We’ve got a few new arcade games out of UNIS to discuss today, ranging from one that now looks set to release, to a couple more that are currently waiting in the wings still. All of these have been previously mentioned as part of our Chinese trade show coverage this year, however not in the same depth as here, where there are a few trailers to link.
Do also note that UNIS recently commemorated their 30th anniversary in business; they have uploaded an official highlights video of the celebration at their head offices last month. RePlay Magazine have some good coverage of that and their big Emojiplanet push in prize redemption this month too. H/T to Ted on finding the below media as well:
Bigfoot Smash
Firstly, we have the third Bigfoot game out of UNIS. To quickly go over the history there, in the latter half of 2020 UNIS revealed their first work to use the licence, Bigfoot Crush. It was a straightforward driving game, where you could choose from a few different Bigfoot trucks and tracks, then race to the finish whilst crushing some cars along the way. It wasn’t exactly designed for adults though, offering a “kidtainment” option at a time when almost nobody was doing anything for any genre. The game came in a twin cabinet, although it was a step up from most kiddie rides – no motion, but a small form factor that works for kids.
Later on in 2023, they launched Bigfoot Mayhem, a kind of answer to Raw Thrills’ Fast & Furious Arcade that was significantly bigger than Crush. Then at AAA Expo in May, UNIS showed off this third mid-range option for three players, Bigfoot Smash. It oddly did not turn up on their booths at either GTI Asia China Expo or IAAPA Europe last month, but has now been confirmed to release after all.
This new one will still work for the kiddie market, but now offers more wiggle room for the grown-ups so they aren’t so cramped. By adding a player, there are three seats and sets of controls, which all use a 65″ screen instead of giving each player their own. The seats now have motion to them (exactly how many “degrees of freedom” is unclear), and the buttons that had previously been integrated into the steering wheel on Crush are removed, with players using a large one on the right to activate certain actions.
Not presently sure if there are any significant gameplay differences between this and Bigfoot Crush though. It seems like there are some graphical upgrades over it, at the very least:
I don’t know what the price is on this one yet either, but UNIS tends to be quite competitive in that regard. I would presume we’ll see at IAAPA 2024, or sooner. MOSS Distributing has it listed now, so it seems that it’s already shipping too (UNIS’ own site doesn’t show it yet… albeit, this would not be the first time that distributors are showing their games before they themselves are).
Sailor’s Quest VR 2
Though Bigfoot Smash was not included in it, UNIS showcased a whole bunch of new products at the GTI Asia China Expo last month, with most being subject to photography sharing bans. This meant that though we could talk about what was around there, the pictures we received of them were a no-go. Fortunately, official videos for these have been starting to trickle out of UNIS of late. For the first and most familiar of them in the pipeline, they have got a new upgrade to Sailor’s Quest VR, the Deadstorm Pirates-like virtual reality motion shooter they made alongside IGS back in 2022:
The original actually got in there first on release before Godzilla Kaiju Wars VR, however by all accounts it is nowhere near as common out in the wild (its only cabinet mentioned in the AH Discord server is one local to site co-contributor Ted… at a location that also oddly bought the HOTD Scarlet Dawn rip-off Zombies Crisis). That evidently has not stopped UNIS and IGS from making a new one though. Little is certain from this early trailer, but the cabinet does have a new coat of blue paint, and from what Oga-Shi was telling us at GTI it sports better, lighter headsets of some kind.
Monster Kart
We did mention this second new game UNIS have trailered in the last Newsbytes, but some of you may have missed its inclusion there. For a brief refresher on this one, Monster Kart is their new stab at the arcade kart racer market, with a few neat twists. One of the biggest two of those is the IP – this is a completely original UNIS effort, not based on an existing one like Mario Kart Arcade GP and Sonic & Sega Allstars Racing Arcade are. The other would be its fully motion-based kart cabinet, something not really done by a game of that genre for arcades before (there have been a select few, but none quite like this):
That about wraps up the new games and media out of UNIS for now; there still remain a few more pieces by them that were seen at the GTI show and have not been revealed properly yet, though hopefully we will see more on those in the near future. It’s possible one or two might appear at IAAPA in November, Bigfoot at least seems like a dead cert at the present moment, and possibly Sailor’s Quest as well.
For now though, what do you think of Bigfoot Smash, Sailor’s Quest VR 2, and Monster Kart?
