I don’t know what it is about Friday evenings at times that suddenly a bunch of news is dumped but we’ll take it! I hope that everyone has a safe and fun weekend.
CAX 2015 Under Way – If you find yourself anywhere near near Santa Clara, CA this weekend and you are reading this, then you should get yourself over to the annual California Extreme event (if you aren’t there already). Tons of video arcades and pinball machines, particularly those which are very rare, like the 1-of-a-kind Magic: The Gathering arcade game or Atari’s Road Runner Pinball (and much, much more). I really, really need to get over to CAX next year…I’ll make plans starting now 😛
Kevin Bachus of D&B holds a Reddit AMA; DDR 2015 Going To Test At Dave & Busters As Well – Kevin Bachus of Dave & Busters held a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” on Friday and there he confirmed that they will be testing out DDR 2015. As previously mentioned on Arcade Heroes, the game is testing at the Puente Hills Round 1 USA in Southern California during the month of July. It was that DDR news that first led me to this online event but in digging a little further, it was a surprise to find Mr. Bachus discussing various aspects of D&Bs business with open candor. He mentions that they tried to get both Dance Dance Evolution Arcade and Sound Voltex over here to see how they would do, despite music games not generally doing really well for them. He mentions the problems that fighting and pinball games present for the company (leading to why it is rare to find games like that at their facilities). The first time I had met Kevin at a trade show he had mentioned that they were trying to get Konami’s most recent Silent Scope game over here but so far I have not heard of any D&B location testing that one out. For the expanded AMA where Mr. Bachus answers other questions and shares thoughts on the arcade industry in great and candid detail, click here. [Thanks to everyone that sent this in]
Pete Kauffman Passes Away – News has broken that the video game industry has lost another pioneer, Exidy founder Pete Kauffman. Exidy may not be well-remembered by most gamers anymore as they went bankrupt and exited the video game market in the mid-80s. The attempt to break out into the home console market also  didn’t work out very well. But they were influential during the golden age of gaming, producing a number of great games in their time on the market. Some of those were notable for various reasons: Death Race began the debate about violent games; Car Polo had full color graphics in 1977 (not a first but it was still quite rare to come across at the time); Star Fire had the first cockpit cabinet; Venture brought adventure gaming to the arcade; Crossbow innovated the light-gun space and so on. There is a brief obituary for Mr. Kauffman at Gamasutra; RIP Pete.
Pete is on the back of the surfboard here for Replay Oct. 1983
Disney Quest Petition – No guarantees on petitions but it couldn’t hurt – click here for an online petition to save Disney Quest. I’m sure the exact facility will not work since they already have the NBA thing contracted out but that shouldn’t stop Disney from putting a big arcade somewhere on the grounds. [Thanks to Jdevy for the tip on this one]
Insert Coin: Inside Midway’s 90s Revolution – A new Kickstarter has appeared to fund a documentary that covers the inner workings of Midway’s arcade division in the 1990s. Handled by former Midway employee Joshua Tsui, this promises to give us insight on the inner workings of a 90s arcade powerhouse. Fortunately most of the people that worked at the company at this time are still with us so I imagine he will be able to gather a large amount of information to share that should be of interest for more than just us video game historians. 😛 In the meantime you can always revisit our article on the unreleased RIP Squad or Midway’s Arcade Prototypes.
Arcade Heroes Video Updates – I added a couple of videos to the AH Youtube channel this week, first with an attempt at doing a weekly series where I see how far I can get on a game on 1 credit with 1 Credit Play Monday and the second, a quick thing on which slots tokens/coins should go into. For 1 Credit Play this coming Monday, I will do a newer game since it sounds like that is what is wanted (probably because classic game 1cc or longplays are a dime a dozen 😛 )
Speaking of Arcade Heroes, I just published a new T-Shirt to Teepublic so it is only $14 for the first 72 hours. Mixes the unreleased Roat Riot Revenge with some Engrish 😉
Name That Game #51 – With the 52nd NTG coming up, that means it will officially mark a year that we’ve been doing this, although technically we’ve already passed that point since I’ve redone a week here and there. For NTG#1, click here. For last week’s answers:
1- Surf Planet by Gaelco/Atari Games
3- Galivan: Cosmo Police by Nichibutsu
For this week:
1.
2.
3. captain silver?