Newsbag: A Review, A Book, A List, Japan and NTG #16

There has not been a ton of news this week and this arcade newsbag will probably feel scanty still. That said, I hope the weekend is going well for everyone where you can go out to your favorite arcade, get some high scores and just have some fun in general.

I posted a new review featuring the latest code update for Stern Pinball’ Star Trek Pinball to Youtube. I had a ton of footage to edit through, being that I am not a Pinball Wizard it took some time to get shots of certain features I needed to nab. Hope you enjoy it!

Some time ago I did a book review on a huge book called Atari Inc. – Business Is Fun. It was an amazing resource of facts and interesting stories about the creation of Atari, chronicling the company’s rise and fall through 1984. That of course contained a good amount of material on their arcade division. Unfortunately the first edition had some typographical errors; fortunately that is being taken care of with an upcoming 2nd Edition of the book. That edition is due out next year (along with the follow-up book, Business Is War which focuses on the Tramiel family era). They have an awesome new cover for the 2nd edition, created by Lukas Ketner. Here is the cover (Thanks to Marty Goldberg for the info)

Thanks to the increased cultural popularity of arcades, some mainstream publications are taking more notice of our craft. Here Popular Mechanics has 8 arcades they recommend a gamer makes a pilgrimage to, most of which we have mentioned on the blog here previously.

I doubt anyone is really excited for this outside of Japan since this will probably never leave those shores but Capcom announced Monster Hunter Spirits for Japanese arcades. It is a card battle game, hence my lack of optimism there.

Name That Game #16 – But first, here are you answers for Name That Game #15. #2 did not get a guess, so I should have made that one the challenge question as it was pretty obscure. I forget that getting a shooter past you guys as obscure is a challenge for me just to figure out 😉

#1: Hyperdrive by Midway

#2: Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer by Technos

#3: Mad Shark by Allumer

And your Mystery Games for this week:

You’ve all played this last one before, right?  >:-D