Cruis’n Adventure and Dance Central 3 Arcade Spotted On Test In Chicago

arcadehero May 5, 2016 13

(Thanks to Jdevy for the tip)

There is always something in development for arcades out there and along those lines, one of those games is often out on test. Thanks to the internet and the prevalence of both cameras and media sharing that goes on, keeping a game under wraps is nearly impossible, which is to our benefit as it gives us something to talk about:

UPDATE: We now have video of this game in action. The title is NOT final. Click here to check out the latest details.

Cruis’n Adventure

Last year, we caught a glimpse of what appeared to be a game with the Cruis’n logo on it, thus launching speculation that the series was on its way back home to arcades. For those too young to remember, the Cruis’n series (which included USA, World and Exotica) was a wildly successful trio of racing games in the 1990s. One of the principal developers behind the game was Eugene Jarvis, who current heads up Raw Thrills. Along with games like Daytona USA, it was near impossible to visit an American arcade during the decade and not come across one of the Cruis’n games. After Exotica in 1999, the series has continued in spirit through Raw Thrills’ Fast And Furious driving games, which use a very similar formula, involving open circuit/point a to point b courses instead of closed circuits.

But enough history for the moment, here is a new, close-up image of the game that has been spreading on Facebook. The pair of units are presently found at the Regal City North Stadium 14 Theater in Chicago, IL:

crusinadventure1

UPDATE: Confirmed that this has been licensed from Nintendo. Raw Thrills also confirmed for me the following: “That cabinet is just a test cabinet, for production it’s much cooler. Cruisn is designed from scratch, completely new engine. Basically what you see there is only a small fraction of what the game will be.”

As a reminder, Nintendo has been very busy in licensing titles to the arcade market lately – we have Mario Kart Arcade GP DX, Mario & Sonic At The Rio 2016 Olympic Games and Luigi Mansion Arcade.

So what do we learn from this one image above?

-Cruis’n is happening and entitled Crusi’n Adventure

-Three button layout on the control panel for view changes, just like the originals

-Better details on the graphics than the most recent Fast And Furious Super Cars games (better object geometry and sharper resolution)

-You have up to three N2O speed boosts

We also can confirm that it is being developed by Raw Thrills, which the next piece below shows for us; regardless, the control panel and seat design are very similar to other modern RT racing titles. When this is planned for a release however is still a mystery; I’ve reached out to Raw Thrills for comment and will update accordingly.

Dance Central 3 Arcade

UPDATE: The previous post used the Konami name instead of Harmonix. We regret the error.

If you squint hard enough, you’ll notice something on the floor behind the girls arms in the picture above, a floor mat with some writing on it. This turns out to be a surprise as another game is on test at this arcade, a large cabinet for Harmonix’s Dance Central 3. A different Facebook user filmed their child giving the game a spin; the quality is poor but you can see the sides of the Cruis’n Adventure cabinets (showing the  big Raw Thrills logo). On this cabinet itself, it shares some elements that were seen with Guitar Hero Arcade back in the day, which Raw Thrills and Konami collaborated on, particularly the LED speakers, then the side shapes of the cabinet with the LED lit T-molding. A Harmonix logo can be seen on the lower right hand side of the marquee, which would indicate that this is legit instead of being one of those odd imports from China. I had no idea that this one was in the works so likewise am reaching out for more information. In the meantime, here is the short 10 sec video:

[fb_pe url=”https://www.facebook.com/jazzmyn.candi/videos/1742348395983519/” bottom=”30″]

In case that isn’t displaying for you, a screengrab:

dancecentral3arcade

What are your thoughts on these new developments?

13 Comments »

  1. chaos May 6, 2016 at 12:12 am - Reply

    I wonder why they would call it Dance Central 3 and not just Dance Central. To the best of my knowledge there was never an arcade release of DC 1 and 2. Are they hoping that people familiar with DC3 on the home consoles would recognize the game and play it?

    • chaos May 6, 2016 at 12:15 am - Reply

      I spoke too soon since it does look like this game did have earlier versions. I never really followed this series so I don’t know much about it other than it was available for the home console market.

      • arcadehero May 6, 2016 at 7:47 am - Reply

        I wondered the same thing but no more info was provided other than to correct me on the Harmonix thing. I also want to know if the ASCAP thing has been resolved, what differences in the software, how many songs, etc.

        My guess is that they are just calling it DC3 for test but the final version will be something like “Dance Central Arcade”, much like they did with Guitar Hero, which was essentially a modded version of GH3 at the time.

  2. Hero of Legend May 6, 2016 at 4:14 pm - Reply

    Can you confirm if Eugene Jarvis is indeed fully involved? I would imagine so since it is his company, but I’m curious of his role in it. Same goes for any other veteran members of the original trilogy, including the composer.

    And what about interest in an eventual home port (not by them I would think, but someone like Sumo Digital) on Wii U or NX?

    And just to avoid any confusion, they said they licensed the IP from Nintendo, in the same way Midway did before right? It’s till fully owned by Nintendo right?

