Seen At The AAMA Gala: New Star Wars Battle Pod Cabinet; Sonic Dash Arcade; Crossy Road Arcade; & More

It is August and that means that the AAMA (American Amusement Machine Association) Gala is upon us. The event generally features AAMA business meetings and seminars while always offering a sort of mini-trade show event where some new products are shown off. Thanks to an anonymous tipster, here is your first look at several new games that will possibly be hitting the arcade scene later this year:

Star Wars Battle Pod: Standard Edition – Here is a surprise! Bandai Namco has shrunk their popular and arcade exclusive Star Wars Battle Pod game into a standard version. This should mean a much easier price tag to swallow than the deluxe machine’s $30k+ price tag. The drawback of course is that these are not a ‘pod’ so you don’t get that unique dome screen or the wind effects. The controls appear to be the same but the footprint will take up something closer to a standard arcade racing game. This also links together for 2 player action, although the tip did not include details on how that works exactly. Hopefully the new software will also support the camera that the Deluxe models already come with, but is not used in Rev1.01 of the game; these models do not have a camera on them.

Here’s hoping that a standard version of Time Crisis 5 is still on the table for the US. No word yet on the “True Mastermind Edition” software for that game which will add 3 additional levels; TC5 is not at the Gala.

Sonic Dash Extreme: As seen in this picture below, Sega’s popular endless runner mobile game Sonic Dash is getting the videmption arcade treatment, entitled Sonic Dash Extreme. The control is a gigantic backlit D-Pad (which helps differentiate it from the other endless runners brought to the arcade like Temple Run 1 & 2, both of which used a trackball) and of course you get the big screen. Sega also is showing off a mechanical redemption arcade game simply titled Sonic The Hedgehog. The last time Sonic was used in the videmption space was Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Arcade which was released in 2011 (that game had an optional ticket dispenser for it; it is unclear whether SDE will allow the tickets to be deactivated for amusement only play).

Crossy Road Arcade and Where’s My Crown Scratch & Win – Adrenaline Amusements has two new games to show off, one of which is a big names from the mobile gaming space – Crossy Road and Where’s My Crown: Scratch & Win. As you can see below, Crossy Road uses the same cabinet as their Flying Tickets game, which also includes a feature I am not aware of existing for the mobile version – VS. 2 player. Adrenaline usually states that their titles can be set to amusement only so perhaps with that in mind, this could become the new age Frogger game for arcades. I notice that this has buttons instead of joysticks though, so that would limit movement since in the mobile game you can move side to side or backwards. Perhaps that will change by the time this is released for distribution.

Using Adrenaline’s TouchFX cabinet (which was used with Fruit Ninja FX and Infinity Blade FX), they also are showing Where’s My Crown Scratch & Win, which I have not heard of before and after some searching did not find anything about it on either the iTunes or Android marketplaces so perhaps this was specially developed by Adrenaline for the arcade. Of course, if I’m wrong about that and it is just my SearchFu being weak, please let me know. Either way, Crossy Road is the one with a name that kids will easily recognize so that will turn some heads.

Dolphin Star and World Tour Foosball – I did not receive direct pictures of Dolphin Star but here is a promo video of it on Youtube. It is a very colorful kids racing game and it is being sold by Barron Games International. They also have the new Foosball World Tour which was mentioned on the site recently (pictured):

The tipster also mentioned that Stern Pinball had KISS Pinball (with the topper) and Whoa Nellie! there; Universal Space had their videmption game Safari Ranger on hand. No mention of Raw Thrills among the games, although they certainly are working on their next games, which I do know includes a new not-Super-Bikes motorcycle racer but we will probably have to wait for IAAPA to get the full rundown on those.

Redemption Games: 100 Balls(BayTek); Sweeper (Benchmark), Push N’ Prizes; Tower Tickets; Spongebob Pineapple; Golden Empire – Here is a variety of new redemption games that are also on site.