Here’s the first batch of my amateur videos from IAAPA 2011. As the title mentions, here’s ReRave by Step Evolution/Coast-To-Coast Entertainment; Emergency by NittoGame; Operation GHOST by Sega, and the Raw Thrills booth with Dirty Drivin’ and a few more games. More to come (including another picture post or two) so stay tuned!
ReRave Arcade – A fresh face to the game turned out to draw some well-deserved attention. This is the first major appearance of Step Evolution’s arcade port of their iOS title, bringing to arcades something that more casual players can get into without trouble, which is something that I think is important. It will be best served by locations that can connect online for the numerous content updates that are planned but if not I think it will still do well.
Emergency – I saw this in some pics from one of the Chinese shows and I was intrigued by the concept and it was great to finally see it in person – a firefighting game that uses automatic squirt guns. Makes perfect sense to me, adding another dimension to a game that would otherwise not be so great. While this isn’t the next Space Invaders by any stretch of the imagination, it’s certainly a step in a positive direction.
Operation GHOST – I admit I have not played GHOST Squad before but now that I have played the new sequel, Operation GHOST, I walked away happy with the concept. I think at a time where games like Call of Duty are taking the video game industry as a whole by storm, this fills that niche for modern arcades quite well while adding some interesting dimensions to it all with the LED target display around the monitor and the impressive gun. I like the switch on the side to change firing modes, and the game itself has enough little twists to keep it interesting. Only drawback was the lower resolution graphics, in terms of both screen and texture resolution. But aside from that, I was impressed by everything else and it’s a fun game I’d be happy to replay.
Raw Thrills Booth – Here I got a chance to play the slightly redesigned Dirty Drivin’. It now uses a crank that uses the Hall Effect instead of a micro switch and it’s attached to the dash instead of the side. It doesn’t ruin the game for me but after trying both I do prefer the side crank. That being said, I still played the game several times and had fun doing so. Getting an opportunity to play on a network of four was welcome too. In addition to that I take a quick look at some of the other games at the booth, ones which we have seen before although towards the end I quickly highlight a couple of surprises that I’ll be getting into more detail on later with another video.
As I keep saying, more to come!
