America’s Most Haunted Pinball; Initial D8; Name That Game #10

Well this week has been a slow one for news, I’ve been busy otherwise. One thing I took care of this week was checking out a spot at the Salt Lake Comic Con. Myself and another local arcade, Atomic Arcade will be providing some arcade goodness for the convention in September. While a Comic Con event in Salt Lake isn’t something that generally draws international attention, the show last year brought in an impressive number of people. The arcade area at this upcoming event will be visible from almost anywhere on the show floor and we’re going to get a huge “arcade” banner up to so it is something that should be on everyone’s mind at some point ;). Now the challenge is figuring out what games to take. Moving games is always a bit nerve-wrecking but some of the dimensions of the stairs/elevators prevents me from taking anything huge like Dariusburst.  Anyways, to a little news that we can discuss going into the weekend.

Spooky Pinball LLC has a love for pinball & horror/terror/scary themes. They like pinball so much that they currently have an original design which has been in production for a few months, which they call America’s Most Haunted Pinball. The game is designed by famous tech modder Ben Heckendorn. There are a number of videos out there about it, one of which mentioned the first commercial units began shipping in April but I overlooked it until now for some reason. This week Spooky Pinball posted a picture showing the games reaching the assembly line, a feat that is always worthy of excitement for pinball fans. As long as it is followed up with good support then that can setup the opportunity for another game down the line. Here is the pic followed by an explanation and a trailer

EDIT: I almost forgot to add this but this is Ben Heck’s second foray into pinball that I know of, his first was working with John Popadiuk on Ben Heck’s Zombieland Adventure Pinball.

Here Mr. Heck describes the modes for the game:

And a trailer, showing the irreverent nature of the game:

If we mosey on over to Japan for some news, Sega has released the latest version in the Initial D series, Initial D Arcade Stage 8 and Transformers Human Alliance finally gets a Japanese release; they also are testing out a new version of their F2P coin-op arcade game Puyo Puyo Quest. Konami released their newest Bemani title this week called BeatStream along with WORLD SOCCER Winning Eleven Arcade Championship 2014.

For those curious about the features (in Japanese):

In regards to ID8, there is zero indication that Sega has interest in giving this North American localization although who knows what might happen if Bandai Namco does well with the Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 4 tests here. On Konami’s BeatStream, that looks like their answer to the various touchscreen music games on the market like ReRave or DJ Max Technika.

Name That Game #10 – Last week I knew the last game would be quite obscure but I thought that the second game would have been recognized by some in the shooter circuit. Here are the answers for last week:

#1 Krull by Gottlieb/Mylstar

#2 Solar Assault by Konami (technically this was Solar Assault Revised but just Solar Assault would have been fine)

#3 New Sinbad 7 by ATW USA (when I said this one was obscure, I wasn’t kidding 😉 )

Here are the mystery arcade games for this week

The challenge question: