Welcome to my last minute collection of arcade news for this weekend.
Star Wars Battle Pod at the Star Wars Celebration – this week has been loaded with plenty of Star Wars news and for the thousands attending the celebration, a chance was there to experience Bandai Namco’s Star Wars Battle Pod. At one point the line reach 1.5 hours for a waiting time and that was with the Namco reps getting people out after one level (maybe 2 min or so). That’s what you call pretty good publicity.
TRON 3 Story – While we’re sort of on the subject of movies and arcades, there is a new TRON 3 tidbit to come along, this statement by Olivia Wilde deserves a little discussion. The main story will apparently follow Quorra as she handles the real world. I had a feeling that this was the direction they were going to take it in and I can only speculate what that means for the film. If they spend as much time inside the computer world as they actually showed Tron himself in Legacy, then most fans aren’t going to be happy with that, myself included. If this storyline holds true then the most interesting way I could imagine them handling it would be to juxtapose both worlds in real time (much like they did in the original TRON at the very beginning, showing a player on an arcade game and what was happening inside the game). Otherwise if its just a quirky fish-out-of-water story, then those have been done plenty of times and I don’t think that would excite the fanbase very much. I do imagine this could give Flynn’s Arcade a chance to shine again, hopefully they give it some screentime again. As always, best to wait before going too overboard on speculation as there is a lot that can change. Any fellow Tron fans out there, what do you think?
Truck Smashes Through Nickel Mania Arcade in Murray UT – I mentioned this on AH’s Facebook page earlier in the week. A truck crashed through the front of a nickel arcade business in Murray, UT this week, injuring a couple of people and destroying a number of games.
This business is local to me and I also talked with the owner of the venue earlier this week when he came into my place to buy a game. We had a big snowstorm blow through the area on Tuesday/Wednesday and at first I thought the accident might be weather related but it was a medical issue with the driver, who suffered a seizure at the wheel.
As for the destroyed games, none of the retro video games were damaged as far as I have been able to find out. It did obliterate several kiddie rides and some redemption games. It also damaged a number of games and the fairly new carpet they had installed within the past year. Given that the kiddie rides were all up-front it is extremely fortunate that no children were giving those a spin when this happened. The owner hopes to be back up and running by next week; this is certainly a good reminder that any arcade business needs some really good insurance. For extra pics, visit this link at Deseret News.
Heighway Pinball Update – Heighway Pinball has decided to add an option LCD to the backbox portion of the game. I’m glad its just an option as I think their placement of the LCD on the playfield is the best choice.
Missile Command Prototype Marquee Investigation – Andys-Arcade has this interesting investigation into the prototype marquee for Atari’s Missile Command, which would have been a bit more elaborate than most other marquees tend to be. Check out his discussion of what might have been intended, even though the code for something to control the lighting has not been discovered.
Dissidia Final Fantasy Arcade News – A bit more news came along this week to promote Square Enix’s upcoming Dissidia FF release, including info on the PlayStation 4 port. In fact, they provided a handy video below to compare the two. It looks like the arcade version has some different levels and the lighting used is different, the arcade version looks brighter but both games run smoothly from the looks of it. Team Ninja is working on this one:
Name That Game #41 Redo – Since we had zero guesses this past week and I’m short on time at the exact moment as I’m finishing up this post, I’m going to phone it in and repeat last week 😛 Also don’t forget to vote in the genre poll from last week if you didn’t already! I am a little surprised to see the beat ’em up rank as high as it did but that is an awesome genre that works really well in arcades. I certainly miss seeing new takes on it as well.
It’s good the arcade owner was able to recover rather quickly. But yeah, really fortunate no kids were on the rides at the time!
I’m surprised no one said Black Widow for #1. I’m still stumped on the other 2, though.
No one else was injured were there at the arcade were they? What time did it happen? Hopefully when the arcade was closed for the night. I have no idea on the name that game but the top one looks familiar.
Star Wars battle pod will be popular for a good while especially with the new film coming out this year.
There were 2 reported injuries, one person drove herself to the hospital to be treated. It happened in the middle of the day so they were open for business.
That’s really scary to see something like that happen. I just hope everyone turns out all right.
I was looking up some more info on the FF game and been reading about the prototype running on a Taito Type X board, but is now running off the PS4 brand instead. My hope is if we’re not getting a local release in the states, then I hope the console port doesn’t lack in any features as I wouldn’t like seeing players missing out.