Amusement Expo Day 1: Tekken Tag 2, PIU Infinity, Koihime Musou

Amusement Expo 2012 officially opened up yesterday in Las Vegas and here is what was there to look over. Images thanks to Kevin Williams of The Stinger Report.

Compared to last year, there is a larger offering of new products for us to discuss as heading their way West and that is always a good thing. We have already discussed Raw Thrills’ Big Buck HD – here is what else was on hand:

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Unlimited (Namco) – We revealed that this game would be showing up at Amusement Expo a few weeks ago and here is the photographic evidence that as usual our sources held true. This uses a two player cabinet which I think will be very helpful for operators who do not have the space or budget to get two cabinets (although thanks to the “Pair Play” in Tekken Tag 2, two cabinets can be linked for four player battles), Also interesting and unusual is the separate station here that allows onlookers to watch the game as well as modify their character when not playing. Unusual for the US as these types of stations are fairly common in Japan these days.

Pump It Up Infinity (Andamiro) – Andamiro kept this under wraps pretty well as far as I could tell. They sent out a press release the other day touting two of their redemption games and a few other products that would be there with no mention at all of this new PIU game. Seeing how it looks like Konami has ceded in the dance arcade game battle here (at least for now) PIU is in a pretty good position to pick up any slack. For those interested, there are more pics and some discussion about the game @ Pump Haven.

Koihime Musou (Rain/Pentavision) – I have a hunch that with Namco announcing that Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Unlimited would be at the show, that prompted companies like Pentavision who have strong ties to Asian markets to bring something in the fighting genre to fruition here. In this case it was the anime fighter Koihime Musou (website here). Of course whether this will be more than just a show appearance remains to be seen – we’ve seen this happen before where the manufacturer uses the show to test the waters. Andamiro did that a few years back with Arcana Heart 2 although they didn’t really push the game anywhere beyond the show. Koihime seems to share some traits in common with AH from a passing glance, in that it focuses more on girls fighting girls and the 2D graphics. That said, it’s nice to see a little love coming the way of the fighter genre in the US again. It still has the problem of competing against console releases though which often undermine arcade sales much more so than other genres. But the arcade is still a great place to play these kinds of games, that hasn’t changed.

Only other thing I have at the moment is this video of a model explaining LAI’s Speed of Light game. Apparently this game has had so many orders it’s on a backlog until June.

That’s it for now, but stay tuned as more is coming our way soon.