Newsbytes: Rare Star Trek Card; Election Booths 2016; Killer Queen; Sega

This week has been quite a busy one for myself – I feel like I’ve been run over by a semi but I’m in the home stretch. Part of that has been taking games to the Salt Lake Comic Con 2016 event. It competes with the San Diego and New York Comic Cons in size and celebrities so it has been crazy. Here’s the best costume I’ve captured next to some arcade games so far:

Also don’t forget to check out the updated Batman 66 Pinball post with some more details. Now for some news that I have overlooked while I’ve been busy…

Win A Rare Star Trek 50th Anniversary Card @ Dave & Busters Sep. 8th-11th: You might recall that recently Dave & Busters added a temporary exclusive Star Trek pusher arcade game to their stores. Players can win collectible Star Trek cards by playing the game. I received a press release about a special card that will only be available from September 8th-11th; I found an image on Twitter to promote it as well (for some reason the PDF file with the PR is corrupt and WordPress doesn’t like it… suffice it to say, the card is available at any D&B with the Star trek pusher game)

Apple Industries Rolling Out Election Booths 2016: Earlier this year, Apple Industries unveiled a software update for their Smile 2.0 enabled photobooths that would allow the user to take a picture with celebrities like Gene Simmons. Now they have rolled out their “Election Booths 2016” update, which allows the user to get their picture taken with US Presidential candidates Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton.

Thanks to the online nature of the booths, Apple will be able to track which candidates are selected the most and they will unveil the results before the general election in November. Just note that this will be for any of theirl Smile 2.0 booths like the Sapphire, Royale, Deluxe, Photo Studio, etc…the booth itself won’t say “Election Booth 2016” unless the operator decides to decorate it on the outside as such.

Killer Queen Retooled Cabs rolling off assembly line – We reported back in March that the indie game Killer Queen Arcade was getting revamped in partnership with Raw Thrills. Now since that broke, marketing for the game has been… let’s say odd. The game didn’t go to the Vegas Amusement Expo but it was installed at a location near the Vegas airport; there’s been no mention of it on Raw Thrills’ or Betson’s site, but the latter company is selling the game. With this tweet however, perhaps that is all about to change as “retooled” units are coming off of the assembly line. I also have heard of a location in Texas getting a set so perhaps you will come across this one out in the wild soon.

Sega Arcade Game Autumn Preview – We’re at a point in the year where some companies begin to unveil games that they have been working on for a while. Sega is one of those companies where in Japan, they hold an Autumn Preview event to showcase a small number of games. We already heard about Initial D Arcade Stage Zero but now it has been revealed that it will be released in March 2017. On top of that, the event showed off a new cabinet for Sega’s ever popular UFO Catcher crane series and a new kid-tainment game by an unspecified Chinese company called The Jungle Heroes. You know, if any of you game devs out there want to license the Arcade Heroes name for an arcade title (maybe for something in the style of Panic Park or Mario Party), I’m open to negotiations 😛 News via Famitsu.

New Song for NEON FM – Sporting their updated and buttery smooth graphics package:

Golden Tee 2017 Features – Golden Tee fans have reason to GET HYPE as Golden Tee Live will be rolling out to bars here soon. Here is a new trailer to showcase 2017’s features:

Overwatch cast at a Japanese Arcade – I’ve not played the new Overwatch game at all (although my brother has… to the tune of 200+ hours) so I do not recognize these characters but I can still appreciate some cool artwork of a Japanese arcade 😛

When Games Meet Their Doom – A few years ago, a game distributor made waves when they filmed a video of them throwing arcade cabinets off of a building. The reaction is generally negative as collectors want as many games preserved as possible although for anyone familiar with the distribution side of the arcade business, this sort of thing happens all the time and has ever since distributors had dozens of games rotting on their lots that no one wanted. From the distributor’s view, it’s inventory that is taking up space from product that might sell; they can’t always afford to have a game sit around for 10 years waiting for the right buyer to come along. Given the wide reach of the internet, some collectors who would be willing to save the games don’t hear about it until it is too late or they live too far away. In the case of Pinballs.com, these particular games suffered from water & mold damage. Here is the video of the moldy game destruction (Facebook only).