Taito Unveils Left 4 Dead Survivors Arcade In Japan

I’ve been keeping an eye on this since Taito initially teased “Project Z” back in February and yesterday in Japan they began a press blitz to promote the upcoming  game, giving us a first look at the cabinet. But first, a new video from Taito that they are using for that promotional effort:

From this, it appears to be a modified build of Left 4 Dead 2 but what surprises me a little more is the arcade cabinet. At the moment it is using a modified VEWLIX cabinet with what looks to be a standard mouse and a Nintendo Wii Nunchuck controller, as opposed to the specialized Half-Life 2/Cyber Diver cabinets that were used on previous FPS games that Taito had done. Note that where this is the first build it could certainly change – I would not be surprised if they end up creating something a little more sturdy although when CounterStrike NEO was released by Namco back in 2003, that just used a keyboard and mouse.

The people pictured as testing this are a J-Pop band called M.S.S. Project. They were at the JAEPO 2014 trade show to help promote Taito’s Groove Coaster Arcade and since there is four of them, Taito signed them up to promote this. Sticking to the theme of fours, there will be four venues in Japan where this game will be on test starting on 5/23.

Also via Twitter I found this animated GIF from the press event above that shows the controls in action. The game also has a timer but I’m not sure what else this will do differently.

Chances of this showing up in the West are pretty slim – granted Namco did test out Half Life 2: Survivor but that game didn’t perform adequately to get a release. I believe for this to even have a chance it would need an enhanced control scheme, probably something closer to Sega’s Border Break arcade game.