Newsbytes: 007 Pinball Leaks; Dave & Busters Expands Internationally; Al Kress Passing; More

Welcome to Newsbytes, a curated look at arcade & pinball news from around the world and wrapped up into one post. It’s been a little bit since we had one of these but I’ve been able to scrounge up enough for this post.

BTW, I will have some coverage on IAAPA Expo Europe 2022 here soon. I was not able to attend in person but I have contact with some who were, so we’ll get that out sometime this next week.

James Bond Pinball Pics Leak Out To The Net

This should come as no surprise given the online age in which we live, but here are some leaked pics of Stern’s next game. The “official” reveal was cancelled “out of respect to the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II”, as Stern had initially planned on revealing the machine at the Electrocoin booth for IAAPA Expo Europe 2022. There’s always someone “in” on the pinball scene though, so these official pics gradually popped up on online places like Reddit, Pinside and Facebook.

These might not be final-final pics, but it does make it obvious that this is all based upon Sean Connery’s Bond and not any of the others. This makes sense from a marketing stand point – I’ve always seen Connery Bond top fan lists, and the pinball market does tend to skew older. I’ll run a separate post about this once the official announcement is made but expect these to ship soon. Above is Pro (which IMHO would look better without the giant DR. NO logo, but maybe that’s just me), below is Premium.

Dave & Busters Announces Middle East Plans; Testing Game & Go Food

We’ll start today with a couple of stories from Dave & Busters. To comment on that first one, just opening a single location internationally is big news but D&B is going for 11 across three countries. This is being accomplished via franchising, so I imagine that if it’s successful, it’ll just grow from there.

Dave & Busters To Open 11 Units Across KSA, UAE, Egypt

Meet Dave & Buster’s New, Futuristic Revenue Stream

As an aside, I’ve often heard that the ME is a growth market for arcades & amusement, with places like Dubai setting the stage for that over the years (who remembers Sega Republic?). There’s also been the DEAL show going on over the past decade – I hear positive comments from manufacturers who attend.

On the other story, this is another interesting concept that they are experimenting with in conjunction with Coca-Cola, where they have what’s essentially a convenience store on-site; you scan your card when you go in and you’re charged once you leave, based on what you bought. Pretty cool and as the headline says, futuristic. This is currently testing at the Hollywood, FL location, and if successful, it’ll roll out to other stores.

New Promo For Asphalt 9 Legends Arcade

It’s quick but shares some player feedback:

Betson’s Northwest Amusement Showcase Taking Place On Oct. 1st

If you find yourself in the NW region of the US and are in the arcade biz, then Betson has a pre-IAAPA show coming up that will preview some new stuff and educate operators via seminars. I imagine that Fast & Furious Arcade will be there but you can also expect to see games from Andamiro USA, Bandai Namco Amusements, Coastal Amusements, Incredible Technologies and Rilix.

While I wasn’t planning on this myself with IAAPA so close, for some reason my IAAPA press credentials were denied (never had a problem since first going there in 2009) so if I can’t get that resolved, I suppose this showcase will become my IAAPA trip instead.

Industry Icon Al Kress Has Died

Replay Magazine shared the sad news that Al Kress has died following complications of a fall he had in his home earlier this month. He is one of the few people in the industry who has done it all – he was an operator, a distributor, and a manufacturer. The latter was Benchmark Games, which became a part of the Elaut Group a few years ago. I had the pleasure of chatting with Al a few times over the years and he always had sharp insight.

You can read his obituary here; Replay will also have a special story about his life in their upcoming October issue (Al has appeared in Replay many times over the years)

RIP

Fixing A Broken LCD Monitor

If you have experienced the backlight dying on one of your Makvision monitor games, hopefully this video will help:

Talking Tekken 8 For A Moment

As I mentioned when Street Fighter 6 was revealed, there’s not much for an arcade blog to say about games which probably aren’t destined for real arcade use. But of course since the arcade is where many of these big games won their fame and made their name, it’s natural to expect some talk on it.

I would like to do a livestream discussion about fighters and the modern arcade on YouTube, why we don’t see big names hit the arcade scene anymore and such, which I hope to do sometime this next week. Until then, here’s another Tekken you’ll not see in American arcades, although I’m hearing there won’t be a JP arcade release either – BNA seem happy to focus on Gundam EXVS there now.

Speaking of fighters, there is one on consoles that is possibly headed to Japanese arcades called Omen of Sorrow. This is a nice looking 4-button fighter that is going to be testing on Taito’s NesicaXLive 2 platform here soon. If it passes the test, then it might be available at Round1USA locations that still have that.

Headlines

Andamiro’s Latest SpongeBob Redemption Game Is Now Shipping

There’s an English Page For Andamiro’s Chrono Circle Game – I won’t expect this to be available for anyone other than Round1USA, unless it’s at IAAPA

Betson Opens A Giant New Distribution Center In Vegas

Modders Have Added The NFL 2023 Player Roster To Midway’s NFL Blitz – H/T to Retro Ralph on finding this

US Adults Are Cutting Back Entertainment Spending – Which means arcades, among other things. I’ve been seeing this happen for most of the year so this is no surprise.

More Designs Added To The Arcade Heroes Teepublic Store

EVGA Severs Ties With nVidia And Exits The Video Card Business – This is a strange story and it sort of applies to arcades since they all use PC GPUs. Not sure how many arcade machines have used eVGA though. It’s strange to me that they aren’t going to even try to work with the likes of Intel or AMD.

[Console] Gimmick! Is Coming To Consoles, But Not The ExA-Arcadia Remaster

[Console] Ayaneo Hopes They Have A Switch ‘N Steam Deck Killer On Their Hands

[Console] Operation Wolf Is Coming Back…But Not To Arcades – When a game is made for consoles first, don’t expect it to be just like the arcade original

[Console] New Rise of the Triad Game Coming Soon To PC

[Console] A Detailed (True) History Of The Magnavox Odyssey

[Console] More Sega Goodness Comes To Switch

[Console] That’s One Big Sonic The Hedgehog Ballon

[Cool] AI-controlled Robot Plays Go

That’s all for this week, thanks for reading and we’ll see you on the next story