In 2006, Raw Thrills caused a stir by bringing motorcycle racing back to arcades with The Fast and the Furious Super Bikes. News about that game was one of our first stories, posted on Day 1 of this site’s operation in fact. The game did exceptionally well on the market, finding another popular sequel in 2010 with Super Bikes 2. While the second game did drop the FnF license, that didn’t seem to hurt the earnings at all, and it has been the motorcycle racing game arcades have been going to ever since. Here’s some old footage of SB2…I can’t believe it’s been eight years already:
So now, it’s time for another entry in the series. With Super Bikes 3, we first heard about it months ago from a trademark filing, but all was quiet since. Today, Raw Thrills officially announced that SB3 will be a part of their IAAPA 2018 line-up, providing this cabinet image below (click on the image for a bigger view). The game increases the amount of chrome found on the cabinet, along with the curves. The speakers are more prominent than before and the bike controller itself has more in common with the MotoGP controls than SB2. The image on the screen below gives us our only glimpse of the graphics for the moment, with this using a much more advanced engine for better lighting and detail:
Part of the fun in looking at sequels is to compare them to previous iterations. Here’s how the game has evolved since Super Bikes 1. I’ll also throw MotoGP in, since that was kind of Super Bikes 2.5.
The Super Bikes 3 Flyer
That’s not all however – we’ve been provided with the sales flyer of the game for you to enjoy. From this, we learn that you have 8 different bikes & riders to chose from; it also shares something in common with Cruis’n Blast, featuring 5 tracks to race and the ability to link up to 8 units. We’ll have to wait and see if any of these tracks are new to the series or are remasters of one of the many classic tracks found on the first two games.
This game WILL be at IAAPA 2018 in a few weeks and we can confirm that the game is slated for a release “Q1 2019.”
What do you think about the game from what has been revealed so far?
Good stuff, I like racers with action and a good speed experience. Most realistic racers are a bit boring to me.
Sounds ok but it seems a bit of a repeat unlike atv slam by sega but it’s interesting seeing all the different versions coming out over the years. Seems like rawthrills will steal the show with all the content they have with all their games unlike namco. Speaking of which I wonder what namco has in store? If anything other than products by other companies such as rawthrills.
@Arcades4ever: dunno what Namco’ll have tbh; other than the Mario Kart stuff I haven’t really noticed them too active in the arcade side of things unlike SEGA and certainly Raw Thrills. Then again, only found out recently Square-Enix were doing arcade releases recently, didn’t think that’d ever happen xD