Welcome to Newsbytes, a post that curates arcade & pinball news from around the web (that may not work for a full post of its own) and posts it on a weekend – not every weekend these days.
BTW, For anyone who noticed that the Arcade Heroes Twitter account had a Gold badge next to it for a few days – that wasn’t me. Someone hacked the account although they never posted anything with it; I’m assuming they were using a stolen card although I couldn’t tell you why they were doing that exactly other than liking a few odd tweets. The amount of spam I’ve also got in my inbox has gone up by 100x since then and the filter keeps shoving most of it into the main box so if I’ve missed a message, my apologies. I am going back through and will respond ASAP. I may try a Twitter blue badge though since that offers an extra layer of security but otherwise, I’d never pay $1k/mo for Gold, lol.
Here’s the news:
Bandai Namco Begins Celebrating 20 Years Of Maximum Tune
There’s no announcement of Maximum Tune 7 (yet), but Bandai Namco is gearing up to celebrate 20 years of Wangan Midnight Maximum Tune with some new tournaments on the 6RR version of the game. This is only available in Japan and some select regions (not counting imports but I haven’t heard of many showing up out West); It should be noted though that Namco’s US arcade side has been running a Championship on 5DX+ since last month. I had always thought that the game first came out in 2021 though, so looks like I got my dates wrong there. Here’s a new YouTube channel that they’ve launched as a part of the celebration but it is just in Japanese.
Looking For A Special Attraction Indy 500 Setup?
Anyone who remembers the ‘special attraction’ Indy 500 setups at GameWorks might perk up at hearing about this 8-player setup which is currently on auction. Located down in Ft. Myers, FL, this clean and functional game is currently sitting at $1700…but I’m sure that’ll go up in the moments before the auction is over. That said, not everyone has the space to fit something this large – an arcade might (I don’t, presently), but they also might not care to take up so much space with a game that old.
HEXA Pinball Debuts With Space Hunt
Pinballnews.com has the skinny on a new contender in the pinball space called HEXA Pinball (although doing some back tracking on the story, I see that Knapp Arcade has been on top of it too, but I had missed it until now), along with their first game, Space Hunt. It’s interesting to note that they are based in France, which generally hasn’t been big in the arcade game making scene, much less the pinball one (as far as I know, they could be France’s first pinball manufacturer). Some of the elements about it bring Spooky Pinball’s Thermonuclear Annihilation, although that could be more just the color scheme making me think that way. Per the product page, there will be two models available, with the starter at €8900 (basically $10,000USD – plus freight). The game will begin shipping Q4 this year but it’s unknown at the moment if there will be any distributors outside of France that will carry it:
Big Shot Gets A Flyer
First unveiled at Bowl Expo, JET’s new videmption game BIG SHOT now has a flyer. It’s nothing fancy but I still appreciate flyers. This game is available now, although they still haven’t posted it nor the smaller version, Quick Shot, to their website yet:
Project Neon Update
Looking for a vertical shmup on your NeoGeo MVS? Then check out Project Neon. I’m not sure how far along this is in development but it is looking sharp so far. This reminds me, it’d be cool if the guys making this new Earthion game for the Genesis/Mega Drive could also make a version for the Mega Play or Mega-Tech coin-op platforms…
Footage Of The Original Drakons Arcade Game
Thanks to nsm for posting this – he does apologize for having to film with one hand as the other tried to control the game. You also might have missed this in the recent Drakons coverage, as I found out about it afterwards. As I had heard about the original prototype, the game allowed players to steer their dragon/drakon around the environment off-rails but my guess is that it didn’t earn very well. It’s too bad as the concept looks like fun to me and I have a soft spot for yoke controllers:
Arcade 1UP Slipping
I recently had a friend who saw a sale for an Arcade 1up system, bought it at the low posted price, and waited for it to arrive. A day or two later, he got an apologetic email saying that the demand was too overwhelming so they had to refund most orders, including his. Suffice it to say, he wasn’t particularly happy about that and ended up going for the AtGames Legends instead (this wasn’t his first experience with A1up though, other times it had been good).
While this video below doesn’t get into that situation, it does touch on some other issues that people are starting to have with the company – which comes at a time where their competitors like iirCade are failing. I don’t have anything against the concept itself, which is an impression that I might have given off before, I just take issue with locations that are using them in place of buying commercial-grade arcade machines.
Atari Bringing Lunar Lander Back
Not to arcades though – to consoles. I have some thoughts about this through my Atari-focused channel but here’s the teaser trailer that doesn’t show any gameplay. It does seem to have a good idea at expanding the original concept but we’ll have to wait and see if it might work for arcades too:
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Headlines
H/T to all you cool cats sending me many of these links; We’ve got a lot more headlines than usual today
James Bond Pinball 007 Accessories Showcase + My Footage Of James Bond 60th LE At The Pinball HOF
Bowlero Buys The Lucky Strike Brand
Step ManiaX Content
Official Video For UNIS’ Emoji Frenzy Redemption Game
The Idolm@ster TOURS Gets More Location Testing
When Both The Game And The Fix Are Cheap, A Winner Is You
Now That’s What You Call A Thrill Ride – It’s good that no one was hurt, but the theme park tech/mechanical staff should have caught this before the ride even opened.
New Book About Midway’s History Available Now – I’ll have to grab this
How About A Brazilian Mario Kart Arcade GP Cab
The Carnival Chaos Hyper Ride By TrioTech
Sonic The Hedgehog Co-Creator Gets A Hefty Fine And A Prison Sentence
[Console] Digital Eclipse Turns The PC Classic Karateka Into A Playable Documentary – I enjoyed this one (to a degree – I hate that stupid hawk) on the Atari 800XL
[Console] Massive Info Dump From Inside Sega USA Posted To The Net – Tons of info about the Saturn, not much about the arcade side from what I saw
[Console] New Shmup With PlayStation/Saturn Style Graphics Hits Steam: Devil Devour Alive DX
[Console] Yu Suzuki’s Air Twister (Basically A Modern Planet Harriers) Headed To Consoles – Makes me wonder whatever happened to that Space Harrier clone that was in the works for arcades a few years back
[Console] I Had No Idea That Cyan (creators of Myst) Were Still Around
[Console] Gimmick Special Edition Is Now On Console – And yet, I’m still seeing people complaining that it’s not the Exact Mix arcade remaster ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[Console] Dead Wii-U? There’s Now A Recovery Kit For That
[Console] Reviewing a brand new homebrew game for the Atari 7800: E.X.O. – This is from my other YT channel
[Console] Japan Is Getting The Taito LD Collection This December
[Mobile] Taito Launches Space Invaders World Defense AR Game
[Mobile] Bandai Namco Amusements Europe Launches Wincha Crane Game App
That’s all for this edition.
Excellent content as always.