(Thanks to Abe Navarro for the tip)
About a month ago, news came along that a new entry into the famous Tetris: The Grand Master would be finding its way to the arcade scene but it would remove the Tetris license(not sure why that is, since the company produced 4 games with the license as recent as 2010 but on this page it sounds like they are trying to figure out who to talk to about it). Given that most of the popularity behind that game was found in Japan, I had assumed that The Grand Master 2015 would likely get testing and a release there, with some kits finding their way over here through the way of import. While it has been tested in Japan, apparently Arika has some slightly different plans than what I expected:
The playtest in the United States was sheduled for 13th to 14th June. It’ll be done at the ROUND1 Puente Hills Mall. http://t.co/CYGjti218f
— tgm_series (@tgm_series) May 26, 2015
That is the Round1USA location found in the City of Industry, CA, which is north of Anaheim. Granted, their focus on Japanese arcade product is very strong and makes it an excellent location for testing out such games. So far it appears that it will this is compatible with Japanese candy cabs but they have posted a video showing it running on an LCD(embedded below). One assumption is that with more LCD cabs out there (Lindbergh, Delta, etc), they would want it to work for that too. The last time we saw a puzzle game grace the arcade scene was with Sega’s Giant Tetris, which was a limited release back in 2009/10. What are your thoughts and expectations for this latest entry into the series?
quite shocked really given the sort of game it is let alone a joystick game but it makes a nice change. hopefully if this is successful they should try with other games like the next don pachi shmp game as well as others.
Shame they probably won’t release a dedicated cab since there’s no Round 1 near me.
The loctest shows it playing in a candy cab…they might just do a kit
Exciting news, the name drop is probably because the tetris rights in america are owned by BPS right?
It’s not just the American rights but whoever owns the worldwide rights at present as in Japan they are not giving this the Tetris name either.
This article is pretty wrong …
Care to elaborate on how? It shared the best knowledge available but if it is “pretty wrong”, needs the right information to correct it
Without a Tetris license, I wonder how they’re getting around the Tetris v. Xio ruling.