Newsbytes: Insert Coin Trailer; Exa-Arcadia Shipments; EAG 2020 & More

Hello heroic reader, and welcome to another exciting edition of Newsbytes. As a Monday edit, footage of Sega’s Mission: Impossible Arcade has been embedded below

Insert Coin Documentary Trailer

This should’ve got it’s own post this week, but I was super-super busy. It has been mentioned on the blog before how often Midway/Williams history seems to get overlooked compared to the likes of Atari and Sega. But, that is changing more and more as the people behind the Midway games of the 80’s and 90’s are more than happy to share their history with people. We’ve done so a few times when it comes to unreleased games, but the stories behind the released games are just as interesting – and more impactful, since those are games that many of you have created memories with. That’s what this upcoming documentary gets into a good history of the company – I look forward to seeing the whole thing (direct link here; thanks to Cody Melior for sharing this)

exA-Arcadia News: Game Shipments; Gimmick! exAct Mix Details

It’s also been a post-worthy week for exA-Arcadia, as many users who ordered their boards have begun receiving them. To that end, here is an unboxing video of an exA board, which went into the hands of a collector. I’ve been talking with the exA-Arcadia CEO (ShouTime) about it and there has been an interesting trend – there are a lot shoot ’em up fans who jumped on getting an exA, due to the amount of support that the system is giving to the genre. As you’ll see in the videos, these collectors have been mainly grabbing Aka & Blue Type-R. ShouTime said that for orders on Kung Fu Vs. Karate Champ, that has only come from operators so far. For myself, my exA board should be shipping out this weekend, then it will be in my hands by the end of next week/beginning of the following. Once I have it, I’ll do my own “unboxing”, but hopefully I’ll have resolved my I/O issue (need to find a Sega JVS I/O Rev. B). I’m getting both Kung Fu Vs. Karate Champ and Aka & Blue Type-R; the printed materials for Kung Fu are pictured below the videos:

And gameplay of Aka & Blue Type-R

Here are the printed materials for Kung Fu Vs. Karate Champ. After I publish this post, I’m going to buy Shaolin Vs. Wutang on Steam so I can get a good feel for the game and be able to point out differences between the PC and Arcade versions. Fortunately it’s on sale for under $5 at the moment, so it’s a no brainer. But I also just learned that Shaolin Vs. Wutang 2 is set to launch on PC in a few weeks. I wonder if Kung Fu and SW2 will share any similarities…

Also have this poster for Akyrios EXA:

Speaking of that, I did pick up Iron Crypticle for the Nintendo Switch on Christmas, and I’ve really been enjoying that. I mention that game as it is headed to Exa as Lightning Knights; not sure when it will be shipping though.

Also on exA, there has been some more information on their exclusive Gimmick! exAct Mix to come out. One, that the carts will be done in green (to match the player character, Yumetaro), and that it also will not use letterboxing; it has a mode specifically for 4:3 or 16:9 (you can read this Twitter thread for more details; Exa does have some auto-detection for the screens, with some caveats depending on the hardware being used).

EAG 2020 Wrap-Up

Our friends over at Arcade Belgium have begun posting videos of their time at EAG this past week, which you can find on their YouTube channel. Jason at Planet Harriers also reached out to me and he did grab footage of Mission impossible, along with other details from EAG. As a note, the game may change between this and the final release, although said release should only be a couple of months away, so I doubt that it would change drastically between now and then:

Here’s one of Arcade Belgium’s vids:

Speaking of trade shows, JAEPO is up next, and several companies have rolled out official sites to tout their offerings for this year’s show. Links:

Bandai Namco Amusements’ JAEPO site

Konami’s JAEPO Site

Sega’s JAEPO Site

Taito’s JAEPO Site

exA-Arcadia will not be attending JAEPO this year, but they will be holding their own event to reveal more content for the platform.

TMNT 2018 Review

In case you missed this on the YouTube channel, I posted a review and full playthrough on Raw Thrills’ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Which game should I be doing next?

Freeplay Arcades At A European Airport

Thanks to Kevin Williams for posting this one, showing some arcade love at an airport over in the EU:

That’s all I’ve managed to find for this Newsbytes. I’ll leave you with a terrible pic from my adventure last night in traveling around Utah to pick up four different games from three different sellers. I’m excited about all of them, although finding a Dragon Saber (rare, little known sequel to Dragon Spirit) was perhaps the best part of the trek.

Have a great weekend!