Newsbytes: Pac-Man 40th; CarnEvil 21st & Other Milestones

Welcome to this rushed edition of Newsbytes, a collection of quick arcade-related news pieces that I try and post on Saturday. That didn’t work out thanks to a load of work that I had to take care of yesterday.

Bandai Namco Reveals Big Plans To Celebrate 40 years of Pac-Man

2020 marks 40 years of Pac-Man, and Bandai Namco is more than ready to take advantage of that to celebrate the character and their brand. The first indication of that was this “official theme song” music video called Join The Pac, performed by Ken Ishii. There will be much more that they will roll out, with pacman.com serving as the hub of news for the festivities. The big question is: What will Bandai Namco Amusements America do to celebrate? They have the World’s Largest Pac-Man and Pac-Man’s Pixel Bash, but those have been on the market for a while. Will we get something new, like a sequel or update to Pac-Man Battle Royale? Something else? Maybe we’ll get a surprise at IAAPA.

CarnEvil Is Now 21 [Corrected]

I hope that everyone had a fun Halloween; one important milestone for this year (in terms of arcade history) was the 20th 21st anniversary of the release of Midway’s CarnEvil(big thanks to Scott P. for correcting me on that. CarnEvil came out in 1998, for some dumb reason I was thinking ’99). The game quickly garnered a reputation for it’s character, style and gore. It also is a light-gun game that still earns well for it’s age, as long as it’s operating properly (mine has been down for many months, thanks to a fault in the monitor that I cannot find a replacement part for. Hurray CRTs). If you really want to reminisce, check out the official CarnEvil fan page on Facebook.

UPDATE: Here’s an interview with some of the original CarnEvil team, thanks to Prince Arcades for sharing this. It’s a great watch!

What fond memories do you have of CarnEvil?

https://twitter.com/arcadeheroes/status/1189961435108921345

Colonial Soldier Arcade Celebrates 1 Year In Business With 2019 Gamer of the Year Awards

Different arcades have different ways of celebrating milestones, and for the Colonial Soldier Arcade in Deptford, NJ, they did so by holding some tournaments and awarding trophies. Congrats on surpassing that first year mark!

Disney Promoting TRON Uprising For Some Reason

Starting two months ago, Disney XD began to post snippets from the TRON Legacy-inspired cartoon, TRON: Uprising to their YouTube channel. The show aired back in 2012/2013, ending after only one season and leaving viewers up in the air with a fairly big tease at the Season 2 that never happened. I don’t know why they’re promoting it now – could be just something that they do, or something related to Disney+. I highly doubt that Season 2 would happen now, as getting all of the voice talent back together after 6/7 years is unlikely. But, it is nice to see TRON getting some attention again.

Indie Sizzle Reel Coming This Week!

I’ve been working on a video project this month to highlight the currently available and coming soon titles that are produced for arcades by independent developers. I hope to have it ready this week, as I want to highlight them before IAAPA hits. Apart from that, we should expect some more news on what you can expect to find at IAAPA through this week, Barron Games has something that will be released from embargo on Tuesday.

Overall stay tuned, and that’s it for this weekend’s very brief Newsbytes. Thanks for reading and we’ll catch you on the next post!