    This is amazing news! Thank you so much for keeping tabs on this! 😀

    • arcadehero May 6, 2016 at 10:36 pm - Reply

      As the CEO of Raw Thrills, Eugene is credited as the Executive Producer on all of the games they make. I know he’s more than just the money guy though – at every arcade trade show, you can always find him going around and playing all sorts of games to get a feel for them. He is definitely hands on with the games that RT releases. To give you an idea, we published this interview with him for last years major release of Jurassic Park, which helps provide an idea of how involved he is with the process: https://arcadeheroes.com/2015/02/23/qa-jurassic-park-arcade-eugene-jarvis/

      I did ask a number of questions of the VP I know at Raw Thrills but he is travelling outside the US and wasn’t able to provide more details that I added to the post; so not sure yet who exactly has been working on the game other than it is the in-house RT team; hopefully we can find out soon.

      As such, no info on a home port but based on their past history, such a thing is rare and likely up to the licensor. If a home port was on the table, it likely will be a few to several years before it happens as the target market for Raw Thrills is arcade operators. Short times between an arcade release and a home port often eliminates sales on the arcade side (kind of the, shoot-yourself-in-the-foot type of business model). As such, I don’t believe that a WiiU version would be in the cards unless Nintendo is planning on surprising everyone.

      Unfortunately I wasn’t given details on the licensing situation so there is still a possibility that the reason why nothing has been done with the IP is that there is still something from Midway in the background (which would be with Warner Bros. now). Kind of like the odd situation with Nintendo and Ikegami Tsushinki regarding Donkey Kong Arcade. This might be a question that goes unanswered as usually the arcade companies don’t like to discuss details behind their licensing deals or they are not allowed to due to standing NDAs.

      We’ll definitely reveal more as soon as we can find out; Thanks for the questions!

      • Hero of Legend May 7, 2016 at 11:37 pm - Reply

        Thanks for the reply! 🙂

        I would think Nintendo just decided to just leave Cruis’n in the back burner, and it’s only been in the last year or so that they really got back onto the Arcade scene with the games you mentioned (Pokken would be more on TPC’s hands), plus Killer Instinct (Nintendo’s other arcade team-up in that same era) having a successful revival might’ve also caught their eye.

        You may be right on the gap for a home port as Cruis’n USA and World got ported 2 years after being released in the arcades.

        Which is fine. Pokken was less than a year apart but it didn’t do that well in arcades supposedly (well one arcade in Japan having removed the game being the only example I can think of, but no-one is saying it’s successful in arcades either).

        I’m really excited to see this in action. This is the only real racer Nintendo has that uses actual cars (Excite has bikes and trucks, Wave Race and 1080 don’t obviously, nor Pilotwings), and seeing this “from them” is very exciting! 😀

        • arcadehero May 9, 2016 at 9:57 am -

          Ah, I forgot Pokken but that’s because it didn’t get a release in the US (officially anyways). Fighters are in a league of their own – if any fighting game is released, it’s a 100% certainty that they’ll do a console port. This in turn has lead to there being almost no arcade fighters getting a release out West, as operators long ago became tired of sinking their investment into a money pit(excepting a few specialty locations, earnings on a fighter die the moment a console port is available). Japanese ops still put up with it but I’ve read some who aren’t keen about the idea like they used to.

          Given Raw Thrills’ reluctance to do console ports (only two exceptions and that was during the Wii craze circa 2007), I’ll have serious doubts as to such a port until Nintendo announces such a thing. I don’t believe that their ports sold very well so that always I could imagine that if they are desperate enough to bring attention to the NX that they could do it although from the rumors, I think that NX will be a strong contender out of the gate. But that’s just my guess 🙂

  3. Seth May 6, 2016 at 4:53 pm - Reply

    I hope this doesn’t cause arcades to toss out their PIU and DDR cabs

  4. Luke Shiny May 6, 2016 at 5:31 pm - Reply

    konami will sue

  5. Jdevy May 6, 2016 at 11:27 pm - Reply

    Glad I found this. Honestly I was thinking of this movie theater when seeing a photo of the arcade inside of this movie theater and realizing that this could be a test location for Raw Thrills’s games, seeing it is in Chicago and an earlier Pac Man Battle Royale cabinet.

    I was surprised to see Cruis’n Adventure. Honestly I thought this game was just a Cruis’n conversion cabinet for Chuck E Cheese places to get them new racing games for cheap. I also was a bit right about the machine’s look when I was joking about this game location test on April Fool’s as it does look like a mix of Batman’s and MotoGP’s cabinets with a large Cruis’n marquee on top. I am looking forward to playing this as I have some fond memories of older 90’s Cruis’n games at pizza places and arcades.

    Now for Dance Central, I wonder how this will do profit wise. If it does well, it might influence music arcade game development in the west with operators trusting music games to an extent. Who knows, maybe Dance Central will get popular in arcades, even though it is based on an Xbox game.

  6. arcades4ever May 19, 2016 at 3:16 pm - Reply

    Wow, two games being tested at once. Played the dance central on my younger cousins wii and wasn’t too bad and was sort of decent, but then not really bothered with the title.
    Never played the cruising racing game before. Heard of it years ago but their were too many good games to play at the time whenever I visited an arcade.

Leave A Response »