Welcome to another exciting edition of Newsbytes, where I curate some of the quick pieces of arcade news to showcase for this weekend. Let’s get to it!
Xeno Crisis For The Neo Geo MVS
While NG:Dev Team’s Kraut Buster has grabbed plenty of NeoGeo MVS headlines lately, it’s not alone in fighting to keep the ol’ system alive with brand new content. Enter Bitmap Bureau and their title Xeno Crisis. A quick summary:
Xeno Crisis is an arena shooter in which up to two players take control of battle-hardened marines embarking on a deadly mission to confront an alien menace and get home alive! Run and gun your way through thousands of adversaries as you explore the research outpost, searching for survivors, and ultimately confronting the origin of the outpost’s demise.
First developed for classic Sega hardware like the Genesis, the team has designed it for other platforms to spread the love around the retro community. Fortunately for owners of the MVS, it’s included on the list (the Genesis and the MVS both used the Motorola 68000 CPU, so that makes some of the porting process easier). If you don’t have an MVS, but just so happen to have an AES, Genesis, or Dreamcast, then you are in luck; the game can be ordered here with the carts going to ship “Q2 2019.” Here’s the trailer to enjoy:
Aziz! Pinball Goes MXR
Ever since we saw RGB LED lighting and HD screens hit pinball (around 2012), I’ve been stating in occasional posts about pinball that projection mapping or other augmented reality tech would be the way to go with product. Granted, the use of such tech in a commercial pinball machine is a challenge, not just from a cost perspective, but technical one too (pinball needs glass, so projecting onto the playfield like this would cause reflection…although I’m sure something could be figured out). EDIT: Aurich on Twitter informed me that there is glass on the project below, so I guess it’s not a problem like I had thought!
While it seems logical that such alternate technologies might be used by the Big Guys eventually, you can’t count out the little guy in pinball. We’ve seen a number of unique and interesting ideas come from the “indie” side of pinball creation, one of which is Aziz! Pinball. I’ve attempted to embed the video below, although such embeds tend to be hit and miss. If it doesn’t work, you can find it here; H/T to Pinball Press.
Honda Shows Off The N-BOX Custom Ver. Interactive Kiddie Ride
It looks like the competition in the interactive kiddie ride business is about to heat up as car maker Honda jumps into the mix with a “custom version” of their N-BOX vehicle. While the article doesn’t show the display or the game that is used, it says that there is one and that it even has power windows. Read more about it here.
Time To Get Weird with Mortalmania
Ah, the age of digitized 2D graphics. What happens when you combine two memorable games that used the technique into one? Well, the results are something that, despite being odd, is something I think I’d play 😛 H/T to The NBA Jam book Twitter for this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmzxN4hdVyQ
The Cursed Castilla Paper Arcade
You might have heard the name Abylight Studios around here previously, as they are the brains behind the upcoming Super Hydorah AC title that is launching on the Exa-Arcadia here in a short while. They have other games under their belt, of which I wonder if we’ll also see on the Exa if Super Hydorah does well.
If you don’t want to wait, then you can make a tiny paper arcade cabinet out of one of their other titles, Cursed Castilla. For those that have played this one, do you think it would work on Exa?
https://twitter.com/abylight/status/1088865903788216321
This Week In Arcade Cakes
It’s been a little while since I’ve come across such an edible works of art:
https://twitter.com/InsertManyCoins/status/1088859400108949504
The Spectre Files Ships
I’ve brought up the prototype Midway laserdisc game The Spectre Files before; if you don’t recall or didn’t catch those mentions, click here and here for a background – or watch the video below. Thanks to Galloping Ghost Productions, I got my hands on a cabinet (#4 of 10 Limited Editions) this week and will try and record video of a playthrough to show on the Arcade Heroes video channel soon.
That’s all I’ve managed to scour together for now, have a happy weekend!
The Neo-Geo community is unbelievable. It’s like having eternal support for that platform. Those “Alien Syndrome” / “Gauntlet” clones are most entertaining in multiplayer mode. I hope they will add this feature.