New month, new arcade games – although you’ll want to stay tuned here as we’ll be hearing about a few more this month once JAEPO (an arcade-focused tradeshow in Japan) lands. To start things off we have a game from Wahlap & Sega Amusements, one that was seen at IAAPA 2022 called Storm Rider 2. Sega sent out an email this morning promoting it and after contacting a distributor, they’re saying it’s shipping now. As the name shows, this is a sequel but in terms of gameplay they are very different from each other. I’ll compare below but first, the twin cabinet in case you hadn’t seen it yet:
On top of using a swivel bike seat, this also employs a motion base (which can be turned on/off) to further enhance the simulator feel; It also features a touchscreen for things like track/rider selection, course map during gameplay and more. It uses Unreal Engine 4 to power the graphics; For some other features, I’ll quote from the website:
The game uses advance AI making the game play ideal for casual and core gamers. The highly immersive 4 racetracks take players across various locations with spectacular sceneries. Players can compete in single player campaign or challenge your friends in epic four bike multiplayer race. The unique bike upgrade system plus three bikes and three characters, encourages players to play again and again.
Now to compare the first one to this one, although I unfortunately don’t have an equivalent direct capture video to share of SR2 at the moment.
The influence of Raw Thrills style racers is more apparent in the sequel although this does stick with closed circuit courses (which is more Sega’s thing) for that. I wasn’t able to see how the parts upgrade system worked at IAAPA and I haven’t seen/heard about how it did on test but it certainly was a success given that it has hit production.
Have you played this arcade exclusive yet from the tests or at a trade show? What did you think about it, if so?
