Things have been a little bit quiet for the blog lately, but I’ve been super busy. Big nod to Ted for helping out on many stories and drafts during this time. In the meantime, I’ve been to two gaming expos in the past few weeks, California Extreme & the Utah Retro GameXpo. With those out of the way, and most of the videos all done and dusted from them, it’s time to write a wrap-up.
Utah Retro GameXpo
I don’t have much to say on this event (which is still happening while I write) as it’s not much of an arcade thing. However, there was a room partially taken up by an arcade, and it had three of the new Asteroids Recharged cabinets, which I’ll talk more about below.
Since the post is mostly about CAX, we’ll get the Utah Retro GameXpo out of the way first.
Even though it wasn’t really about arcades, there was tons of video gaming and art goodness at Retro GameXpo, and enough arcade connections to make them worth bringing up here. The highlight of my visit was, without a doubt, speaking to the OG cast of Mortal Kombat I & II. I spent most of the time talking with Master Daniel Pesina, but also did get to chat with Elizabeth Malecki (the OG Sonya Blade) and Carlos Pesina. I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to get an autographed MK poster (which will soon be hanging up in my arcade above my UMK3 machine) and get a shot with the crew:
For those curious, the arcade area was furbished from a collection of games owned by Alan-1 and Flynn’s Retrocade – some of those games included titles from the fan favorite Grinkers, which closed down a few years ago in Idaho.
Among the playable games (aside from Asteroids Recharged), they brought: Bandido, Centipede, Dig Dug, Galaga, Lode Runner, a Neo Geo MVS 6-slot (mainly playing Top Hunter and SVC Chaos), The Real Ghostbusters, S.T.U.N. Runner, Street Fighter II Champion Edition, and Wizard of Wor. Perhaps its because I’m around arcades every day that I didn’t play much of those (I did a little), but instead spent a bunch of time in deathmatch on the Quake LAN that a local enthusiast set up. That hit my nostalgia bones in the right spot:
California Extreme 2024
I’ll just call it CAX, but this was my second time attending this event (the previous time being in 2018), thanks to a company I’ve been doing some consulting for, Alan-1 (they have a new website coming later this month). I’ll get into them in a second, but first, just for the general show – very heavy on pinball, it did seem to have less in the way of video games than in 2018, but was still packed with gaming goodness:
If you are interested, I’ve made a playlist of all the CAX uploads, here.
New Games
While CAX is focused on retro, a few new games were on-hand that are worth talking about from the following companies.
Alan-1
Alan-1 had their two upcoming arcade releases, Avian Knights and Asteroids Recharged Arcade there, and they were strong hits. Even Owen Rubin (creator of Major Havoc, and several Atari arcade releases like the Asteroids sequel Space Duel) had a lot of praise for the game – and a couple of polishing suggestions for the gameplay. As a part of the hype, a tournament was held through their Major League eSports (MLeS) app, where the top score won their own Asteroids Recharged cabinet. A producer from Atari, Jason Polansky, was also there, and he was quite happy with the product; he’s in this video presenting the prize:
Stern Pinball
Stern wasn’t there officially (they were busy at San Diego Comic Con), but one of their distributors was on-hand with a bunch of new Stern’s, including John Wick, JAWS, and the recently announced Godzilla 70th Anniversary Edition. While it’s still the same Godzilla Premium, I give the nod to this model due to the fantastic black/white/red artwork that adorns the playfield. The metallic side art also looks rad. For whatever reason, the gameplay I filmed below shows that this was the best round of pinball I’ve ever played. Usually my games last a couple of minutes, five tops. I think I became conscious of the line that had formed behind me though, so kind of threw it, but for that time where I was in the zone, it was beautiful:
Pedretti Pinball
It was an unexpected surprise to find the recently announced Fun House remake by Italian newcomers Pedretti on hand. I’ve never owned a Fun House and didn’t play it “back in the day”, so I’m no expert about it, but what I played here felt like a new game and it lives up to the name. Bonus on the LE version for the LED eyes (both the LE and the “Classic” version were there):
Boys Night Out & Doggy Tails
Another surprise was the presence of a couple of games I had not heard of before the show, both designed by Joel Kaiser. Doggy Tails is earlier in development than Boys Night Out, the latter one being based upon Joel’s 2017 indie film Popcorn Landfill. I enjoyed the shot flow on BNO in particular, although I couldn’t manage to nail the corkscrew ramp:
DSM Arcade
I haven’t been sure if I would come across one of the new DSM Arcade indie arcade titles, but fortunately there was a collector or operator who brought several indie titles to the show – Killer Queen Arcade & Black Emperor by BumbleBear Games, Cosmotrons by Arcadeaholics, and Nidhogg II by DSM Arcade. I hadn’t played this on PC nor the arcade version – it’s like sword fighting tug-o-war. Great looking cabinet with a lot of color too:
exA-Arcadia
ExA wasn’t there in an official capacity, but thanks to the Californian arcade import outfit Game Saru (who helped showcase several new games of theirs at EVO 2024), several exA titles were available to play across a few cabinets. I don’t recall all that were available, but for certain they had Akyrios EXA, Axel City 2, Blazing Chrome AC, Dynamite Bomb!!, and Samurai Showdown V Perfect. These cabinets were also popular, being set near the big collection of Japanese candy cabs (including some VS setups).
Arcade Prototypes
I have a real soft spot for unreleased prototype games – I don’t know exactly why, but CAX is one place where you’re guaranteed to come across something that never made the final cut. Just note that I’m not big into emulation so I hadn’t played any of these games previously, but I’m sure the ROMs are all out there in case that’s your thing.
Marble Madness II – Marble Man
First is Marble Madness II – Marble Man by Atari Games. Coming along in 1991, it turned the marble into a character (sort of reminding me of 7up’s 90s character, Cool Spot, which had its own Genesis game) and bumped it up to three players – but made it control using joysticks. The version at CAX restored the trackball controls of the original ’84 game, although I did find the one I used to be more sensitive than I expected going into it. Still, anyone who is a fan of the original should find plenty to like here. I think that poor timing (this should have been released in ’86 or ’87) and the joysticks are ultimately what killed it:
Danger Express
For another 90s Atari title, there was Danger Express. I’d only seen this one pop up on System16 and hadn’t heard of an existing cabinet. The best way I can describe it is Konami’s G.I. Joe meets Midway’s NARC. Oddly enough, the punch and shoot button are one in the same, making that basic attack that you have a bit janky. Still, the game was playable and it oozes that early 90s charm, especially with the whole premise. This concept probably would have worked a few years later when 3D became more easily available – I could see it working in a Die Hard Arcade sort of way.
Inferno
Next up is a 1984 piece by Williams called Inferno. In the video I said it’s like Robotron 2084 meets Zaxxon, but commentors nailed the latter game better with Crystal Castles. This is also a game I’ve read about a few times over the years, but I never watched a video or done more than look at some screen shots. It wasn’t difficult to get a hang of and it’s a fun game – the sounds and fonts used will also make you wax nostalgic for Williams games of the era.
I think the only reason it failed was timing – ’84 was the bottom of the gaming crash, so the concept had to be better than good to make it (unless the company was desperate to put something out to generate revenue). Had this been released in ’82, I imagine it would be considered a classic today… although with the Crystal Castles idea, I wonder how it might have controlled by using a trackball for movement instead of the Q*Bert-like diagonals.
Speaking of Q*Bert, I did meet with Warren Davis at the show. He had a table there and was amusing people passing by with some card tricks. He was super nice to chat to, and I bought his book, Creating Q*Bert – which I read through on the flight back home. Fantastic book that I would highly recommend, that actually gets into some prototype games that he worked on or pitched that never saw the light of day – USSA and a Highlander 1v1 fighting game would be of particular interest to many readers. He also spends a bit of time detailing the process of developing a game that is practically a prototype, just due to being super rare – Us Vs. Them. I’ll do a video or blog post to review the whole book some time soon.
War of the Worlds
Getting back to prototypes, next up is War of the Worlds by Cinematronics. Up until 1982, this company was laser focused on creating vector games. War of the Worlds reflects that but it landed in an odd spot between B&W and color models (there are some protos of this game that use a full color monitor). The game isn’t exactly terrible per say, but I can see why it didn’t make it – it’s highly repetitive. Had they borrowed some ideas from the likes of Phoenix by changing things up over waves and having what is basically a mothership boss battle at the end, then I think it would have been better. As it is though, it didn’t feel like an 80s game, but rather one stuck in the 70s. The scaling effects on it are awesome though.
One proto I missed filming, but I did play, was Midway’s Bio Freaks. That’s an odd one where the arcade version wasn’t released, but the console port was.
Arcade Rarities
On top of prototypes, there are a bunch of games that are rare to be found in the mix (actually rare, not “eBay rare!!!”) at CAX. These include: Canyon Bomber, Computer Space Ball, Fire Truck, Galaxy Ranger, I, Robot, Liberator, Major Havoc: The Promised End, Quantum, Solar Assault Revised (see below), Speed Freak, Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator Captain’s Chair version, Star Wars cockpit, Strikeforce, and plenty that I didn’t film.
Arcade Normalities
CAX isn’t all rarities of course – you could find plenty of common or perhaps uncommon but not exactly rare titles to play. Aside from what you saw in the tour video at the top, I played Caveman Ninja, Circus, Krull, OutRun, Reactor, Revenge of Shinobi, Pleiades, Strider, Thunder Blade, and Venture, among others. I did film some of these, but might just keep them for members since I don’t know that most subscribers to the channel are there for the old games (of which there are dozens of emulated video captures found all over the internet). Here’s one of them though, just so we have a little something to end this post with.
Overall, California Extreme was a great show with a great collection of games. If you were there, what fit your fancy the most? If you weren’t, which of the mentioned games would you have liked to have played the most?
