Welcome to yet another Newsbytes post. Here I grab some quick news and headlines from the arcade/amusement world to share with you as you get into the weekend. Let’s start with:
Chuck E. Cheeses Rebranding With New “Fresh & Clean” Look
Few companies are as famous in the arcade business as Chuck E. Cheeses. They enjoy more open locations than any other chain in the sector (somewhere over 500 last I checked), making them easy to find. While they have been going through various efforts in recent years to upgrade their facilities, they are about to launch one of the biggest re-branding efforts in their history. As this story over at CNBC notes, the new theme will be aimed at appealing to adults with softer colors, a new logo and new signs. The new design will roll out to seven locations first to see how it goes; if successful then it will promulgate to their other venues.
Classing it up at Chuck E. Cheeses.
With this, the iconic animatronic shows are going away so if you were into those, say goodbye. I do doubt that the game selection will change in any significant way; i.e. I wouldn’t expect to start finding The Walking Dead and similar games to be rolled out to all of their locations. They already enjoy a number of games from different companies that are CEC exclusive so I imagine that will continue along with the strong focus on redemption gaming.
Sound & Light: Return To The Arcade Mini-Documentary
Well here’s a breath of fresh air – a documentary about arcades that isn’t some poorly informed clickbait attempt to lament over how “dead” arcades are. It is the opposite in fact, taking a look at two indie arcade developers and their efforts to revitalize the scene in their own way. Those devs are Griffin Aerotech (Skycurser, Airframe platform) and Galloping Ghost Productions (Dark Presence, Deathstalker and more). It’s only 10 minutes long so give it a watch:
HADO AR Hires US Sales Rep
We’ve covered Japanese company Meleap before as they have been striving to bring their Augmented Reality units to the amusement market. Now, they have hired a US sales agent to begin offering the game to the USA. That agent is Sid Seattle, known among classic gaming circles and for his work at Dorky’s Arcade. At the moment the only distributor listing the equipment for sale is PrimeTime Amusements (an advertiser on the site here as you see on the banner to the side); Sid tells me that he has access to sell any of the HADO products including the HADO KART setup that we discussed on the site recently. In fact, let’s share that video again here in case you missed it 😛
Strike Harbinger Renamed To Flight Armor Project
Indie arcade games have certainly been in the news a bit as of late, in fact my next article in Replay is about all of the projects I know about that are out there or coming up. One that I checked into this week was the Space Harrier-like Flight Armor Project by Hitspark Games. The game is still on track to launch in arcades, consoles and the PC next year and now sports a new name. Their website is here.
Love this game! Can't wait for its release! pic.twitter.com/zPmUhqJYkJ
— Game Sack (@GameSack) August 12, 2017
The team brought the latest demo to the Game On Expo in Phoenix, AZ for this weekend. The latest build supports 2 player co-op plus “an amazing 1440p Yamakasi Catleap S-IPS monitor and MOTION SIMULATION EFFECTS provided by the upcoming WHIRLWIND VORTX peripheral prototype that lets you feel the speed of flight and the impact of hits! ” Interesting (and a little sad) that the first arcade releases to support higher than 1080p resolutions these days is coming from indie groups (Cosmotrons will be using a 4k). Judging by the stills within this tweet, the game is looking great so far…imagine that running at 60FPS 😉
We return to GAME ON EXPO in Phoenix, AZ this weekend! Come play our new demo now with 2-PLAYER SIMULTANEOUS high speed action! @gameonexpo pic.twitter.com/Fl0VgqsZ6m
— Strike Harbinger [Chris Tang] (@strikeharbinger) August 11, 2017
Andamiro Launches Pump It Up Character & Music Contest
Andamiro released a video this week to showcase a new contest for cash that they are holding, asking fans to create and submit either music or characters to them by September 10th. Oddly enough the contest seems to have begun on July 21st but the video only came about this week. More details from translated Korean can be found here.
Golden Tee 2018 Videos
As we posted about earlier this week, Golden Tee 2018 is scheduled to launch next month. Unlike most arcade developers, Incredible Technologies loves to market just about every aspect of their game prior to launch, even creating videos to note small things like new special effects that happen when you hit the ball. Here are the latest vids; GT2018 will be released on September 25th.
Jurassic Park Pinball ColorDMD
The promo trailer showing off the new color animations for Jurassic Park Pinball is now online, give it a view:
That’s all for now – feel free to comment below about any of the stories above or let us know if there is something that was missed!
