Newsbag: The Hobbit Pinball Update; Razion; Brewcade in SF, NTG #26

Happy weekend everyone, no matter where you are hopefully the weather isn’t too bad and you can go out an play some arcade games!

What am I playing this week? – We used to do this on Arcade Heroes back when multiple writers were active on the site, just mentioning what it was we were playing that week or weekend. At home I’ve been playing Hyrule Warriors (WiiU), the Adventure Mode is just perfectly addicting. For the home side this will be my GOTY2014 as it is certainly the game I have spent the most time on this year. I have played a little Smash Bros. U, which is the first Smash game I’ve ever owned. Guess I’m just not that into it like everyone else it but it is fun. I also had been playing through Shadow Warrior (PC) which I took a break on after IAAPA, I need to finish that up this week.

On the arcade side of things, a friend sent me some old PCBs to test out as he could not get an arcade local to him to respond to let him test them. The names should be familiar to various readers here: Armed Police Batriders, Battle Bakraid, ESPRade, Macross, Macross Plus, Thundercross II. There were also a couple of boards that I could not get working: both by Konami, Gaiapolis and XEXEX. I almost got XEXEX to work but it seems to have a couple of bad chips/ROMs and it just doesn’t want to stay working. It’s great to finally get a chance to play some of these games I’ve only read about and while I haven’t been able to spend a whole lot of time on them yet, I can see what it is that makes them so revered – fine attention to detail and some personality always goes a long way.

The Hobbit Pinball Update: Jersey Jack Pinball has posted these pictures of the updated The Hobbit: Smaug Gold Special Edition. There are some additions over what was shown at IAAPA2014, including the complete redesign of the playfield art. I think the new art was a better choice, that dragon looks pretty awesome.  There is also some new ‘stonework’ in the back; I’m curious if they will add any other toys to the playfield at this point – probably not as they have the pop-up orcs/goblins in the middle of the playfield to take that up. Here are the pics to enjoy:

Razion Comes To the NeoGeo MVS: I mentioned this last week but NGDEVTEAM’s new scrolling shooter Razion is now available. They shared a couple of videos showing the game in action on some real arcade hardware (first video shows 60FPS) :

Brewcade Now Open in San Francisco, CA: For gamers and drinkers in the SF area, a new bar/arcade has opened its doors this week to cater to your desires. Called Brewcade, they have a solid selection of classics to enjoy including: Bubble Bobble, Dig Dug, Donkey Kong & Donkey Kong Jr., Frogger, Galaga, Missile Command, Pac-Man & Ms. Pac-Man, Joust, Pole Position, Q*Bert, Robotron:2084, Space Invaders, Street Fighter II, TRON, and many others. Speaking of scrolling shooters, they have a few including 1941, 1942, 1943, 1945k III, Aerofighters, DoDonPachi, Raiden, & more. A full list of the games was posted at Sfist.com. If you live in the area, then go and check them out, we wish them the best of luck in the business!

Name That Game #26: In case you didn’t see the commentors on last week’s NTG guess the right answers, here they are:

#1: Joust 2: Survival of the Fittest by Williams

#2: Eyes by Rock-Ola

#3: Super World Stadium ’98 by Namco

And your challenge for this week: