Welcome to the year’s first Newsbytes, a collection of arcade news from around the web from the past week (or two..or three..in today’s case). I do have a story on Halo: Fireteam Raven 2-player that was going to be published on Thursday…then Friday…now I’ll aim for Monday. Sidetracking happens 😛
High Score Girl Making Waves On Netflix
Thanks to reader Kieran May for the tip on this one. He sent me a heads-up about it before Kotaku had posted their article, but due to reasons above I wasn’t able to get to it. I also don’t currently have Netflix to watch it (yeah I know, blasphemy!!! and all that. We used to have it, but realized we weren’t watching it as much as other streaming services so consolidated down…but might have to pick it up again). Anyways, High Score Girl is an anime series with a strong focus on arcades and arcade culture of the 1990’s, with some love drama thrown into the mix. Here’s a quick review that sums up the series pretty well without getting into spoilers:
New Dark Presence Footage
It’s been a while since we’ve talked about Galloping Ghost’s in-house digitized fighter game, but recently they uploaded a number of player matches to YouTube for those interested in this upcoming 1v1 title. I haven’t heard whether or not they plan on doing a wider release for this in 2019, but it seems playable enough from the footage I watched.
ICE Founder Ralph Coppola Passes Away
There was some sad news that hit the wires this week, coming from Replay Magazine. ICE (Innovative Concepts in Entertainment) is pretty well known among redemption arcade circles, but if I throw out “bubble hockey,” then that should cover it too. ICE was founded in 1982 by Ralph Coppola with the release of the Chexx bubble/dome hockey table and later popular games like the Cyclone ticket redemption machine. In recent years, they have been at the forefront of videmption developments, working in conjunction with companies like Play Mechanix to create a number of hits.
I’ll quote from Replay’s news here:
Ralph Coppola, one of coin-op’s most talented and productive game makers, passed away from a massive heart attack the morning of Dec. 28, three days after Christmas. He was 70 years of age and in otherwise good health due to his athletic lifestyle. […]
Catholic funeral services will be held at 2 p.m. tomorrow (Jan. 3) at St. Michael’s Church in Buffalo. He is survived by his wife (of nearly 50 years) Suzanne, sons Joe and Dan (both of whom are executives at ICE), daughters Marcy and Lori, and seven grandchildren.
“What a lot of people never knew was that Ralph was a lawyer before he came into the games business,” said RePlay publisher Eddie Adlum. “Hasn’t it been grand that he made the switch!” May he rest in God’s peace.
Likewise, we pass along our condolences to Ralph’s family, friends and company. RIP.
Evan Kirby Joins Touch Magix
We normally don’t post about new hires to companies, but since they asked, there’s no harm in it. Here’s the brief press release the company issued on the news:
TouchMagix Inc Bring Evan Kirby On-board as Sales Manager for the Americas
TouchMagix, a manufacturer of coin operated games in United States announced that it has appointed Evan Kirby as the company’s new Sales Manager for Americas region. He joins Ken Anderson’s team who is an industry veteran.
The 29-year-old Evan brings experience working as a logistics specialist at CNT and as a game reviewer for Vending Times.
He will create additional sales efforts to benefit company’s customers and distributors in Americas.
Interestingly, he is also the son of well-known industry veteran
Rick Kirby.For more information on TouchMagix, Visit:
http://www.touchmagix.com/arcade-games
Arcade History: Making Darius
If you like arcade history, then here’s something we don’t see often – a photo showing the arcade manufacturing process from a Japanese game. Such photos are not hard to find from companies like Atari and Midway, but this is the only one of it’s kind that I recall seeing from Taito. A second picture showing the finished result is here.
Updating Arcade-History.com
Speaking of arcade history, did you know that there is a website that goes by that name? If not, I’d recommend checking it out – they have entries for just about every game console under the sun, but since they started off in tracking arcades, the database is quite extensive and informative. That said, there are a lot of games out there to track and document, with many needing to be added. I’ve been using it quite a bit lately and noticed that they were lacking a number of modern arcade releases. So, I made an account for free and started adding some titles.
I bring that up as I’d really like to see more games show up for people to read about, but I don’t have the time to add everything that I would like. No, I am not affiliated with the site, just wanting to bring attention to it and help them out. Note that you need to choose Type: Arcade Video Game, then a year to pull up everything listed for that particular time. Either way, check them out and help them out!
Jack Black Plays Pinball
Pretty self-explanatory, although with as massive as the Pinball Hall of Fame is, I would have expected more games to get a showcase.
Stern To Unveil Next Game At CES 2019
This is more an alert than anything, but the next Consumer Electronics Show (CES) is taking place next week, and Stern Pinball will be there as they have been for the past few years. One major difference this year, is that they are taking the opportunity to make a new game announcement. Rumors have said that it’s The Munsters; we’ll know soon enough.
With that, I’ll leave you with the most recent video I uploaded, more footage of Sega’s House of the Dead Scarlet Dawn. I’ve been trying to get a vlog about 2018 done, but once again I’m not finding the time. Have a great weekend!
