to do a  Hell’s Kitchen-type video game, this would be the perfect way to bring Taito’s quirky “table controller” format elsewhere. You would be a Gordon Ramsey-like character who needs to judge the food you get from the chefs and if it sucks, you throw the table/tray up, sending the meal crashing through the kitchen. If it’s fine (we’re going for over-the-top arcade exaggeration of course), then it switches to an “aiming” mode where the game view moves side-to-side and you have to time “throwing” the food at the correct table otherwise it ends up on other patrons faces. I think it could have hilarious results. Pounding on the table will get the attention of the staff but at the same time making them more nervous and thus causing more mistakes – but the point of the game would be to get a certain number of good dishes out in a limited time.  Given more thought to make it more intuitive, I think it could be done and it would be a very unique game with a great sense of humor.

Anyways, that wasn’t the only game of the event, Taito had Kickthrough Racers on hand, which is slated for a September release in Japan. It also was revealed that KR uses the newer Taito Type X Zero hardware. They also showed off a new 3D Mahjong Cosplay title and Raiden IV for the NESiCAxLIVE arcade download service. Apparently this version of Raiden IV has an extra stage over what came out with the original arcade release, probably putting it in line with the content available Xbox 360 version of the game. I have the 360 version and it’s fun but leaves me wanting to play it on a proper vertical screen with Sanwa controls.

More details can be found at 4Gamer.net & Game Watch