As mentioned in the last post, the past few days I was probably going to be AWOL as I was exhibiting some arcade machines at the popular Salt Lake Comic Con in Salt Lake City, UT. By all means it was a success – I even did a little Arcadeheroes.com promotion there. 🙂 I wasn’t able to research for news and post so here is a little catching up in that regard.
First, news came along that the World Record for Donkey Kong arcade has fallen once again, this time thanks to the skills of Robbie Lakeman. I know not every WR makes the news as there are a lot of the records that can be had out there and a lot of media attention was given just to the effort to get the high score on this game over the past several years. Congrats to Mr. Lakeman on his achievement, 1,141,8001 points is the score to beat for anyone out there who are practicing at the game to see if they can nab the title. More info on how it all played out at the Donkey Kong Blog. Thanks to George Arbogast Jr. for the tip
Next up is a new teaser from Skit B Pinball. They most recently unveiled that in addition to their Predator Pinball machine that they were doing one called Experts of the Dangerous. Then this weekend they posted this teaser that they are calling “Return to Funhouse Pinball”. There isn’t much there than that but just in case you are curious:
Not that this has anything directly to do with arcades or pinball (yet), the advances in projection mapping hold a lot of potential for new ways to entertain out-of-the-home. I think once this technology is applied to pinball it will be huge (much more so than LCD screens in the backbox or playfield) but there are interesting things that could be done in arcades as well. They have been to small degrees, often mapping a floor where players can stop on something but even in a small scale game there are ways this could be useful in creating new ways of seeing the action – projection mapped globes at museums if turned into multi-player coin-op game experiences as one example. Video via the DNA Association
Finally, Haunted House season is here and with that, new innovations are ready to take their place in the space. Check out this project from VRcade, where they have what they call the “World’s First Virtual Reality Haunted House” to offer. It seems like a good use of VR, especially since the interaction of the user with their environment is minimal. On a tangent thought, given the flailing over the “Haunted House” franchise that the current Atari has been going through over the past few years, a VR effort of it would probably make more sense than the endless runner and so on. Anyways, here is a trailer for The Nightmare Machine by VRcade (link via DNA Association)
That should catch us up for the moment but I imagine that news will ramp up a little bit as the month progresses.
