Not long ago, Play Mechanix held their annual World Championship for their Big Buck HD arcade game, where thousands of dollars in prizes (around $64,000) were given away to the best Big Buck players on the planet. They also streamed the event on Twitch, which was almost 5 hours long. I only caught the very end of the tournament the day it happened but someone else mentioned to me that during the stream they talked about some of the updates coming to the game in 2015. The updates were not on the units at IAAPA 2014 from what I was told so I didn’t check the cabinets they had setup next to Jurassic Park.
Play Mechanix has posted both days of streaming to Youtube (Day 1 was the Ladies Tournament) and about 11:42 into the Day 2 video is a trailer where they show off the 2015 upgrades:
If you check that out then its all self-explanatory – 3 new animals will be added to the game next year including Bighorn Sheep, Gemsbok, and the extinct Irish Elk. They have added new Dangerous Trophy animals, brought back “Big Game” trophies, raised the stakes for Add-On Tourneys, they will finally launch the Big Buck store and they are adding a whole new adventure to the game called In Case of Zombies: Doe of the Dead. That mode kind of gives the impression of Ghostbusters but applied to zombies (ok, redneck Ghostbusters/Zombiebusters; that’s a little vibe I got out of it anyways). It is definitely something different for Big Buck, especially that part where you fight a zombie deer with your bare hands (my guess is you have to pump the shotgun quickly to shake it off). I took the liberty of getting some screen grabs of this part and I reached out to Play Mechanix about a trailer that is separate from this stream but its late Friday so I may not hear about that for a couple of days 😉
What are your thoughts on these updates?
I’m very excited to try this, and the new animals as well. I hope they put zebras, those are my favorite animal 🙂
IIRC, zebras were in Big Buck Safari as a Big Game Trophy. So with those making a return, I imagine they might be included.
Yes, I remember those from BBS. I play it on my iPad all the time 🙂
they were called Trophy Animals back then
This looks and sounds cool. I like the thought of shooting zombie animals in the wild. Just a pity they never released it in time for Halloween. The other thing is I’ve only ever come big buck HD once and that was in an arcade in Whitby, UK
Just a heads up, there’s now a countdown on the BBHD website for the release of the update
Thanks Federico. I actually have had the game on test for 3 months but I haven’t been allowed to talk about it. However, you can catch the game in the background of this new video I posted… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inI2o9nWQWQ
Thanks, really looking forward to it.
The countdown is also on the CoinUp website in case ops want to see it. I also learned today that the new animals will be released 1 year apart. Irish Elk in 2015, Bighorn Sheep in 2016, and Gemsbok in 2017.