Back at Bowl Expo 2023, Coastal Amusements brought a new shooting gallery style game to that event called Bullseye: Crack Shot. We’ve heard little about it regarding a US release since then, but it seems to have been undergoing some changes for Stateside release in the meantime. Now with IAAPA 2023 upon us, the game returns and in two cabinet flavors. Let’s check it out:
Background
Originally released in Asia and more recently Europe by UDC, Bullseye Crack Shot has been developed by Ace Amusement. This name is a rising star out of China, as quite a few companies are grabbing their products. In fact, they’ll have their own separate booth at IAAPA, but I do not yet know what they will showcase. I’m not sure how their equipment holds up in an arcade setting, but their output has been rather high volume in recent years. You can see numerous examples of it in this video by UDC:
Cabinet
When the game was shown off at Bowl Expo, it was shown with two single cabinets linked together under a single marquee, as already released in Europe by UDC. That has changed; now, we have a standard and deluxe cabinet.
The single might have a 43~47″ screen; the DX may be as large as 85″. I’ll have to confirm specs at the show, as the product page doesn’t say. I am also unsure about linking. I would assume that singles can link, especially looking at the flyer which still shows a twin cabinet. But things like that can change without notice. I’ll verify at the show.
Bullseye follows the now familiar setup of using a realistic, metal gun in a shooting gallery setting. We’ve seen a few of these in recent times, all in the wake of Taito/UNIS’ OnPoint. OnPoint’s fault was in using real BBs to fire at the screen, which most operators balked at. The guns were quite realistic however and that launched an effort to bring a similar feel, without the liability of BBs flying around.
These new cabinet designs appear to be influenced by those sold by JET Games here, where they also have a single (Quick Shot) and a deluxe (Big Shot) option to choose from.
The Game
For the game, it features either six or eight levels to play – I’ll need clarity on this as the game flyer shows six, while the game page mentions eight. Four of those are “Skeet Shooting, Accuracy Test, Break the Bottles, and Target Switching.” At least a couple of others are more standard light-gun fare, where you are shooting at bad guys – as you can see in the DX image above. Some can be seen in this early video from UDC:
The game will operate for tickets or as a normal light-gun arcade game, where you just play for points. Hopefully that does include a leaderboard, although sometimes game devs seem to “forget” to include such a thing these days. I haven’t seen it in motion personally yet so can’t comment on its look, but I also hope to high heaven it’s running at 60fps. That is one aspect that some devs out of still miss too frequently.
On The Genre…
As an aside, thing I would like to do at the show is compare and contrast the various games in this growing “metal gun shooting gallery” genre. I’m only sure about this and Big Shot being there, but there certainly could be others. I think OnPoint is no longer in production so I don’t expect to see that at the UNIS booth, unless they want to surprise with a non-BB version.
As an operator though, these are appealing, since gun games still do great. I’ve never had one from this genre to see how it does though.
Have any of you out there operated or played these various titles? What do you think about them?
