Newsbytes: Sega’s IAAPA; Point Blank X; Pixels; NTG#66

Time for another Newsbytes Round-Up of arcade news. It is typically a bit slow after a major trade show and around a big holiday but things don’t completely dry up. With December approaching fast, I’m going to have to work on a video compiling the big news of the year and a few other things.

Sega Showcases Their IAAPA booth – In case you want to see more than what I posted about IAAPA, Sega Amusements produced this video to showcase all of the titles at their booth. This shows more redemption pieces than what I did, so this can shore that part up if it is what you are looking for.

Point Blank X w/ A Different Software Build – The Australian based Highway Entertainment posted this video of Point Blank X, showing a little bit of direct feed footage as well as the game running in a Time Crisis 5 SD cabinet. This indicates a kit of some kind or implies that the game runs on the same hardware as TC5 does (the guns are the same, as I noted in my IAAPA video). Either way, PBX fans will notice one major difference in the game here – no enormous scaling targeting reticles for every shot. The question now is whether or not this software is sooner or later than the IAAPA build, or if that is a ‘feature’ that can be deactivated by the operator. It is a tough week to get answers straight from Namco (due to the holidays) but we will find out for certain soon enough.

Thoughts on Pixels – So Microsoft has been doing a cool thing for their Windows Store all week long (accessible on Windows 10 and I assume Xbox One) where you can rent a movie for only 10¢. As such, it has distracted me from doing some work as I catch up on movies I didn’t see (or want to see) in theaters with the only real risk being my time. Among the titles that have popped up for rent was Pixels, which I had meant to go and watch but after a slew of bad reviews, I just left it alone until now. For all of the hate spewed at it, I was expecting to find something like I have seen on Mystery Science Theater 3000 but in reality, I don’t see what all the ‘worst movie ever’ spew is about. No it isn’t a perfect movie and there are some moments that make you go huh? (particularly everything to do with Lady Lane) but the film maintains the same tone throughout unlike Wreck-It Ralph, which went on an odd candy reference bender around the middle. I assume some of the bad rap comes from Adam Sandler not being as well liked or loved for his recent movies and he does look bored at times. Where I haven’t seen those, I haven’t formed an opinion on him based on that…there were a few laughs in the film, mot much I found myself laughing out loud about all the time but again, I didn’t hate the movie. Yes the story of aliens picking up stuff about a probe from 1982 is a bit silly and the coincidences about the protagonist meeting the love interest when things get started are too convenient but whatever. Comedic fiction isn’t going to make perfect scientific sense to be fun. Great special effects certainly help and that makes seeing the games in action like this more entertaining.

I should also note that I can attribute the improved earnings on all of my classic games to Pixels. Sometimes people have said it was because of the movie that they wanted to play again, otherwise earnings are up on games like Centipede by a good margin. And no, that isn’t influencing my mini-review above 😛 I am happy to see anything help boost arcade business out there, either way.

Interviews of Gary Stern & Jack Guarnieri – If you are interested in checking out an interview with the #1 guys of the competing pinball companies, then here you go. Done by 904Pinballzine:

Name That Game #66 – It’s been a little while since the last Name That Game, thanks to IAAPA. From the last one, two guesses were right but no one tried for the challenge question on the 3rd…here are the answers with links

#1 – Kangaroo by Sun Electronics/Atari

#2 – Pang 3 by Mitchell

#3 – Dingo by Jaelco

Guesses for this week: