Welcome back to Newsbytes, the series of posts at Arcade Heroes covering bite-sized pieces of news from around the worlds of arcade and pinball. It’s been a little while since we had a regular edition of this (the last was a rhythm game-focused special, thanks to a spate of news there in January), so a hefty chunk of material has built up for you to chew on. We try to get these out on the weekend, but in this case it will be something to start your week off with. Let’s go!
Arcades at MAGFest 2025
A few weeks back was the 2025 edition of MAGFest, the shows dedicated to bringing video games and video game-adjacent music together in one big blowout. Though nobody at AH was in attendance there, it’d be remiss of us to not mention the strong presence arcades had at the fest, from its usual selection of existing games provided by Save Point to the better than ever dedicated area for newer indie/homebrew efforts, which can both be seen in this comprehensive 20 minute tour by our friends at Indie Arcade Wave:
Now, lots of the indie titles presented there weren’t ‘real’ arcade games – many don’t play by the rules of (or even have) traditional coin-op cabinets, and few are getting proper arcade releases as such to the industry, with lots simply going out on Steam or consoles. But there were some housed in fully-fledged machines, such as this awesomely elaborate one-off made by Arcade Commons for the 2024 mid 90s-style indie racer sensation Nightmare Kart. It would certainly cost an arm and a leg if manufactured and distributed…
The biggest indie game placed on show at MAGFest that is seeing a proper arcade release though would of course be Chef It Up. For a quick refresher on this one, it is an original cooking simulator out of Sydney-based MonkeySplash Studios that first turned up late last year in the States, initially out on test at a Dave & Busters and then at IAAPA. Likely thanks to our coverage, it also got some positive inclusion in the small “Arcade Watch” feature of the UK’s Edge Magazine last month; cool to see word spread about it further.
Four pairs of BumbleBear Games‘ Killer Queen Arcade were additionally there; also note that the company recently mentioned in their monthly newsletter that they’ve been testing out the arcade version of ZOMBEEZ at Wonderville in Brooklyn, NY, where they have “collected a lot of interesting data”. Aside from making some adjustments to the cabinet, there’s not much more than that to mention, aside from this photo – which to be clear here was not at MAGFest, but let’s say it is MAGFest/indie arcade adjacent:
Quick videos of the indie games that were at MAGFest in action can also be found at Indie Arcade Wave’s Instagram and TikTok profiles, as well as this upload by Retro Pop Planet (H/T to Jdevy on that last one).
For another community-focused expo with some arcade presence last month, there was also Frosty Faustings for the fighting game side of things. That had its own arcade area too, as well as the official presence of Sega developers, who were there to promote the new Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O. for PCs and sign some imported cabinets on the side…
Japan Game Updates
Over the past couple weeks we’ve posted about a few major developments out of Japan, which alongside the reveal of Missile Command Recharged have brought a heap of traffic to the site (always nice to see) and kicked off 2025’s arcade news cycle proper. But there’s still been several more things going on over there, as well as one or two updates to those stories, so let’s group them together here.
The first was the location test for the new Bandai Namco rhythm game Penda Beats, news of which reached us very quickly. That test has now been over for a week, and thanks to staff unusually permitting attendees to publish photos and footage online (despite the game not being officially announced yet), there’s a few good videos of it in action out there. This one below demonstrates the gameplay in full flow, whilst prolific Japan location test documenter Game Room Ariesu has a clip of the tutorial and a detailed report on their site. The play style wasn’t quite what everyone expected, but it shows promise.
Penda Beats and the next Wangan Midnight game aren’t the only things that Bandai Namco have going on though – as well as a new update for their Gundam card game to capitalize on the franchise’s latest theatrical release over there, they announced another version of its Extreme VS. arena battler, Infinite Boost. Idolm@ster Tours has also had some action, with a new in-depth livestream and the announcement that there will be a final location test before its Spring release (which is looking to be later than intended now). Elsewhere, Konami have confirmed their new-style Gitadora cabinets will be coming out in March.
Sega meanwhile have announced less in the way of upcoming titles for Japan, owing to there being fewer in their pipeline, but Initial D The Arcade has been collaborating with Project DIVA again, the 6th King of Performai rhythm game tournament finals are soon, and they have made a neat little official guide to Japanese game centers for inbound tourists, promoting Initial D, Virtua Fighter eSports, and Maimai DX (which should soon be the first of those to receive an official Western release via Sega Amusements).
Last but most certainly not least, tuned later this week for coverage on new exA-Arcadia announcements, including some updates on games that were seen at IAAPA 2024…
New Florida Pinball Show
This month has seen Florida get the first edition of its own new pinball show, Pinball at the Beach. Sponsored by local pinball retailer, Little Shop of Games (whose owner organized the Texas Pinball Festival until 2023), this had games both old and new to enjoy, along with some brand new titles like Stern’s Dungeons & Dragons: Eye of the Tyrant & Metallica Remastered, Spooky Pinball’s Evil Dead, Jersey Jack’s AVATAR, Barrel of Fun’s Labyrinth, American’s Legends of Valhalla, and much, much more. For more some photos and a full report post, Pinball News have the details.
Scott Pikulski Starts Doozy Studios
In a surprise move, veteran ex-Midway and Play Mechanix designer Scott Pikulski (CarnEvil, Aliens: Extermination + Armageddon, Halo: Fireteam Raven, Minecraft Dungeons Arcade) has recently broken away from PM to start up his own development company, Doozy Studios. Though he has said this will be focused on a few console projects at first, if those are a success the hope is to do more from there, including (potentially) arcade games again. We wish him the best of luck in this new venture…
Thanks For 20,000 Subscribers
Not to blow our own trumpet too much, but last month the AH YouTube channel finally crossed the 20k mark, as anticipated, and so we celebrated it with a special livestream:
New Releases January 2025
After a bit of a break, we’re back to our monthly new games releases shorts on YouTube too. Note that this may not be 100% as UNIS are still yet to confirm the status on some titles of theirs. But we’ll get as close as we can on anything we know about. Also, if you’re curious, here’s a video that rounds up some of the recent major game news that we’ve covered on the site.
Headlines
Bandai Namco Reports Strong Q3 2024 + Announces Restructuring – Bamco sure are busy, between all their new games and this upcoming reshuffle, which besides having lofty plans for producing their own films in North America implicates the amusement side of things as well (it appears to split the arcade development/sales and location operations segments again in Japan, with the former becoming “Bandai Namco Experience” soon). No news yet on whether the latter part will affect the overseas side of things…
Chrono Circle Goes Offline – Updates had already ceased months ago and it was seemingly never all that popular, but still a slight shame. Andamiro could’ve put this out as a Maimai competitor if it wasn’t for the Round1 exclusivity. It’s not all sad news there though – the USA side has announced in an email that their Star Wars coin pusher is now shipping, and a limited number of black Pump It Up LX units running the latest version of PIU will be sold in the US starting with Amusement Expo. If that fits your fancy, order ASAP
Your Last Chance To Grab Mission: Impossible Arcade DX – Will we get the sitdown model spotted on test a couple times last year in its place at some point after this? Or a new sequel a la Transformers Shadows Rising one day? Who knows…
Industry Veteran Ryan Cravens Leaves Stern Pinball, Joins Pop-A-Shot As VP of Arcade Products – Good luck to Ryan!
Want A Sega Amusements 40th Anniversary Polo? They’re $50 On Ebay
Twilight Zone Trademark Suggests It’s Stern’s Next Pinball Update
After Shinobi, Golden Axe Gets It’s Own Fanmade Neo Geo Port
San Francisco Rush Helped Metal Slug Developers Get Through The Grind
Sega Japan, Mitsubushi & Takara Tomy To Expand Amusement And Merchandizing Opportunities
Vertigo Games Reportedly Sells SpringboardVR
The Mixed Reality Ping Pong Table BitPong Is Testing Well
[Home Headlines]
Switch 2 Finally Unveiled – It’s old news and long overdue, but there it is
GDCA 2025 Nominees Announced, Led By Astro Boy & Black Myth Wukong
Taps Played For The Apple Vision Pro – Writing this on my laptop, which I was promised that the AVP was going to render such tech obsolete. Whoops!
Valve Stops Games From Becoming Ad-Infested Like Mobile Gaming – Thank you Valve.
Atari Bringing Breakout Beyond To Consoles – This is actually a game created for the vaporware console, the Intellivision Amico
14% Of Gamers Still Play Retro Systems – I’m surprised it’s that high
I Could See Punk Runner Getting An Arcade Release With A Yoke Controller
Game Journalist Julian Rignall Talks Five Decades Of Gaming
That’s all for this Newsbytes; which of the stories here interested you most?
