Another trade show day has come to a close and with that an opportunity to post more photos from IAAPA 2014. I have amassed quite a bit of video although editing it will be another time consuming issue.
Part 1 of IAAPA 2014 / Part 2 of IAAPA 2014
Allied Tank Attack (InJoy Motion) – The latest hardware/software revision of this tank battle game was on hand and the improvements made to it were proving to be a winner for InJoy as they had sold out of the games at the show rather quickly. These updates have improved how the games looks and plays and further adjustments such as a tutorial are coming.
Go Go Pony (IGS/Barron Games) – A simple video game for kids where you have a small amount of control via the harness.
HopStar (Baytek) – Here is an interesting videmption concept that takes the playground game of HopScotch and brings it to the virtual world. There is a simple footpad where you jump in co-ordination to the on screen pad prompts – two feet for two blocks, one foot for a single block. It’s a simple concept but something that should draw kids in.
Jurassic Park – A better shot of the non-motion deluxe cabinet seen at the show. I got a chance to play the motion version, which was developed in-house at Raw Thrills as opposed to outsourced. I want to play a little more but it seemed good – it wasn’t overdoing it (which can make you nauseous) by exaggerating inclines or way off in its interpretation (leaning to the left when the game shows you going right). There are three scenarios that are broken up into 3 levels each; there is no voice acting from the movies that I caught or attempts to pull off likenesses of the characters. Some of the locations are certainly from the first movie but it has been such a long time since I watched any of the movies (and I skipped 3) that my memory is probably rusty on that.
DISCLAIMER: This cabinet has not passed final approval of Amblin Entertainment/Universal so there is a chance it will change in final production. A sales person told me they expect to have the motion version look closer to the non-motion one.
Kiddy Dido Standard/Motion (InJoy Motion) – The newest product from InJoy was something for the kids – a version of their Dido Kart game that was specially designed for 2-8 year olds. The software is a little different in that there is no foot pedal – the child simply has to steer. They also collect tickets for ticket dispersion and music notes which can play a special song at the end of the round. The motion version is like an elaborate kiddie ride in that the motion is more than back and forth but also side to side but it is pretty mild, tailored to the audience.
Mediamation VR – This motion theater company is now dabbling with VR, with this motion seat setup that is currently using the Oculus Rift VR headset. I heard that Oculus has been wanting to restrict the headset for commercial use for now but there is talk of further delays on the consumer version launching on top of that. There are other VR headsets in development for commercial so things might change depending upon who is first.
This was the first time I got to use the Oculus or any modern VR headset. It does work nicely but how it looks when it is in front of your eyes is different than those many VR videos out there as you can see the pixels on the LCD. The game Mediamation has puts you on a spaceship flying through some different situations and you need to look around you to find crystals, which you shoot by using the right/left triggers on the connected Xbox controller. The seat moves you around for an additional sense of motion and it also had solenoids of some kind in the seat for extra feedback. The headset was a little heavier than I expected and it didn’t have an audio headset built-in, which I hadn’t realized before. Mediamation had a pair of noise-cancelling headphones to put on you however.
MixMatch (Incredible Technologies) – Incredible Technologies had a small booth and what I found to be a surprise, they did not have the new Golden Tee 2015 there at all. I haven’t seen GT2015 on any other booths yet either. Instead they had two new videmption products – LoonyTix, which we saw at Amusement Expo 2014 and a new one called MixMatch. It is a simple game, as videmption usually is, where you swipe one of the rows and then tap to stop, hoping the three rows can match up on one of the characters to win big ticket payouts.
Redline Rampage (GlobalVR) – I still haven’t had a chance to play this yet but seeing it in action a little, it appears to be a solid combat racing title. I will give this a spin tomorrow morning so I can form a straight opinion about it. They only had one cabinet on hand so no multiplayer.
