It’s time for another game release, although this post may be a little brief, since the game has launched already – in the UK. The game in question being Animal Kaiser Plus, as it is now available in the US for locations to grab.
Animal Kaiser Plus – Quick Details
For a brief rundown, Animal Kaiser Plus is a reboot of Bandai Namco Amusement’s kids card vending & animal battling game. First released in Japan back in 2007, the series was mostly popular there and in the UK. It was mainly popular in Hawaii for the US, but not so much in the mainland.
Thus it was a little bit of a surprise when its brand new reboot appeared in the States at Amusement Expo 2024, even after already being teased for the UK on social media late last year and at EAG in January. I compiled a bunch of details on it that you can read here, and there’s this video:
The US Release
I’ve confirmed with Frank & Anna at Bandai Namco Amusement America that the game is now available for the US market, with an MSRP (final price might vary depending upon your distributor) of $4995. That would be quite a price for today’s market, although as you might have noticed this is designed for the niche of kids and cards.
Given that card games have been growing in popularity here, Bandai Namco felt that now is the right time to give the game a shot, which is also why its seeing this reboot as opposed to another sequel.
As one additional piece of information, there was a question that popped up on YouTube, about what happens when the game runs out of cards. Here’s the answer I got from Anna:
Each cabinet comes with a count card, worth 600 card dispenses. Once you receive a box of cards, you will insert the count card into the machine and it will run through 600 dispenses.
Once that runs out, you need to have a new count card inserted before you can even play the game.
To my knowledge, it will not run unless you have a valid count card in there, even if you want to play the game without dispensing.
It will just throw an error.
So yes, it will be unplayable if there is not a count card being read by the IC reader.
This is normal for a majority of card games out there; cards can be ordered from your distributor. Also note that “version 1” comes with 78 cards, and “version 2” will be announced “soon”. They also already have some replacement parts listed on the site.
What are your thoughts on Animal Kaiser Plus? Would this release be a good addition to your location?
Hi mate, and thanks for sharing. So, she’s saying that you need a “Count Card” to dispense cards, and each one “allows” 600 cards before becoming exhausted, right? I did read that correctly? They actually charge you an on-going fee to dispense cards AS WELL as a fee for the cards themselves? Is that standard for card drop games? Only really been playing Spongebob here in the UK, and wondered if this was the same; the operator has to buy a “licence” to dispense cards, and the cards themselves…? Just thinking; at the places I’ve been to, I doubt that the operator would “renew” the card count if they have to pay for it, once the popularity of the game waned. Any idea what the price is for the count card? Feels a bit like they are just using it as a stealth tax / profit increase money maker for them. Regards
This is exactly how the Raw Thrills games works. In each box of cards, there is an RFID card included in the box that authorizes you for the amount of cards included in each box. This is to prevent you from a) running the game without cards or b) stuffing already dispensed cards back inside the game.
There’s no seperate fee or whatever, it’s there to ensure you continue buying new cards.