It’s a busy, busy week for the arcade sector. With many new releases coming out at IAAPA 2013, it gives us plenty to mull over for a little while; operators have a lot to consider as far as which games they should get to please their clients. I have noticed that the love for driving games is stronger than ever as you will see even game makers who normally just do redemption are now dabbling in video, starting with a driving game. I suppose its the default because it is easy although with so many to choose from you really need to present a concept that hasn’t been done before or at least hasn’t been done in a really long time.
Emphasis again that these products are being shown in Orlando, FL and the intention is for the games to see full distribution in North America.
Previous IAAPA 2013 Coverage: MEGA POST #1 / Day 1 Part 2 / Day Part 1
Click on any picture for a full view. Most pictures sent in via Kevin Williams of The Stinger Report. I was sent over 160 pics but am not using every single one as some are redundant but I wish to express my thanks to him for the extensive photo taking he has done.
Adrenaline Amusements – I received some clarification on a picture that was a part of the bundle from yesterday . It is regarding the new Fruit Ninja FX 2, which has a new attachment to the cabinet of a sliced watermelon and a sensei toy. I thought it might be a decoration but according to Kevin Williams: “the system is a unique arcade toy QR cade interface (smart card to store player data)” That is certainly one way to go about prizes to drive value and repeat play.
Bandai Namco – Via the Twitter feed of a Namco rep, Sam Ven, Namco’s arcade division will officially be called BANDAI NAMCO starting in 2014. So I will try and get into the habit of it starting now.
Super Alpine Racer – From all accounts, the new Super Alpine Racer is a big hit at the show. In an earlier post I mentioned coming across a QR code high score system that was posted to RawThrills.com. Here is confirmation that Raw Thrills has worked with Namco to developed this title that I received from Kevin Williams. Sounds like if you enjoyed the first Alpine Racing games then you will certainly enjoy this as well. The HUD seems similar to Raw Thrills Winter X Games Snocross and in every picture I’ve seen of it so far, all 4 units are being played.
A bigger success though sounds like Mach Storm. I know some of it has to do with the cabinet being completely different than what we are used to here but I also think there is a part where the huge number of racing games in the industry means that you will stop and notice something that is still in the simulator area but different. I’ve beat that drum many times and I don’t say that to discount the game software itself, which also has to be solid, otherwise the cabinet can only help so far. Here are a couple of shots showing a different angle of the cabinets
Close up for Mario Kart Arcade GP DX
Benchmark Games – Traditionally this company focuses on big ticket redemption games (as you can see in the background of this pic) but at IAAPA 2013 it looks like they are ready to jump into the videmption arcade space with Super Shifter: Drag Race Challenge. As the title suggests, this is a drag racing title, Kevin describes it as a “fun game” but no further details beyond that.
Betson – While normally associated with Raw Thrills, Betson does often handle products by other manufacturers.
King of the Ring – This one is notable however as it is the first time I am aware of a Kickstarter project coming to fruition at a level where an arcade game is picked up for manufacturing and distribution. Developed by Nexersys, this gives an exergaming angle to a genre in arcades that hasn’t received too much love in the past decade. The screen in the center is a touchscreen
Feiloli – This Taiwanese manufacturer was at the show promoting some videmption products, such as Treasure Island. There are two different games that they are promoting using the same name – a videmption ticket game and a videmption prize merchandiser. Both use a balance board hand controller
Golden Dragon Amusements – There is always an unusual mix from Golden Dragon, a Chinese manufacturer. Last time I visited their booth they had a light-gun game with a pretty cool cabinet called Bloody Taizerhuang. Cabinet was amazing, game was ok. They now are promoting a water-gun game called Island Hero.
ICE – The main showcase for their booth was the new Harpoon Lagoon Deluxe. The standard version of this was a big hit at last year’s IAAPA show and has been a high earning game since. This model adds the shark marquee with extra monitors to draw attention to the game, which due to its table top configuration can easily be overlooked.
Kevin also reports that ICE will be handling IGS/Wahlap’s Overtake racing game in the US, which can be seen in Mega Post #1.
Play Mechanix / Raw Thrills / Specular – Running up to IAAPA we’ve had a lot of news about new games coming to the market from manufacturer Raw Thrills and their developers.
