Tuesday Newsreel: Hobbit Pinball Playfield Partial Reveal; Killer Queen Indiecade, Fast Beat Battle Video; Google Breakout

I meant to get to this yesterday but wanted to get permission for one item below for going to wire.

That item is related to the new Hobbit Pinball machine by Jersey Jack Pinball, slated for a release in Summer 2014. until now, that was all we really knew about it, was that it is coming next year as JJP works on getting their first title, Wizard of Oz Pinball out the door. Since they have achieved that goal, it makes it so production time on their other machines will be shortened and they shared the basic design for the lower playfield of the game. I’m sure this could change for the final build but you will notice the idea is to have moving axes among other features. There are targets in the outer ball drop lanes that you may have to bump the machine to get. According to the email that JJP sent out with this image (which I did get permission to share here), it also stated this about the game:

Joe and the Team are going full out on The Hobbit Trilogy. Joe says “This design is going together better than any layout I have ever done. It will include several different elements than my other games. It is a more expansive flowing game with fast shots and multiple ramps. The main mechanism is Smaug which will be very interactive. The game includes subways and a mountain-scape. Aside from WOZ Joe has designed some of the best loved highest earning games including our own TheWizard of Oz, The Simpson’s Pinball Party and South Park. Joe continued; “We are all having a lot of unexpected fun creating this game”

Without further adieu, the partial playfield (click for a full view):

(Next tip thanks to Adam Coate)

Next is something of interest for “indiecades” – I’m not sure if that’s the best name for them to be honest but they probably aren’t getting a wide release anytime soon and they are non-coin. In particular this is a story run by Kotaku about a huge cabinet made for a game called Killer Queen but before we get to that, a message to the author of this story (who appears in the video below)

Evan, buddy, pal. Please do some research on the subject before writing a headline like “Nobody Makes Awesome Arcade Machines Anymore“. Sure what defines “awesome” is arbitrary but I will confidently submit these modern cabinets for review:

This Cabinet is Awesome #1; This Cabinet is Awesome #2; This Cabinet is Awesome #3; This Cabinet is Awesome #4;

That’s just a small sampling of professionally built arcade machines that could be classified as ‘awesome’ and they have more going for them than just big screens too (artwork, LED lighting effects, unique controllers, special molds to adorn the cab, etc.).  Presenting arcades as a dead art form doesn’t help the cause of arcades and arcade game makers who still produce this stuff for a living. These games are released to the public at large on a regular basis, no matter what coverage they might get in game media. Why they are overlooked on a regular basis I can’t answer but suffice it to say, you can still find some great arcade cabs out in the wild.

Anyways, back to the story at hand is the unique Killer Queen arcade setup by Josh DeBonis and Nik Mekros. It was designed for an NYU Event called No Quarters and supports 10 players. In one way you could say it carries on the tradition of unique arcade setups on college campuses, Galaxy Game was the first and it ran for about a decade, although it did take quarters to play. The video gets into more detail about Killer Queen with the creators.

Next up is something sent to us by 趙泳泰 on Facebook, a six min videos of the Fast Beat Battle Rider arcade game.  This is a game by Taiwainese company Saint Fun, we’ve covered it before and surprisingly it got a bit of attention. I’m still trying to get some more info on what happened at the GTI Asia Taipei trade show last week but not much luck since the last post about it.

Finally, I found out about this on Facebook, not sure how long it’s been the case but apparently if you go to Google Image Search, type Atari breakout and wait for a moment, it launches “Image Breakout” where you get to play Atari’s Breakout game on your browser but with random selected (but clean) Google images. Neat little timewaster although the physics are different than any other Breakout I have played and it’s pretty easy. You can pause the game; I currently have 4404 points and 10 lives still. Curious to see how high I can go. As neat as this is, I have to wonder why current Atari isn’t trying to do things that will make them easy money, like putting Atari Lynx games on the Nintendo 3DS VC and such (I’ll avoid suggesting they jump into the arcade biz at the moment as that probably wouldn’t work out given the path they’ve been on for the past 15 years or so). Seems like that would be more of a no-brainer than this.