When information started coming out about Griffin Aerotech’s Skycurser scrolling shooter arcade game, we quickly learned that it was being designed to be created not just as a dedicated game but also as an upgradable conversion kit. Conversion kits are uncommon to find these days so it was a surprising development. Called Airframe, it is a compact kit that incorporates a PC-to-JAMMA board and ITX PC hardware. Instead of carts it uses USB thumb drives. Skycurser was officially launched earlier this year but since then, things have been quiet in regards to other titles that might grace the platform.
Until now…
Rashlander – A Gravity Based Landing Game
Developed by Ryguygames, this follows the pattern of Griffin Aerotech lobbying other indie developers to create their games for their hardware. To quote from the Youtube trailer description:
Rashlander is an unyielding arcade game about scraping past gravity-heavy asteroids and distorted spacetime in a fragile, unfueled lander, while trying to avoid incinerating your crew.
And for that trailer:
In watching this, I was immediately reminded of other gravity based games like Gravitar, Cosmotrons or the obscure PS1/NUON homebrew game Decaying Orbit (ok, I’m the only person thinking of the latter). Indies do seem to gravitate towards such game styles. While Rashlander will be landing on PCs in 2018, owners of an Airframe kit will be able to enjoy the game in full arcade glory in “late 2017”. No word yet on pricing or options but the Youtube description also mentions a cabinet.
On top of that, Rashlander is going to be a trilogy:
https://twitter.com/ryguygames/status/915058282359853057
What do you think about this latest addition to Airframe and thus arcade cabinets?
