Happy weekend everyone! It’s felt like a really long week on my end. If you haven’t already please check out the videos from Amusement Expo 2014, there are plenty of new games to take a look at, many of which we have discussed on the blog already but a few interesting things we haven’t seen in action until now.
The Stinger Report sent along a few different news links which covers Stinger Newsfeeds 1351-1355.
A lot of kids have probably heard how playing video games “doesn’t amount to anything” when growing up but something like the professional tournament circuit has certainly blunted the edge to that argument (on another side, opening up an arcade or game store also is making something out of such a passion – it helps if you know your video games to get into such a business). Rocket News has an article about Japanese gamers dominating some big tournaments and how fighting game competitions in particular have become a spectator sport, with larger and larger cash prizes up for grabs.
A release date has been confirmed for Capcom’s Ultra Street Fighter IV in Japan of April 17th. This gives arcades a mere two months to make up the cost and maybe squeeze out a profit before people have it at home. It’s the same thing as usual with the arcade fighter market but this will probably be the game to play in tournaments for some years to come.
Next up is something that can appeal to many fans – of arcades, VR and TRON. As the creator of the RiftCycles Project states :”This is a stunning and unique arcade prototype that combines the Oculus Rift with a Light Cycles simulator that I built from scratch.” Even without the VR portion, I thought that a light-cycle arcade game would have probably done well in 2011 around TRON Legecy’s release as that kind of arcade game is something that didn’t necessarily need the movie to do well to be able to have standing (much like how the original arcade game made more money than the movie did). So it would be cool to see if this gets some legs beyond a DIY-style idea. You can see his project in more detail here.
It is easy to overlook or forget the influence that electromechanical (EM) games had on the market before the video arcade machine changed everything. We’ve covered some EM titles in our history posts before, particularly some of Sega or Midway’s interesting developments from those ages. I doubt we would see any new major release ever occur again that would create a game of this nature that doesn’t have a ticket dispenser included with it. But in the few times I’ve been able to play these games, they really are fascinating. Sure they are shallow and very limited as to how deep that can go with the play since you only have so much space to use in a cabinet. But like pinball, they are unlike any other kind of game. Polygon.com has a new article up that gives the games some love and dives into some of the history behind pinball and EM amusements of the past. Here’s a video from one of Sega’s EM titles made back in 1970.
