Arcade news is starting to tick up once again, but I have been sidetracked on covering all of it as I’ve been working on getting my second arcade location ready to open by October 1st. Along those lines, it looks like there are enough new location stories to warrant another Location Watch post, so stay tuned for that this next week. 😉
Now onto the quick bytes of news!
Jurassic Park Mini Coming Soon?
It seems that the story the other day about a new home version of Jurassic Park has been generating some buzz, and Raw Thrills has responded to growing operator requests. Straight from the top:
“There is misleading information about a new mini Jurassic Park arcade game. In response to numerous operator request, Raw Thrills is investigating the possibility of creating a mini Jurassic Park Arcade video game for smaller locations. Due to the preliminary state of this effort no further information can be released at this time.” – Eugene Jarvis, President of Raw Thrills
I’ll let you know more once there is more to know, but I think that this is a welcome possibility!
Pre-Orders Open For Psyvariar Delta AC
I had a post partially complete to focus just on this, but it was a victim of my limited time. Fans of Success’ Psyvariar are in luck, as the latest version of the game is now available to pre-order for arcades. Psyvariar Delta AC is exclusively available on the exA-Arcadia platform and can be nabbed just as a cart for around $1250 USD. Per the page, here’s what it’s all about:
PSYVARIAR DELTA AC brings back the classic series to the HD age! Combining all of the ships, stages and pulse pounding techno music from past installments, Medium Unit and Revision as well as the all new Delta stages and newly composed tracks by master WASi303. Supporting both horizontal and vertical modes, extra informational gadgets have been added to the game for players to achieve even higher scores. Easy enough for beginners but difficult enough for the best pilots.
It is also worth noting that the test for DoDonPachi Saidaioujou (often abbreviated as SDOJ) has been a success by what I’ve been told; the first day saw people wait in line for quite a while and some had to come back the next day to get a chance to play. It seems safe to say that SDOJ will do extremely well in Japan…should be interesting to see how it does overseas too. They have also been asking those who played the game for their input. In my neck of the woods, I have at least two people asking for it…
Arcade 1up Version Of Big Buck Hunter Now Available For Pre-Order
If you have wanted to have a Big Buck Hunter arcade machine in your home, but didn’t want to shell out the $5000~6000 for the offline home version, then you are in luck, as the Arcade 1up version of the game is now available for pre-order. The unit comes with 4 versions of Big Buck Hunter – Pro, Pro Open Season, Safari, and Safari Outback. These are all a little different from the version that is currently gracing open arcades and bars (Reloaded), but I’m sure there are plenty of arcade fans out there that would be happy to have this around.
Oh and speaking of Raw Thrills, they now have an “official fan newsletter” that you can subscribe to if you wish.
NEOGEO MVSX Pre-Orders Open
Last but not least from the available pre-orders out there is the NEOGEO MVSX. This was previously mentioned on the blog and begins shipping in November.
Sword of Rage Discontinued
Alas, not all games get made forever, and such is the case with Steve Ritchie’s return to the Black Knight saga, Sword of Rage. As Stern Pinball posted earlier this week, now is your last chance to nab one brand new if you’ve had the itch for it:
In other pinball news, Jersey Jack Pinball will unveil their next game next month (rumor still holds that it’s a new Guns ‘N Roses) and deeproot Pinball will be making some kind of announcement on Monday. It would be nice to see the latter reveal something more than animation teases and show an actual game for a change; Rumors are also swirling that they have picked up Heighway Pinball’s failed Aliens, but that might be wishful thinking. We’ll find out soon!
Inconsistent Gov. Pandemic Policy Continues Damaging Our Industry
Thanks to Greg Bacorn for sending this story my way, where the owner of Bounce Magic in New York state has had to permanently shutter one of their locations and is still unable to operate their second, while similar businesses are allowed to operate in the state. It sounds to me like they need to be taking similar action that was done in Massachusettes and sue the governor over the arbitrary and inconsistent orders.
Or maybe the owners could protest by playing pinball at the NY state capital…whatever works, I guess!
MaiMai Splash Footage
The latest version of Sega’s MaiMai is out in Japan…here is some footage for anyone interested:
Dave & Busters Inching Closer To Bankruptcy
While the news coming out of the business world regarding Dave & Busters wasn’t positive this week, the company certainly is not going down without a fight. I’ve never seen their social media marketing machine this energized, as they have really been engaging with their customers and going to town on quick new videos on YouTube. I believe that most of their locations have reopened, but there are some places where they still can’t operate. We’ll see if they dodge the bullet or not, but until then, they are temporarily downsizing in an effort to stay afloat.
Along those lines, some waves were made this week when Chuck E. Cheeses asked a court to be able to destroy 7 billion redemption tickets that they have in-hand, to avoid people from getting their hands on any un-won surplus that could be used to get prizes.
For some happy arcade location news, check out this interview that Eurogamer did with Arcade Club’s Andy Palmer.
That’s all I could find for this weekend – I did hope to have a full playthrough of Aliens Armageddon uploaded to my channel, but the shiny new capture device doesn’t like it. I tried capturing the game with various different settings and no luck – the graphics look fine on the game screen and in my capture program, but when I finish recording, everything becomes a pixellated mess every 7-8 seconds. It might be my laptop, which is getting older by the day, but I will also try out a different game and see what happens.
To that end, let’s finish with an image of a brand new out-of-home VR concept that just doesn’t care about making users look really goofy:
For now, enjoy your weekend and if there is an arcade open near you, be sure to help them out!
