We are heading into the last weekend of 2012, which I hope is fun and safe for all of you as the new year is rung in. In some various arcade related newsbits, this might be the last “variety” post of the year but who knows.
At IAAPA 2012 this year, Namco had quite the booth, with a 2nd story sitting on top of their Deadstorm Pirates 4D+ game rising above the rest of the show floor. I did capture a little bit of video of what they had there although unfortunately I did not get a chance to do so on Dark Escape 4D, their newest light-gun shooting game. I only got a short time to play that before we had to move on as the game was popular and times were restricted to just a few minutes of play. Fortunately Namco themselves put together this video details what they had to offer, guided by the Pac-Man Girls and Sam Ven. check it out:
Andamiro’s Pump It Up Fiesta 2 2013 game was at IAAPA and I got some video of that but it also is now out in the wild for players to track down and enjoy. One of the first locations (perhaps the first) to get the upgrade was Arcade Odyssey in Miami, FL. Today they celebrate one year in business (congrats on that!) and they also announced that next month on the 19th of January they will hold another PIU Fiesta 2 competition. If you are in the area, be sure to drop by! [Fiesta 2 Tournament Event Page]
One surprise for Christmas was that Stern decided to release a software update to the Data East Star Wars pinball machine, the one first released way back in ’92. The changes and updates to it are too numerous to discuss here but I find it neat that a game that otherwise would be forgotten of in this regard gets an update 20 years later. The full details about what has changed, along with the free download can be found at Pinballcode.com. Stern’s page about it can be found here. Of course once Disney really gets going with the Star Wars sequels in 2015, I imagine that we will be seeing another Star Wars pin come along around that time (we did with the prequels).
Speaking of older pinball games, Star Trek: The Next Generation was a popular pin that was recently converted into a virtual pinball table for The Pinball Arcade software that can be downloaded to a mobile device. Collector Tighe Lory happens to have both and made a video doing a side-by-side comparison. Enjoy
That is it for now, I may write up some arcade game reviews this weekend as I have not done those in a while now and it can’t hurt to have more, including looking at some lackluster games.
Updating a 20 year old pinball machine is meaningless, and even re-releasing it is impossible. A virtual recreation of the Star Wars Data East pinball machine is a must for pinball arcade!
It’s more of a thank you to fans and it never hurts to grab some attention by releasing anything Star Wars related.