(Please note, a couple of updates have been added below)
UPDATE (11/5/13): An interview with Steven Ranck of Specular Interactive about Batman is up now with many more details including new videos!
Some weeks ago we ran a story about a new arcade title coming from Raw Thrills and Specular Interactive (creators of H2Overdrive and Dirty Drivin’) to follow a Batman theme. According to the information at the time, the game was called Batmobile and involves driving the Batmobile around Gotham City, taking out various infamous henchmen in the process. Thus it is not a traditional, circuit racing game but something that appears to be more of an open-world, mission based design. Players can choose from numerous Batmobile vehicles, from the classic 1960s TV version to the Tumbler-style seen in the recent Dark Knight movies. There was a video showing an early build of the game but it was taken down within a couple of hours of the story being ran; since then we have not heard anything else about the game.
Today thanks to an anonymous tip here is your first look at the cabinet for the rechristened BATMAN. It is not a final build but close to the production model (look closely and it looks like the steering wheel doesn’t have the horn cover). There are some aspects of this that look similar to the Dirty Drivin’ cabinet, particularly the color scheme of the sideart. In addition to the huge bat symbol marquees and the bat-headed seats, there appear to be some backlit features on the control panel but its hard to tell if they are interactive or not. With Dirty Drivin’ it did something similar, with the items showing you vehicle status. There are two fire buttons built into the Batman Arcade steering wheel, there is a PIN pad for saving progress and the game is capable of linking 2 units together.
UPDATE: Thanks to many of you for sharing this on Facebook; in one of those shares, Andrew Eloff, a VP at Raw Thrills elaborated a little further on the final production cabinet of the game that they are planning:
“The production games have a custom designed Bat Wheel. ...[in regards to] the LED’s and giant sign – we are trying to attract players to the game and have found that a bright presentation helps! The software is extraordinary! It includes EVERY Batmobile ever plus the flying Bat. And yes, it’s reasonably priced.“
So there you go. I thought the steering wheel didn’t look “final”, so look forward to that.
Expect Batman Arcade to be launched in November just in time for the IAAPA trade show and so it can arrive into arcades as the holiday season kicks in.
UPDATE: When we originally ran the story, there was a video found on Vimeo that had some test footage from the game by one of the graphics artists who has worked on the game. The video was taken down just a few hours after we ran the story but it has reappeared so we’ll assume its good to go. It was from earlier this year and its hard to say how much the game has changed visually since so take this as not necessarily representative of the final product. I imagine the gameplay part of mission-based objectives, chase n’ bash, shoot ’em up play is the same however. As a note, HD resolution is not available in the embedded vid here, you’ll have to go straight to Vimeo to check out the cleaner version.
UPDATE#3: Some screenshots have been unveiled, check them out here
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This game makes me think of and sounds like gaelco’s Tokyo cop police game and taito’s chase. This should be interesting since it’s no just Another typical racer. The cabinet certainly has that fast and the furious colour scheme and design look about it.
I heard that the initial test units were done on Dirty Drivin’ machines. So they just made it an evolution of that, I guess. Although who knows, perhaps there are a few more minor changes to be made before it hits a full release; I imagine they will start production in October to have it ready for IAAPA.
Saw this a few days ago at a local Dave and Buster’s. I didn’t think it would impress me much. Yeah, except while not being all that impressive technically, it was one of the first new arcade games in awhile that really looked fun.
Did you play the game gamefan72? If so what was it like? Was it like crazy taxi, Tokyo cop, chase etc sort of game where you drive to where ever the arrow points where to go to?
Oh and in case any of you are wondering, this would be the D&B in Addison IL, if any of you are around the area. I didn’t realize it was a Raw Thrills game until just now, since they are 5 minutes from me and just up the road from D&B, I assume this is a location test.
Most likely as the game isn’t slated for a release until Nov. That D&B seems to be the place to go for Namco and Raw Thrills loctests
Makes sense. The area used to seem like a hotbed of location tests back in the 90’s. There used to be SO many arcade makers here, I swear Chicago is the arcade capital.
Yeah it still is as you have Raw Thrills, Namco, Sega, Incredible Technologies, Fun Company and Stern all in IL. RT is sourcing a lot of their stuff out of state (Specular which made this game is based in CA) and of course Namco and Sega do a lot of outsourcing too but the loctests all end up in IL at some point.
wow, this has potential. I was hoping it would be a linear action driving game like playstation’s Ray Tracers, instead it is an open world mission driving game like the mediocore/passable Tokyo Cop but maybe better. We’ll see what happens.
Other than that, Specular never fails to impress, old-school style.
Heard that the game had a spotlight on top that projects the Batman symbol on the ceiling above. Can anyone confirm this? Almost want to pull the trigger on one of these for the route but havnt seen it in person yet. Wasn’t impressed with Dirty Drivn.