It was only a month ago where we had the chance to see all of the latest arcade games coming to the market, but that doesn’t mean that developers are taking a break. Angry Birds has graced arcades a few times before, and now it may do so again with this new title from Raw Thrills, Angry Birds Boom!. Let’s see what might be in store – if this reaches production.
With the above said, please keep in mind that as a game on test, what you see below may not even close to the final product. The game may also never see full production. It all depends on how the test goes, but keep that in mind before making any final judgments.
Angry Birds Boom!
Posted to the Arcade Heroes Discord server this morning by ArcadeZ, the photo below was snapped by a friend of hers, Adventures with Krit. The location it is presently at is called In The Game, an FEC in Crestwood, IL. Note that Raw Thrills does not comment on unannounced games, but given that you can go and actually play the game, we can safely say it’s not some kind of elaborate, but late, April Fools joke.
Astute readers will notice that this is currently in a reskin of Raw Thrills’ Nerf Arcade. That doesn’t mean that the production model, if there ever is one, will use this setup however. Raw Thrills and others often reuse cabinets for development/testing on similar games, before coming up with something original for the final version. Of course, it can save money to reuse an existing design, so this could go either way.
As a quick aside, this of course is not the first time that the Angry Birds franchise has graced arcades. It’s not the first time that Play Mechanix (whose logo is also on the machine) has worked with it either, having made Angry Birds Arcade way back with ICE. LAI Games and Adrenaline Amusements have also worked with the IP. Rovio is now owned by Sega, so you would expect them of all people to do something with it in arcades, but there might be some legal differences going on due to how Sega Amusements International is presently set up. And then again, SAI did already distribute Angry Birds Arcade – perhaps they passed on it for this reason, as they want to sell games of different IPs at the moment?
Time To Guess
Since we don’t have Angry Birds Boom! on video yet, we can make some safe assumptions from the one photo available right now. The use of mounted guns likely means that players are firing Angry Birds as their ammo – the placement of the pigs who are looking straight at the screen (but at different distances) seems to confirm that. I also assume that targets farther away will be worth more than the easier close ones. They also seem to have pigs that descend through pipes.
Of course, this probably will have a few different levels with their own configurations, unless the development team decides to change it up completely. It may also be a remake of the aforementioned Angry Birds Arcade in some shape or form – with Play Mechanix involved again, that is a possibility. We’ll have to wait and see.
As for when we will see this officially announced; assuming that it has been doing decent to great on test, it’s impossible to say how close it might be to production. Perhaps it could appear at Bowl Expo 2024; failing that, IAAPA 2024 in November.
What do you think about Angry Birds Boom!, from this single pic? Would you like to see this in arcades?
