Top Gun Maverick is one of the biggest movies to come along in the past few years, and given the action-packed premise, what better film to turn into an arcade game than this? That’s what Raw Thrills has figured as they recently had the machine on test, and with Dave & Busters starting to tease the game already they have now given approval on revealing it, ahead of their upcoming official launch at Amusement Expo. Let’s dive in with what we have so far…
Top Gun Maverick – The Cabinet
As you can see from this shot of the game on location, Top Gun Maverick draws upon the two screen/motion base design of Raw Thrills’ Fast & Furious Arcade deluxe that came out back in 2023. It is not the exact same; the screen portion appears to stack up a little shorter than FnF’s, and of course the player hotseat is now designed to more resemble an aircraft.
The cabinet uses a motion base, and features a right-hand joystick and left-hand throttle. If you look real close on the stickers, you can also see it mentions “Danger Zone”, as a nice little nod to the movie and the music.
Top Gun Maverick – The Game
As with numerous other Raw Thrills titles, Top Gun Maverick is being co-developed by Play Mechanix. This would effectively be their first ‘aerial combat’ arcade game. That said, Raw Thrills has no comment regarding the gameplay at the moment, just the acknowledgement that the game exists and green light for this story. As mentioned further details will coming up around Amusement Expo (in the meantime, they have shown off a new Wizard Of Oz videmption game that we’ll have a post about up on here shortly).
Because of this, we don’t know exactly how this plays at this time – whether it’s on-rails like After Burner Climax or off-rails like Blazing Angels Arcade. Fortunately, we will find out more soon enough though. Also, the game should be debuting at Dave & Busters in the coming weeks, from the looks of the teasers (e.g. the below image) they have been doing on their social media as of late.
A Brief History Of Aerial Combat Arcade Games
With that all said and done, this does bring to mind some other jet fighter/air combat arcade video games that have graced the arcade scene over the years, which some of you may or may not know – so let’s briefly look back a little on those. One can in fact go as far back as the 1970s to see the first games in the genre, including Atari’s Jet Fighter and Pursuit, or Meadow’s Games’ Cobra Gunship. The 80s then saw other early titles like Red Baron by Atari and Two Tigers by Midway… but the most significant and perhaps most famous air combat arcade game of all time would naturally be Sega’s After Burner.
After Burner is influential not just due to its blistering gameplay and sensational graphics, but also due to the ‘taikan’ (meaning experience) cabinet and controls. Those latter two aspects simply could not be surpassed by a home console in any way, even if a perfect port of the software was achieved. Sega had already set up simulator style cabinets with Hang-On, Space Harrier, and OutRun, but After Burner took things to a whole new level, particularly with the Deluxe model:
After Burner would dominate this subgenre in arcades for a while (not talking about scrolling shooters like 1944 or Raiden, but more aerial combat simulators). Sega would later release follow-up titles like G-LOC and Wing War (which took the ‘taikan’ cabinets to their apex with their ultimate experience, the R360), lesser-known attempts such as Sky Target and Sega Strike Fighter, and then of course there was their original game’s fantastic return, After Burner Climax, in 2006.
Namco was one of the select few who came up with an ‘answer’ to the success of After Burner, with games like Air Combat & Air Combat 22 in the 90s, then Mach Storm in 2013. GlobalVR did also release Blazing Angels Arcade in 2008 (which I still have from when I opened up my arcade that year), and as mentioned we’ve seen After Burner Climax and Mach Storm. Aside from those though, there haven’t been many other major releases to speak of in this subgenre… until now.
Ending the draught slightly last year, LAI Games launched Ace Amusement’s Air Strike out of China. This isn’t strictly in the same mold, as it has some fantasy and racing elements to it, and you can’t control how fast your craft goes with a throttle. But it’s close, and I’ve heard it’s a solid earner – although I would imagine that is partly down to it featuring a redemption mode too. Ace have also recently made Air Combat (not to be confused with the Namco one), which gets even closer with a bigger cabinet; albeit still without a throttle control too, and it hasn’t been seen out in the States just yet. Off the back of all these, hopefully Top Gun Maverick will be a worthy entry into this canon.
Overall Thoughts
Taking into account the above about those two Ace titles coming on the scene, it’s interesting that Raw Thrills would go for a game like this right now. As noted above it should be slightly truer to the subgenre’s gameplay roots with the benefit of a throttle control, in contrast to other games that have omitted one from their controls of late. From the looks of the screens in the photos we already have, however (especially with their 1st/2nd UI graphics), it seems like there may be some racing game-lite features in it too.
This is also part speculation, but considering the fact that Dave & Busters have already had a Top Gun Maverick experience for their VR platforms – which are now being phased out – it wouldn’t be surprising if this is to replace it, or has at least been pushed or funded by D&B, as certain other Raw Thrills games have been as well. If that is the case it is likely it will end up being another timed exclusive for them too (the two tests spotted for it so far have indeed been at their flagship Dallas and Schaumburg locations).
Until we do get more information on it, what are your thoughts about Top Gun Maverick by Raw Thrills? Would you like to see it at an arcade near you?
