I haven’t been able to do a weekend “newsbag” for a few weeks due to various personal and business matters going on in life but this morning I get a breather so here we go. BTW, stay tuned for a Star Trek Premium pinball review. I had been waiting until the code update was released to do one; now it is a matter of editing a bunch of footage into a 5 min chunk, always a joy.
Some time ago, we had a story on a new Namco-owned FEC that would be opening its doors in Schaumburg, IL. That story had suggested that the restaurant/bowling/amusement gaming lounge would be open by Christmas 2014. Namco has sent out a press release this week about the venue, providing an update as to where it is at. The venue will be called “Level 257”, a wink at the 256th level in Pac-Man being a kill screen. Pac-Man will play a big role in the venue theme and it sounds like a lot of the stats are the same as before (16 bowling lanes, 40,000 sq.ft., fine dining, etc). It looks like the project has been delayed however to “early 2015”. An official site can be found here although at the moment it is more of a teaser site than anything else.
Also in new arcade venue updates, back in June we mentioned The One Up would be opening this year in Sherman Oaks, CA. That grand opening is now set for this coming Friday, September 19th. According to the info I was sent, “The “Arcade Gastrolounge” is poised to be the most unique restaurant on Ventura Boulevard. Chef Mario Harrison features a New American small plates (tapas) menu of traditional recipes with a unique twist, with dishes like the Cap’n Crunch Fried Chicken. Play all of your favorite classic games on a single arcade! The One Up features 15 arcades which offer over 400 free games from Pac-Man to Donkey Kong to Street Fighter.” In terms of the game side, it sounds like they will rely mostly on multi-cade type cabinets to provide a wider selection while not taking up a lot of space. They have details on that on their new website. As some bar/arcades are doing, they aren’t charging for the games, just the drinks/food. Here is a concept print of what the arcade room will look like:
A commentor on this post stated yesterday that Round1USA in Southern California currently has some Sega InitialD8 Arcade Stage machines. They do support the IC cards but not the network from what the poster says. If any second confirmations could come along about that it would be interesting to know. Perhaps if the game does well there we could see a resurgence in InitialD in the US, which has pretty much been on hiatus here since ID5 as Western Sega has not seen the desire out there needed for more technical racing games to bring them to market.
Name That Game #15 – It’s been a few weeks since we did Name That Game. Here is a link to #14. Your answers for that, which were guessed quickly:
And your Mystery Games for this week:
No idea about the other 2 but the last one must be aero fighters.
Doesn’t initial d newer model require a server to work the game outside of japan unlike wmmt 4 and so on?
I wonder if namco will expand operations and have more restaurants just like the chucky cheese and dave and busters? That to me is very good business as kids would tend to go on the games either before or after a meal leaving the parents time to themselves or part take in the games even.
That last game is a favorite of mine. Mad Shark by Allumer. 🙂
1st one midway’s hyperdrive????
I doubt that Round1 getting InitialD8 means anything with regards to an official western release, even if it does do well for them. They seem to import a lot of games due to the company’s Japanese origins, and all the new Bemani games at Round1 has sadly never resulted in any sort of official NA release of those games.
Yes I know, I just meant that in the sense that if it did really well Sega could take notice. It has happened before in the case of other Japanese imports like DDR but admittedly that has been very rare.