Here’s an update for anyone close to the location tests on Tekken Tag Tournament 2 (as a reminder, The Next Level Arcade is no longer participating in that).
On our Facebook page, a commentor said that the Fun Works in Honolulu has received their machine and it is playable now.
ArcadeUFO has a rundown of what to expect on their end. The game is running on one head-to-head cabinet and will support online features such as stats and ranking with the other arcades running the machine. Players can purchase a Banapass Card, which will allow you to save your information, customize your character and so on. Register a nickname for yourself here.
Arcade UFO will have the game operational as of this Sunday and the test will be active through the 17th of January. I imagine that Super Arcade and Round 1 will also have their units anytime now. Whether all locations will be ending on that date is unknown but likely. I imagine that if successful, then the game will be available for other US arcades to purchase not long after that.
Fun Works and Super Arcade are both up and running with Round 1 going live in a few hours.
I was asked recently when we broke the news of the LocTest (Location Test) why we keep saying “…with zero traditional trade promotional support”?
The term is a tongue-in-cheek confirmation that the current amusement trade has never favored promoting LocTest or really driving the players to them. Partly as these are a test if a machine could be a successful earner on the market, and also as the amusement trade has never been interested in bedding the fans and players.
The most recent investment in player support was from Konami in the US to try and redress bad reaction to their international build of Dance Dance Revolution with internal LocTest’ing; this was followed by a tournament.
But the big regular promoters of fan based support are Incredible Technology with their Golden Tee competition and private top player testing – and also Play Mechanix with their Big Buck Hunter tournaments and fan support. This hard work has left the rest of the traditional trade cold to the idea – but we are seeing a change in policy from some of the newer developers.
All this said, we have to remember that Bandai Namco Games US has been ‘encouraged’ to undertake this LocTest of a game that management had already dismissed as not suitable for the US trade. If this as half as successful as I and the JP team feel, then we could see a complete change in the way Japanese amusement promotes hardware international separate of the traditional trade!