Shooting Mania (Wahlap/LAI Games) – This videmption game was found at both the Wahlap and LAI Games booths. It is a shooting gallery type game controlled by a single button per turret. The items will scroll either right or left on the screen and you have to try and shoot the item off to collect treasures and more. You can win a bonus special game where it is like a board game – you push the button and it spins the wheel to move you so many spaces on the board. You see a lot of Chinese videmption games on the floor but most lack the quality to be comprehensible, much less fun – this has the polish to be a fun game.
Showdown (Sega) – Just a little more from Sega’s Showdown, the special deluxe version. Here are pics of the detailed dashboard:
Toy Speed (Sealy Electronics) – This is another kids racing game where there is no foot pedal for the gas, it just goes and the kids have to simply steer. I haven’t seen any kid try it yet but from what little I saw of the graphics, they were smooth at least.
Valkyrie/Project HADES (Simuline/Specular Interactive) – I had two opportunities to try out this interactive motion theater/shooting ride today. The unit uses Active Lens 3D glasses, which means that the operator does not need to worry about calibrating the screens all the time. The operator must keep them charged, which for some odd reason the first pair I had didn’t take a charge but they got it fixed so I was able to see how this was in 3D. The game is a very fast paced zombie shooter – you infiltrate a base to grab some disc with “Project HADES” on it, then you must escape. The base is infested with hordes of fast moving zombies. While there are two opposed screens (4 players face each screen), the scenarios are fairly similar in how they play out, with a few differences depending upon the sequence. You pick up a pistol, then shotgun, then assault rifle, then back to a shotgun, then the rifle again and finally an RPG. This is not the final software, there are still some tweaks to be made. The only gun that felt a little off in thinking about it was the shotgun, it might have been the sound or that the gun doesn’t have completely different feedback to make it ‘feel’ like a shotgun. There are other effects with this unit including wind and strobe effects. The frame rate is excellent, which makes the 3D very smooth, no interlacing or other issues. There are also easter eggs/secrets to shoot; my top score was 21,430 which I was told was decent. The highest they had seen was around 27,000. Overall, I liked this and was happy to play it more than once and it appeared that many other show visitors have enjoyed it as well as lines were long for it in the middle of the day.
The final enclosure structure that ‘wraps’ around this will be different in appearance when the ride is released early next year.
XD Dark Ride/Gigamon (Triotech) – The interactive theater by Triotech, the XD Dark Ride has been around for a little while, featuring Triotech’s unique seats where you have motion per seat as opposed to the entire platform the seats are on. This had a new game called Gigamon, which features elements from movies like Pacific Rim and Godzilla. It first gives you a training round to shoot cardboard targets, then it is into the monster-infested city game. Most opponents you face are small creatures on the street that can climb walls to flying creatures. The big monster has to be defeated at the end by shooting some specific targets near it. The motion was set to strong feedback and the audio package was pretty good. The action can be a little chaotic when you have 8 players sitting in on one level since you will have 8 target reticules on the screen but I think this is where the training round helps you get used to which one is yours. It is a fun game and I managed 98800 points on this one.
blimey when was there another Jurassic park arcade announced? i never knew that happened :L
Jon, they didn’t give it a real announcement aside from it just being at the booth at the show. I heard quite some time ago at random that it was on test but no one shared pictures of that testing so I didn’t have anything to off on; I had a chance to see two pictures of different cabinet designs on a phone but the person showing me could not share them on a public basis because of the licensor not approving the art yet. I also was trying to get video of this a little while ago but they didn’t want to show anything that wasn’t ready.
I could see Go Go Pony having a MLP licensee in Amusement Expo 2015, for MLP being one of the last franchises for Hasbro to “arcadify“ into the market, and the reason that Barron was going to bring a “licsensed“ kid’s video game to IAAPA but didn’t and I imagine they were still waiting on Hasbro to green light that licensed kid’s game… if it was a Mlp arcade game.
The Mix N Match game seems familiar to me. I remember seeing a slot machine where you try to match people just like this game.