Welcome to another edition of Newsbytes, a collection of brief news items from the world of arcades & pinball. I didn’t find much this week again…but some manufacturers are coming to life again, so perhaps we’ll see a little more as the month continues to march along.
New From The Namco Museum Of Art: Genpei Toumaden
The latest episode from the Namco Museum of Art covers a game that is fairly unknown outside of Japan, due to the game’s JP-only release there: Genpei Toumaden. I imagine that Namco decided against releasing this one worldwide at the time because it’s steeped in ancient Japanese history, religion & culture. Still, it was an innovative game for 1986, featuring three different game styles wrapped into one. This brief history on it is all in Japanese, but if you don’t understand that, you can still appreciate the visuals:
Also in Namco Japan-related news, they’ve posted some videos to promote where you can play their Sword Art Online Arcade game while showing off the game & its features (also Japanese only).
Genda Sega Snags Crane Record From Taito
That record didn’t last very long…back in August, Taito set a record for the most crane machines in one venue. With Sega arcade locations now under the new management of GENDA, they’ve rolled out their new brand and look by snagging Taito’s crane record. Per Kevin Williams, this location is the SEGA Shinjuku Kabukicho location in Tokyo and features 477 cranes in the same building.
One question though is how Tokyo’s new emergency order, which has put the region in lockdown again as they try and get COVID under control, will affect this location among others. A source there tells me that they don’t see how arcades there will survive this round, as there is zero relief being offered to such businesses since they don’t fall under the restaurant category. The arcades there haven’t been lax in implementing safety measures, but apparently, those haven’t been good enough. :/ As far as I’m aware it’s just Tokyo, but it’s a big place and I’m sure that most arcade venues are found there.
Playing LAI’s Angry Birds Coin Crash
A short while ago we unveiled a new coin pusher from LAI Games called Angry Birds Coin Crash, and the game is already out on test where it has been filmed. This one won’t be fully released until August, unless something changes for LAI’s production expectations/schedule.
Latest ColorDMD: High Roller Casino
Now up from ColorDMD, is one that I’ve never seen, Stern’s High Roller Casino:
Bay Tek Releases HyperNova
I saw this one at Amusement Expo 2020, but you know why it was delayed until now. It looks pretty much the same, other than a few minor tweaks to the appearance.
New Golden Tee Hardware Base Coming
Yeah, I’m reaching for news if you can’t tell, but in a comment to a slightly snarky comment of mine that I made on the Golden Tee PGA Tour video, Incredible Technologies did confirm that the upcoming release will finally bring the hardware side up-to-speed. They supported the older hardware for such a long time as the coin-op biz is different (games will sit out on location with the same hardware for years), and if they had made big changes to the hardware, then upgrades would have cost much more. Here’s part of the quote:
This new change with new hardware will allow them to finally break out of having to support 8 year old Mobo’s and GPU’s. And finally get rid of all the trash machines out there in the wild bringing the game back to life graphically and feature wise.
In a follow-up comment for someone who appears to be a home user, they also allude to this update being the hardware base for the next 5 years.
Playing Gimmick! EXACT*MIX With NES Graphics
In case anyone was wondering how it looks; The remastered graphics up to the same point in the game can be seen here, or there’s this full-on playthrough from someone light-years better than I am at this game.
Assorted Arcade Gaming News
EVR Arcade Opens In Midland, TX – Haven’t heard about a VR Arcade opening in quite a while.
World Tetris Champion Jonas Neubauer Dies Suddenly At 39
Taito’s Raimais Remade For Atari 8-Bit Computers
Midway’s Omega Race Ported To The IntelliVision – Not an easy task by the description as it uses stock hardware (Not a game I ever cared for though 😛 ) Good Deal Games sells it, although it’s out of stock at the moment.
Let’s end with an interesting little phenomenon that happens often with my Maximum Tune 5 cabinets. In most games when you pull tokens, they just end up in a random, chaotic pile, but for some reason with MT5, they will pile to a point, then suddenly start stacking themselves in a single column. Not sure why exactly, but it’s cool to see nonetheless, almost like natural art – especially where so many places are card systems now:
