Newsbag: Homebrew Arcade; Darius Store; New Sega Rhythm Game In Japan, NTG #25

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve done the newsbag of collecting some stories for a quick look as I’ve been busy with the IAAPA stuff but with that past, let’s get back at!

One of the most popular pages on the website is the ‘New Releases’ link above. I’ve been keeping this updated since 2009 and with 2014 coming to a close, I have now launched the Arcade Releases for 2015 page. I will migrate the link above to the new page on Jan. 1st 2015 but in the meantime it is live. The page has a new design – instead of putting everything on one long list to scroll, you can now use the tabs feature of WordPress to making sorting a breeze. Videmption is now in it’s own category instead. There is already a nice roster going into the new year, which will certainly increase a bit as the 2015 goes along.

Homebrew Arcade Shooter – Galap: I always like to see the occasional indie/homebrew development and that is what UK-based Youtube user Gan9e has undertaken. They are rare of course as getting past the software phase into hardware is the challenge but I have wondered if there is a place for games of this style on the kit scene since we don’t have a download service available. Otherwise there are efforts like NGDEVTEAM although their focus is on the MVS hardware.  The creator of Galap says he has “many moons of development left” on this, with influences coming from Starblade and Starforce, lets hope he will stick with it and bring a nice new space shooter to the arcade scene.

Speaking of that, NGDEVTEAM began shipping orders for their latest MVS-based shooter, Razion this week.

Darius Store – (Thanks to Azrial for the tip on this) Taito doesn’t have a ton of arcade content they are promoting at the moment – Groove Coaster Arcade and next week Left 4 Dead Survivors – but they have decided to give one of their classic IPs some real love with the upcoming Darius store, which launches in Japan this Sunday. I imagine that models of Silverhawks and Approaching Fast Bosses will be in abundance but we will have to wait and see to be sure.

New Sega Arcade Rhythm Game – Chunithm: Reader Kieran sent me a link about this and I had seen the Japanese newswires going a little crazy over this were at the same time, there seem to be a few projects happening right now for rhythm gaming in Japan. Sega’s newest idea is called Chunithm and it has been designed by the same team that developed MaiMai. For the control it uses a slider and a special sensor net for “air strings”. The official website for it is here; it sounds a little complicated for the West so I doubt we’ll see much of it here aside from an import or two.

Sega is also testing out a new version of Project DIVA Arcade Future Tone with a “Photo Studio” feature. It combines features of a Japanese photo sticker booth with the game.

Name That Game #25 – The last time I did Name That Game, there were zero guesses. I thought one wasn’t obscure since it was a Sega racing game and the other was a Taito classic so I also assumed it would be recognizable. It’s hard to know what is obscure to other arcade fans and what isn’t 😉 Here are the answers:

#1 – Power Drift C by Sega

#2 – Colony 7 by Taito

#3 – Tank Force by Namco

And your guesses for this week, which may or may not be obscure depending upon your arcade history…