Wahlap Unveils New Arcade Titles At AAA 2021 Including Asphalt 9 Legends Arcade

While it’s been a while since we’ve talked about tradeshows on the blog here, it’s been a little longer since we’ve discussed a certain company by the name of Wahlap. Based out of China, they made waves several years ago at IAAPA when they showed up with the Ridge Racer-like game Storm Racer, and we’ve seen them on and off since. For a few years in recent memory, their booths at IAAPA or Amusement Expo were fairly low key, but they generally haven’t shied away from going all-out on their booths for their domestic events. Such is the case for the 2021 Asia Amusements & Attractions Expo which just started Monday morning in Guangzhou, China.

As a note, I am not there in attendance, but and finding out about this vicariously from someone who works at Wahlap thanks to some postings that they have done on LinkedIn.

Asphalt 9 Legends Arcade

The first major game announcement from the company is an arcade rendition of Asphalt 9 Legends, an arcade-style racer developed by Gameloft for mobile platforms, as well as the Switch and PC. The software of this edition has been designed by IGS, with Wahlap handling manufacturing/marketing/distribution. Since Wahlap has sold content to the States, it should be possible to grab one of these if you are interested, although I do not know if Wahlap still has a warehouse in California at this point (they said that they did back at IAAPA 2019 when they were looking to sell Speed Driver 5 here, but that certainly could have closed with the pandemic).

Apart from offering far more realistic controls than an iPad can do, this one comes with a 43″ HD screen (not 4K), air blowers, a powerful sound system, and a motion platform. The cabinet changes are the primary difference from the mobile game, save some other needed software adaptations, but if you are familiar with the existing game, then it will be similar (just enhanced thanks to the cabinet additions). There are 20 real-world supercars that players can choose from, including Lamborghini. It will feature online leaderboards, which will span regions; The game will launch in China first, with an English version to come later.

May 13th Update: Trailer

Here’s a trailer for the game that Wahlap sent me. As I watched it, I realized that this is a lot like Overtake, a racing game by IGS that was kind of a “response” to Raw Thrills’ FnF series back in the day. I’m not sure how many Overtake cabs are out there in the West, but if anything it did look nicer than any of the FnF games did. Now I suppose you could say that this is an alternate to Cruis’n Blast, especially where new CB cabs since last year removed a lot of the original supercars:

Jet Blaster

The last time we had heard anything from Wahlap was last summer, when they were showing off this new jetski racing game. That disappeared after it was clear that things weren’t going to be going back to normal any time soon, but the company held onto it and now it seems that it’ll get it’s chance. I’m not sure why the monitor portion of this one is so bulky though…almost like it was housing an old CRT:

Crazy Rafting

You might recall that last year when UNIS held their Virtual Showcase event, they unveiled a new rafting arcade game called Rowing Champs. That one hasn’t been released yet and it looks like Wahlap is looking to jump in first with Crazy Rafting. Both games will probably remind you of Namco’s Rapid River, which is where they are obviously pulling inspiration from. The controller certainly looks the same as RR here, but apart from these pics, I don’t have any additional information on this one for the moment.

Skip Time

I want to say that I’ve heard of this one before, but if I did, it was in a very different cabinet. This running sports game takes a page from the likes of Mario & Sonic Olympics and adds a bit more LED flash to the running pad, although I would guess that the game itself isn’t too far off from a Flash game in quality:

Did You Mean? Ghost Shooting Shop

Since I don’t know Chinese I have no idea what this one is called, but the screen looks a little like LAI’s Toy Frenzy. Thanks to RinaK10 on Twitter for correcting me on the name of this one. You’re blasting ghosts using the small guns; Developed by Japanese company Enheart Inc.

VR Agent

This is a game developed by 3MindWave, a company that I was not really familiar with until today. Turns out, they are the primary developers behind Sega’s ATV Slam, and I believe that this is their first VR game. The VR here is a little different from the normal however – instead of strapping on a helmet, the goggles are integrated into the gun controller itself, so the user views the action by placing the gun in the manner you see pictured below. The game page for this also mentions haptic rumble feedback, 5 missions, 3 difficulty modes and up to 4-person linked play.

Pokémon Ga-Ole

The Chinese version of this Pokémon card vending game was there, which has been out in Japan for a few years. It always helps to have a giant Pikachu around to help promote it:

MaiMai DX 2021 & Transformers Shadows Rising

The Chinese version of Sega’s MaiMai DX was there, in the latest 2021 software, as was Sega’s Transformers Shadows Rising

Speed Driver 5 was also there, but instead of posting a pic of that, let me share one of the videos I captured of this game from IAAPA 2019…the game is the same:

Nitro Trucks

Here is the first international instance we’ve seen of Play Mechanix’s Nitro Trucks, although someone familiar with Chinese would have to explain to me why they translate ‘Nitro’ into that language but not ‘Trucks’ 😛 (Or perhaps it does say the equivalent to Nitro Trucks in Chinese up top, but keeps Trucks for style)

There was more at the Wahlap booth including some other games we know about like Mario Kart GP DX, Monster Eye 2 and some redemption games, but no need to really cover those.

So far I haven’t been able to find pics from any of the other exhibitors at the show, but perhaps those will trickle out soon. Anything from this batch of games that you hope makes it’s way to Western shores?