It has been a relatively slow week for arcade news but I have been able to scrap together a little bit to start the weekend off.
First off is a new location opening; I was trying to get more information on it but for the moment I have come up short. The UK-based Retro Games Party is a group of classic game collectors where some in the group are big into arcades and have come together to get a new location. The space will have about 2000 sq. ft. for the game floor and about 60 classic games, opening soon. Here is the announcement video which is a little long but shows the space as a work-in-progress and explains further details. RGP Facebook is here for any interested.
Taiwan-based IGS continues to expand on their portfolio of higher-quality games, one of the more recent titles they created for sale in the US is the driving game Overtake. They have a brand new light-gun game in the works 
that looks like it is going to capitalize on the upcoming Godzilla reboot called Monster Eye. Billed as a “shocking 5D dynamic theater”, it looks like they are aiming to compete with the likes of Bandai Namco’s Dark Escape 4D. As a reminder, anything above 3D is just marketing for whatever the parent company wants it to mean, there is no industry standard for what 4D/5D/6D is. The game is currently on test at the “Tang Muxiong Jin Wannian Taipei store” in Taipei, Taiwan where it has drawn some crowds and apparently people playing the game until after the location was supposed to close. They describe the game as: “First motion-sensing guns, match the motion Chair and Jet, meet your five senses to experience, feel the sea world adventure game!” I’m not sure what they mean by first motion-sensing guns but apparently they are doing some professional voice acting and working with a movie director on the motion capture in the game so they are putting some money into the production for it. Here’s the teaser trailer that was released last week.
Since we’re on about videos, here is Part 2 of my Arcade Games of 2011 montage. I captured some footage of Aliens Armageddon earlier in the week and I will soon have some to share for Transformers: Human Alliance. I will be putting these together as reviews soon. I also will try and do a part 2 to 2013 and a 2014 montage as I collect footage.
I also have uploaded a bunch of direct screenshots from various arcade games to the AH Facebook page. I will add more as I find them. I’m trying to find high-rez shots, unfortunately such is not always available in the arcade space.
Finally in regards to my book released almost a year ago, The Arcade Experience. The digital Kindle version is not up to the best of standards as it should have been, which I sincerely apologize for. I feel embarrassed to have let it linger in this form for so long. I have finally got around to taking a look at how to fix all of that, modifying the file that controls the formatting and I also am taking the opportunity to correct some typos in the text and adding hyperlinks to the many online sources I quote. Thanks to those who have pointed out some errors in the text. It would have rolled out earlier in the week but Amazon kept having issues with converting the file, so I was struggling to figure out what was wrong. It worked right after I ran this post. The update will roll out within the next 12 hours or so to everyone who purchased the book on Kindle. The update is free so there is nothing you have to do other than open it up after the updated files are in the cloud. My thanks again to anyone that bought the Kindle version and stuck with it. If there are any issues you catch on the new version, by all means please let me know!
