(Thanks to Rico Shen of Music Fantasia for the pics)
It’s the time of year for GTI Taipei, which is a trade show for manufacturers and distributors in Taiwan to strut their latest arcade games and related-products. Unfortunately the name is shared with some car models, which makes finding media for the event a little more difficult than other trade shows. Thanks to the website Music Game Fantasia, which is dedicated primarily to covering music games in Southeast Asia. They have a write-up about the music games at GTI2014 but they have shared some extra photos that they did not publish with us.
IGS – Most of the media from the trade show has to be from IGS, who showcased several new video games. The main event is probably the Monster Eye game which they have been promoting for a little while as reported here on AH but they have some other titles to promote as well. There is their driving game Overtake, which is supposed to have a US release through manufacturer ICE, although since that partnership deal was announced at IAAPA13 I have not heard anything about it since. They also have a game reminiscent of Konami’s Dance Evolution Arcade called Danz Base. This makes at least two games using a Kinect-like sensor for games by IGS, the other being Monster Eye. If they keep up this pace there will be more arcade games using Kinect than one can find on the Xbox One!
Monster Eye – The video below starts off with the trailer as we have already seen but about 2 min in it shows people playing it. It is labeled as a GTI video although it wasn’t filmed there; this picture is from the GTI booth however.
Danz Base
Overtake – IGS has also posted a video of two kids giving this game a spin at GTI2014
Go Go Pony – It’s for kids but it looks higher quality than some other games in this class that I have seen before.
Taito’s Groove Coaster Arcade. I expected this to show up with the Rythmvaders name but perhaps that will take place later. Not sure as that is supposed to be handled by Sega outside of Japan.
Bandai Namco Amusements – Most of what they have we have seen in great detail since IAAPA2013 but there is one piece that previously I had only seen in Japan. I can’t recall what it is called in Japanese but here it is Ace Angler. This of this as an advanced Harpoon Lagoon as it has two screens, supports 8 players and it uses a fishing rod controller (something we haven’t seen in quite a long time, one of Sega’s Bass Fishing games from the late 90’s/early 00’s would be the last time I know of). I don’t know if it works exactly like Harpoon Lagoon does, which is like an interactive attract mode. Given how popular HL has been in the US, I am surprised that Bandai Namco hasn’t given AA a spin here.
Saint Fun – This is a Taiwanese company whose products I have not seen show up in the West yet so we don’t hear from them too often. Here are their newest video games, the motorcycle racing game Battle Rider and Fast Beat
Sega – If Sega had more to show at GTI it isn’t in the pictures. Just a lone Transformers Deluxe as promotion.
That’s all for now – nothing earth shattering really, only Monster Eye is one that seems to be getting the angle for an international release. Of course with Namco’s push towards dome screen technology I bet its only a matter of time before we see some of their rivals from this region begin to dabble in something similar.
