Rarely is there any news coming at us on a weekend so some general arcade interest stuff should suffice for us.
First here’s a video taken recently at a new Taito Gamestation that opened up in Japan. As mentioned in the tweet by Arcade Otaku that I’m borrowing this from, you’ll notice that all the units they are are sleek LCDs, not a single CRT was there from what I noticed. A lot of those cabinets seen are running NESiCAxLIVE, which is Taito’s own game download service for arcades that we have seen before. The guy filming points out most of the games, although at 2:28ish doesn’t mention Border Break or Dariusburst EX. Also doesn’t really mention the Gundam pods.Correct me if I’m wrong but there was even a Strider 2 in there next to the Metal Slug X, pretty awesome selection for any gamer to enjoy.
Speaking of Japan and NESiCA, they are releasing the following games to the platform this week: Raiden III, Raiden IV, Homura, Puzzle Bobble and Space Invaders NESiCA Edition.
For this week’s eBay find, I spent a little while browsing arcade games and lusting after plenty I can’t afford and here’s a cool one you don’t see too often – Atari’s I, Robot, famous for being the first game to use filled 3D polygon graphics. It also used a Hall Effect analog joystick and included an unusual player selectable mode where instead of playing a game you could sit there and draw using the games unique drawing engine. If I had around $3000 to spare I’d probably be scheduling the delivery on this one already but alas my day of having an I, Robot and Major Havoc will have to wait.
That’s all I got for now, but I will continue to seek out new news and stories
Here’s an arcade biz question: do you pay for your electricity or is it part of your rent?
And, if you’re paying for it*, is there enough savings to make investing in all LCD cabs to make it cost-effective over, say, a 5-year period?
*By that I mean, of course, directly since it’s going to be included in the rent in some fashion, albeit probably transparently.
To the first question, in my case I pay for it separately. Not sure if that would be included in the rent of a dedicated building instead of a mall situation.
As for the savings that’s a good question. I’ve converted a few of my own games over to LCD but it’s really difficult to tell how much it might have saved since my costs vary every month between $50-$100 a month in variation. I suppose if we had the numbers on exactly how much a typical CRT uses in kWh versus an LCD we could figure it out.