Music Arcade Games Now: Sega’s Project DIVA Arcade FT in CA; ReRave Plus Kit; NEON FM loctest + More

News post-IAAPA has been sluggish but it is out there. Today, here are a couple of items for some rhythm arcade games…

First off, Arcade Belgium is reporting that the Round1 Puente Hills Mall location in California has snagged a new Project Diva Arcade Future Tone machine. This Nu-powered game was released in Japan on Nov. 21st but there have been no announcements from Sega about availability outside of that country. As usual this is Round1USA flexing their connections muscles at getting some games from Japan that are difficult/impossible to find elsewhere out West.

But that does not mean all hope is lost, as the original DDR started out via imports and it took off from there. If the game does well enough at Round1 then there’s always a chance Sega could expand. They seem to be interested on some level since the previous version of this game was tested out there. Although if they were really serious, then they must have tried out some secretive location tests elsewhere that does not have a hardcore rhythm gaming fanbase to see how the game does among a casual gaming populace.

Then whilst browsing some tweets I came across a picture of Chris Cotty (of Eight On The Break arcade and Coast-To-Coast Entertainment) and Kyle Ward (of Step Evolution) standing in front of the ReRave Plus setup at IAAPA 2013. I noticed a handwritten sign on the games there that I must have missed previously that clears up a detail about the kit. I also noticed (and I know that many others did as well) how ReRave Plus looks similar to the design of PentaVision’s DJ Max Technika arcade games.

Well, according to the sign ReRave Plus has been designed to convert DJMT units to ReRave Plus. There aren’t a ton of DJMT machines out there (the game has been discontinued and I heard that the network for that game has been shut down so fans were trying to develop a solution) but still this tactic is not unheard of as kits that are designed with multiple cabinet styles in mind improve their potential market reach. Touchscreen game cabinets are still fairly rare out West so supporting the few that are should be a prudent business move.

On the NEON FM front, a new rhythm game by Unit-E, I believe their location test is still going but the last update I can find is this video from Nov. 26th and a little mention on their Twitter channel about the game working with online scores now.

Switching gears from the rhythm gaming side of news, there have been a few things happening in the Japanese arcade space but nothing really earth-shattering from what I have read. Today it was announced that Kohime Musou will be getting a sequel next year. The first was made available in the US, but the company that was providing it did a horrible job at saying so (it wasn’t even mentioned on their website – I found out about its release 3 months after the fact) and so the game completely bombed. An all anime girl-on-girl fighting game is a tough sell to begin with but they should have at least tried. By that account I doubt we’ll see the sequel here but perhaps if it is picked up again, some marketing would help sell more than a handful of units.

Lastly, there is a shooter by the name of Caladrius, developed by MOSS which is getting an arcade update via Sega’s ALL.NET+ network in Japan. It’s called Caladrius Aile Ciel (AC; thanks for the correction ZS) and the official website is here.  Seems pretty unlikely it will get some love overseas especially where importing a board with just the game on it isn’t available. (H/T to ECM for this one)