Welcome to another exciting weekend of arcade news, although the news most people are going crazy about involves lottery jackpots. I don’t have anything like that to share here, so let’s get into the quick news items worthy of a mention.
There Is A Sugar Rush Arcade Machine
When Disney launched Wreck-It Ralph back in 2012, they ran a clever marketing campaign that saw the creation of a Fix-It Felix Jr. arcade cabinet, that found their way to some lucky arcades across the country. Afterwards, those cabinets became something of a collector phenomenon, being worth quite a bit of cash on sites like eBay while retrocades from all over hoped to get their hands on one.
With Wreck-It Ralph 2 landing in theaters in mere weeks, it looks like Disney has commissioned the creation of at least one Sugar Rush machine, based upon the candy-themed racing game that played a major role in the first film. Whether or not more than this one exists is anyone’s guess, but it always seemed like the Sugar Rush game would have made a perfect fit for our industry. As a note, Raw Thrills confirmed in a reply to a tweet that they did not make this cabinet, although I think that one reason people think it looks like an RT piece is because the cabinet was modeled after Midway racers of the late ’90s/early ’00s like Cruis’n Exotica, and RT kept certain design aesthetics with them through the years…
https://twitter.com/_rich_moore/status/1052677994446118914
Pinball Expo 2018
As indicated by the past two posts on the site, fans of pinball gaming have plenty to be excited about given what has been revealed this weekend. I believe that Stern’s unveil (rumored to be The Munsters) will be happening tonight. Until then, here are some videos you might find interesting from the event:
Deep Root Pinball – There has been a bit of talk about this new group which involves several big names in the business, but what they’ve been doing has remained a mystery. While there were no specific game announcements I caught here, this might help clear up some questions about what Deep Root is:
Team Pinball – You might recall that earlier this year we posted about a new small pinball manufacturer called Team Pinball as they unveiled their first game, Mafia. As far as I am aware, this is the first time that the game has made an appearance at a public event, and the guys behind it held a seminar to get into the juicy details:
Game #80 For ColorDMD is Stern’s Ghostbusters – Hurray, another game I have
The Atari Pong Table Project is also holding the 1st Pong table tournament today at the Expo.
Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune 6 Soundtrack Hits The Web
In receiving a Maximum Tune 5 unit this week, I’ve been listening to the soundtrack a bit lately. Seems to me that the 4th game has the more popular tracks, but everyone has their preference. For the 6th title, we don’t know when/if it will make the jump over to the United States and Europe, but the game has been out in Japan since June. For those who have wanted to hear that latest game’s beats, check out this link that has all 24 tracks available to download for free.
Be Careful On That Ladder
I spotted this video on Youtube and apart from the cringe of what happens here, I’m interested to know where this happened as they have a Dariusburst Another Chronicle machine there. Not many of those are around in the states.
It’s Time To Riff Ready Player One
I still haven’t read the book yet, but I did see the movie. It was certainly packed with eye candy and 1980’s references, the latter which makes for great fodder to the comedians who have been riffing on movies since the ’90s. Of course with their humor, you’ll get even more arcade references in the mix than before. Anyone interested can check it out here.
provider: youtube
url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxFIJDXE6D0&t=0s
src: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/mxFIJDXE6D0?feature=oembed
src mod: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/mxFIJDXE6D0
src gen: https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/mxFIJDXE6D0?start=0
Namco’s Mappy Is Now Available On The Atari 2600
I’ll admit, I’m not a big fan of buying arcade ports for old systems, as I prefer to see original developments for ye olde consoles. That said, when you see something like this, you can’t help but come away impressed when you see a 1984 arcade game translated onto 1977 hardware that was designed more for Pong-style games and had severe limitations like 128 bytes of RAM.
Mappy for the #Atari2600 will make its debut this weekend at the Portland @RetroGamingExpo! We will have a limited number of boxed copies available! LIKE or RT if you're a fan of Mappy! #RetroGaming #VideoGames #Atari #PRGE pic.twitter.com/hso9C2iiUo
— AtariAge (@AtariAge) October 17, 2018
That’s all I managed to curate for today, although we’ll leave you with some Pac-Man/Halloween humor. Have a great weekend everyone!
Maximum Tune 6 album is coming soon to CDs, iTunes, and Google Store soon, you should get all the songs on your iPhone or on CD. It’s $13 for the whole album and $0.99 for each songs. I’m waiting for 4 and previous games to be on that store as well.
I made a comment on that video, but I have any real doubts they’ll respond since it’s obviously a vibe channel. (figures) For what I noted, glass, crt and bezel can be replaced, but it still serves as a clear warning to be mindful of how to conduct yourself around machines during maintenance.
I’ve once seen someone using a dolly let a cab slip off because he didn’t even bother putting a strap over it.