Newsbag: Coming Soon Preview; Monster Hunter Arcade; Metal Slug Skull; NTG #23

Happy weekend everyone. News has been slow the past couple of days, you could call it the “calm before the storm” in regards to IAAPA but here are a couple of things I’ve scrapped together.

First off, I finally posted that “Coming Soon” video I had hoped to have up a few months ago.  I did try to get some additional footage than is shown here but I had to rely on what has appeared on Youtube already for the time being as everyone wants to wait until IAAPA. As such, there are more games in development than are shown here but hopefully this gives you a taste of what we expect to see at the show on the 18th-20th.

Also in regards to something I posted about last week, I have launched an Arcade Heroes “Store” page. More stuff will be added soon.

Monster Hunter Arcade – I guess someone over at Capcom has remembered that they used to do really well making arcade games and so they have convinced the big wigs to give it a show again. As previously mentioned on the blog, Capcom hasn’t completely given up on the arcade market in Japan but they haven’t been in the news very much either until recently. That news included Luigi’s Mansion Arcade and now Monster Hunter: Hunter Training School. There is no info on this aside from this pic below however given the cabinet design, we can safely assume that it is a light-gun game. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is some sort of co-op beast shooter like Jurassic Park or Let’s Go Jungle.  This marks the 3rd time Capcom is using the MH property in arcades over in Japan in the past couple of years – there was Pugee Race, a kids card-battle game and now this. This unveil is a part of a new location that has opened in Japan with a Capcom theme to it called Challenge Park.

UPDATE: Of course just a few minutes after I publish this post, I find someone that has posted their impressions of Namco’s new Time Crisis 5 that has been on location test in Japan. From the wonky translation it appears one hero name is Luke O’Neil and the other is Robert Baxter from Time Crisis 2. The game still has a weapon changing mode but it is now done by pushing a button on the gun instead of taking cover and selecting. In the loctest there were “4 types of guns, machine guns, shotguns, grenades”. The dual pedal system apparently allows you to get behind enemies and it sounds like they are trying to make it feel more realistic. The scoring system is apparently similar to Time Crisis 4 but with some tweaks. one of those is the addition of the side attack bonus which comes into play by using the new pedal system. Overall the impression that this left upon the writer was that it is an “interesting” game – naturally further tweaks may come to the game thanks to the location testing. We will get our first hands-on taste of it around March.

Here is a sweet arcade related ceramics project posted to the KLOV Forums by user InsaneDavid. He states: “After nearly 80 hours of painting, my girlfriend finally finished her most recent video game related ceramics project – an adult-sized ceramic skull featuring characters and machinery from the Metal Slug series. It features Marco, Tarma, Eri, Fio, a POW, an SV-001 Metal Slug, an M-15A Bradley rocket launcher, a Martian in a UFO, falling bombs, a Rebel Army insignia, first-aid kit, ordinance crate, gas can, meat, wild mushrooms, and “GAME OVER” scratched into the sand.”

Name That Game – Last week brought us back to random game picks and only 2 out of 3 were guessed this time around. Here are the answers:

#1 – Armored Warriors by Capcom

#2 – Pop N’ Bounce by Video System Co.

#3 – Rompers by Namco

Aaaaaannnnddd your questions for this week: