This week has seen a exhibition for arcade games called EAS, which has been held in Berlin Germany. And we have the first look at some of the new games there, thanks to Kevin Williams of The Stinger Report. We can consider this to be a small preview of the IAAPA trade show that takes place in Orlando next month, although my understanding is that many more companies will be at this latter show which also garners more attention so a larger variety of new products will be there. That is not to take away from EAS though, which is allowing customers in Germany to get a taste of some of the latest games to be on the market.
Namco
Pac-Man Smash – Namco’s newest concept in air hockey which is known as Big Bang Smash in Japan is soon making its way to arcades out West but with the Pac-Man license it has huge potential. We have covered it already but this is the first time the game has been seen at a trade show. It will also be at the aforementioned IAAPA show.
Dark Escape 4D – Namco’s latest shooting game was a big hit at EAS, certainly ’tis the season for horror games. For more details check here.
Deadstorm Pirates 4D+ – They also had their 4D version of Deadstorm Pirates on hand, which allows for up to four players and uses 3D as well, which we have seen at a few events previously.
Raw Thrills
Winter X Games SnoCross Arcade – We have heard of this game already but here are the first up-close shots of it we have seen. As covered previously, this is essentially a spiritual successor to Midway’s Arctic Thunder and it also employs a QR code scoring system that allows the player to share their scores and achievements to a social media site from their smartphone, which is seen below. Also by the design they have used, you could say that it is a blending of Arctic Thunder and Super Bikes 2. Now we just need to see a video of this in action. More details on SnoCross
Best Sim
This company has a racing simulator that looks similar what companies like Cruden have done but what the differences might be between the two I do not know.
Race Room
Also when it comes to racing simulation, which the coin-op industry is passionately in love with as you know, there is Race Room which allows you setup a full-fledged virtual racing center.
That’s it for now, if anything else comes along we will be sure to report it!
Am I the only one that cant see the comments about?
No, they are just pingbacks and with the new blog software its not showing those in the comments, probably to prevent spamming via the pingback method.
Snocross looks good for an arctic thunder clone, but I rather have the original Arctic Thunder style presentation back, the snocross branding is way too extreme-sports gimmicky.
@Grenpoxx29 – The 2001 ‘Arctic Thunder’ was a Midway game and though some of the Raw Thrills team had links to the development, they would not be able to do a sequel as Midway owns the IP.
It is also easy for them to just carry-on and build on the success of SuperBikes in a snow environment!
I’ve tried dark escape at italy show today, same european prototype machine that were at the show in germany.
It’s very sad to say that the feeling to the game is very different from the one i tried at the location test in japan.
The screen looks smaller(i’m not 100% sure on that) and the 3d effect is not as good as the one on the jap machine.
Also the sound system is not good as the jap one, it’s still 7.1 ,but they probably changed the speakers with a lower quality ones.
After all it’s still dark escape, but the japanese cabinet is another thing.
It looks like the price tag is about 40k …but this is just a rumor i hope !
@Andrea, your the first person I have spoken too not at NBG that has seen the EU / JP machine(s). Can you confirm that the JP machine you saw had all the levels available? Also is that 40k (Euro) or (Dollar)?