Aliens Armageddon – In case you missed it, we were sent some short footage of the game which you can watch here. There are cel-shading effects in the game and the 55″ deluxe version uses guns just like Terminator Salvation while the 42″ fixed gun version uses pulse rifles like those found in Aliens: Extermination. there are more pictures I was sent of this one than pictured here but these are the better ones; all show that the game was a big hit.
Barrel of Monkeys – New videmption game based upon the kids toys of the same name.
Batman – Another hit for Raw Thrills, here are some more pictures of Specular Interactive’s Batman with a close up on the wheel and control panel.
Sega / Wahlap -The biggest push at Sega was Transformers Human Alliance but there was more to their booth than that. Transformers was drawing a lot of play to both the standard and deluxe cabinets, by all accounts looking like another hit at the show.
An interesting relationship that starting to bloom between Chinese game maker Wahlap and Sega Amusements. At the Sega booth one could find two new racing games by Wahlap, which Sega will be representing in Western markets. Having not seen K.O. Drive I think its safe to say that one is cancelled. “Crowed market, the driver space is” as Yoda may or may not say.
Storm Racer G – Released into the Chinese market in May of this year, this is a sequel to Wahlap’s first game that turned heads, Storm Racer. Kevin Williams had said at the time that the game was the “Space Invaders of the Chinese market” since the quality was on par with any racing title put out by a Japanese, European or US dev crew. I played it at previous IAAPA shows and graphically the quality was top notch and it played similar to Namco’s Ridge Racer. With SRG (the G is for ‘Gravity’), they add standard improvements with improved graphics, more courses, cars, etc. It still has the boost throttle controller; unsure of the price tag at the moment. Embedded a trailer for the game below the pic.
Storm Rider – Next to SRG was Wahlap’s answer to Super Bikes 2, Storm Rider. Was called Storm Racer MT as shown in the trailer.
Simuline – This company based in South Korea has been at every IAAPA event I’ve attended, usually with their big motion simulator games, sometimes with something closer to an arcade machine. One picture of their booth shows the newer Mini Rider 3D, a two seat motion unit.
Step Evolution / Coast-To-Coast Entertainment – Showing off the latest iteration of ReRave that was announced, ReRave Plus is the main attraction at this booth. The game has a “Wild” difficulty now, which has been made for players who apparently weren’t satisfied with ridiculous hard step charts to begin with 😉
Star Trek Pinball LE – Here is a much better shot of the Stern Pinball booth at the show than had been shared the other day. In addition to Metallica (which was released earlier this year), they had a couple of Star Trek Pros (standard models) as well as a Limited Edition. They usually haven’t brought LEs to trade shows like this so that makes for a good opportunity to try one out.
Also there is news for this making the rounds that actor Karl Urban has provided some voiceovers for the game. That is a great touch especially where too often they have to get a sound-a-like which doesn’t always feel right when dealing with a licensed game. StarTrek.com has the full run down on the news including background on Karl Urban becoming involved (hint: he’s a pinball fan too)
TongLi Animation – This Chinese cabinet maker was demonstrating their cabinet making abilities although from the pictures it looks like they do that as opposed to selling custom software. For the most part their booth was running a few different Japanese made games such as Raiden IV, Super Street Fighter IV and Tekken Tag 2. The concert stage/trade show type cabinet is certainly a weird one for Street Fighter. Also there, Under Defeat: The Ride (which doesn’t have motion to make it a ride exactly, just a sitdown cabinet). For something unique there was Funny Table, a game we covered on AH quite a while ago but it is made by IGS.
Zeroplus – A Taiwanese company by the name of Zeroplus has a new light-gun system and a kit game they are selling for it called Shooting Sports. While being shown at the Suzo Happ booth, there is nothing about the game on Suzo Happ’s website but after a little poking around it looks like it is called Olympic Shooter in Taiwan. I assume this will eventually show up on the SH site to order as a kit.
So far we’ve covered a great deal of what is there but there still may be a few more things to show up.
I wonder if alpine racer proves popular enough that they do a remake of the sequal? Odley enough I never saw the first game in the series that much but I saw the sequal a lot in it’s heyday. It’ll be nice to see alpine racer again rather than seeing another driving game and especially Mach storm 🙂
Just to confirm – NAMCO stated that the games new title is ‘SUPER ALPINE RACER’. And it was developed by Raw Thrills in partnership with the team at NAMCO that included a producer from the original series.
Oh I see but it doesn’t say so on the cabinet or is there a new sign to come?
Namco is bringing it! kudos!