The 49th Japanese Amusement Machine Show (better known as the JAMMA show) is upon us and as expected, new games are here to be seen. News will be trickling out in waves over the next couple of days and here’s what we have have so far.
(This and other pics via AM-Net)
First one surprise from Sega. They have on display an overseas version of Virtua Tennis 4 – in other words, slated for an arcade release outside of Japan. The game was already released for practically all game consoles back in May of this year so they are playing catch-up with the arcade version but seeing how the Virtua Tennis series has always been an arcade series, it’s nice to see them bring it home. It also helps fill in the arcade sports genre with something a little different, which at present is dominated by golfing and bowling. One question I have however is will they have changed anything for the arcade version to make it stand out? I imagine that using the auto3D technology would certainly be one way to do that but who knows when all we have is the picture above. I also wouldn’t be surprised to see them use a different cabinet than pictured – Sega used Fun Company for the trackball version of Bass Fishing Challenge so I wonder if the same might be done for VT4 using one of their joystick cabinets. Time will tell and perhaps we’ll see more at this year’s IAAPA in November.
So far nothing else really newsworthy out of Sega at the moment, AM-Net shows pictures pre-show of various booths for games like Border Break, Project DIVA Arcade and others we have seen already.
For Namco, today is the day that their brand new Tekken Tag Tournament 2 has been released to arcades. Hopefully soon we’ll know if they plan on testing it in the US or not as they said to be considering. Here’s the TTT2 booth before the crowds arrive:
Also Namco’s new Dark Escape 3D. I hope we’ll be seeing this one in action very soon, Namco does plan on bringing this overseas as we already discussed.
I had thought that Deadstorm Pirates 3D might have been canceled after we hadn’t heard anything about it this past summer when it was slated to be released but it was simply delayed, probably by the quake.
Namco’s Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 4 ready to impress
Taito of course is proudly showing off their online arcade download service platform NESiCAxLIVE and right there you can see the first public appearance of the new Persona 4 fighting game we discussed not long ago. 4Gamer.net is also reporting that a new version of the 2D fighter Demon Bride is also playable here; they also report that Taito has a new arcade board here called Type X3. Last year Taito revealed the TypeXZero but that seems to have received little attention so perhaps the X3 will be the board that truly replaces the X2. Keep in mind that new tech is often displayed at JAMMA but never comes to commercial use, like Taito’s own auto3D display they showed off last year.
As well as Block King/Legendary Cannon where you can either throw real plastic balls at the screen or use the force feedback cannon to do it, smashing virtual castles.
Taito’s newest music game, Magical Music
There’s much more than this to come, check back tomorrow and I’m sure there will be more news to talk about than I have time to cover!
