After a bit of a hiatus, it seems that videmption games are swinging back into action on the market, as mentioned yesterday with Sega’s Jumanji and now a couple more titles from Coastal Amusements.
If you’re not familiar with Coastal by their name, then you probably are by some of their games. They sell a lot of imported cranes and re-badged redemption games, but have often sold videmption games. The first time I had heard of them was when they introduced Sea Wolf back in 2007/8; More recently they grabbed attention with Ice Man and Wild West Shootout. The latter two games come from different companies in China, as do the titles you’ll see below.
Ice Walker
There was a single foamboard teaser of this at IAAPA but no game to be found. If it looks and sounds kind of familiar, its because it is the sequel to the aforementioned Ice Man, a game that did extremely well on the market and can still be found at many FECs.
The main gimmick for Ice Man, and in turn Ice Walker, is that players use a mounted gun that fires a small jet of water at the screen. While some would splash outside of the game, the rest was reclaimed into the game, and it also had a misting system to create a small layer of fog at certain points in the game. It was a novel idea that certainly but I think that’s more because it was the first one to present the concept in that exact way. The gameplay wasn’t terribly good, in part due to the horrible framerate, but it still overcame that thanks to the water gun gimmick. That same gimmick is in place here as you can notice above, as well as in the trailer below.
From this trailer, one thing that has improved is the framerate – no longer set at a cringeworthy 15fps or so. It still doesn’t appear to be a constant 60, but it is better than IM. This trailer shows an animated LED portion to the marquee, eight levels, and some new power-ups.
Strangely enough, this game is not yet listed on Coastal’s website, but the next game is. Both Betson and Shaffer Distributing are listing the game for sale, although I do not know if they are shipping yet (they might just be taking orders). Interesting note that Shaffer does mention that this one has an Amusement Mode, which means that it can be setup to play without tickets and just like an every day arcade game. Which is why I often cover this videmption stuff, since it’s a blurry line 😉
Zombie Land
This one isn’t a sequel, but an existing game that is featured in a new cabinet. The older model is known as Zombie Land Battle. – but things get a little confusing as they sometimes called that one Zombie Land.
This one eschews the water guns for a traditional mounted light-gun setup, beefing it up from 2-players to 4. The cabinet also doesn’t have a bench seat, which would make the game rather enormous. Like Ice Walker there are also 8 levels to play, but the game play’s more like a standard rail shooter with the player camera wandering around the environment and fighting creatures instead of sitting in one spot and waiting for them to come to you. There is also a single speaker for each player.
It’s possible that this one also has an Amusement Mode but it’s unknown as the product page doesn’t say anything about that. I also am not sure if this one is shipping yet – I checked a few different distributor websites and they don’t mention it but they do have the older Zombie Land Battle listed.
Both of these games are more appealing the young & casual gamer than a hardcore one, which means that you’ll probably find them at certain FECs later this year. In checking the exhibitor map for Amusement Expo 2022 (which is happening next month), Coastal is going and in their description they mention both of these games as coming, along with some new redemption pieces.
Any thoughts on these games? Comment below!
