Apologies about the site being down for the past 24 hours but it seems to be corrected now and hopefully stays that way forever 😛
There wasn’t much to talk about this week but we have a few blurbs to focus on for this weekend. Let’s start with:
The Sega Arcade Pop-Up Book Hits Kickstarter
I have three kids and for the all of the stockpiles of children’s books that we’ve accumulated over the years, I don’t recall coming across any pop-up books. However, I do remember seeing them all of the time back in the 80s when I was but a wee lad. Regardless, there is a new pop-up book that has hit Kickstarter and it’s something for any Sega fan to enjoy. We’ve covered paper arcades before but this book will take it to a new level. Per the description:
SEGA Arcade: Pop-Up History presents five of the most iconic ‘body sensation’ cabinets – Hang-On, Space Harrier, OutRun, After Burner and Thunder Blade – in a suitably innovative form: as dazzling pop-up paper sculptures.
As of this writing, the creators are well on their way to reaching their goal of $52,927 (kind of an odd number for a goal but whatever). They (Read-Only Memory) also have released Sega books in the past so you can rest assured that they will deliver this time as well. Click here if you want to support it!
The Spectre Files – A Complete History
We’ve mentioned the unreleased Midway prototype The Spectre Files on the site a few times and are still waiting for some kind of general release to the game although it is hard to say when/if that will materialize. If we’re lucky, a new and exquisitely detailed article over at the Daily Grindhouse will help gin up some additional interest towards that release but even if it doesn’t, the article is a treasure trove of arcade history. It covers Brian F. Colin’s (Discs Of Tron, Rampage, Arch Rivals, etc.) journey from an animator to game artist and then designer and how he came about to creating The Spectre Files. It is also a fascinating look at both game and film design, covering certain pitfalls of the process.
This game is playable at one arcade in the world at this moment: the Galloping Ghost Arcade in Brookfield, IL. Hopefully more arcades will be able to offer it soon!
Magic Leap – “The $2.3 Billion Hustle”
We’re all about reading links in today’s newsbytes. I’ve been hearing a lot about Magic Leap over the past few years – lots of hype and some in the industry telling me about their friends who were involved with the company. So each time I would hear about them raising another astounding amount of investment cash, I was left feeling a bit perplexed as they still hadn’t shown anything – it was just more fluffy promises of Augment Reality that was supposed to be the equivalent of activating “a real hallucination.”
The trouble is that eventually you have to put the promises to pavement and in the case of Magic Leap, it has been a massive disappointment. When the first demo was shown online, the demonstrators spent more time talking about promises than actually showing the hardware – which ended up with commentors on the stream just lambasting the product.
With some additional demos finally showing more of what the Magic Leap can do (such as in this video above, which is attached to the article I’m about to mention), it has not done anything to turn the perception around, resulting in this critical article over at Medium.com entitled: “Magic Leap not so magical – The 2.3 Billion Dollar Hustle”. The short of it is that after all of the money thrown at the company and mountains of promises given away, their hardware is falling well behind where available AR apps on your smartphone find themselves.
Cosmotrons Production Update
Now onto happier news – the latest updates from a small team that didn’t need a couple of billion dollars to deliver a real product to arcades (although I’m sure they wouldn’t mind that kind of capital 😛 )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5UrbWfeG-Y
ColorDMD Updates: Starship Troopers, Jackbot and Last Action Hero
ColorDMD keeps on crankin’ them out, now covering the titles mentioned in the subheader above. Their website is here in case you want to browse the latest.
That’s all I managed to find for this edition, on to working on my next book. Have a fun and safe weekend!
