At IAAPA 2024, UNIS came out in force with several new arcade games, including the recently-released Sailor’s Quest VR 2. Of the others, there are now four more that we can finally confirm shipping and pricing on: Neon Rush, Dino Storm, Monster Kart and Bigfoot Smash. To cover this release blitz in one go, let’s take a closer look at all of them here; also note that we have some other pieces of news in development from a couple of other companies, so hang tight.
Neon Rush
First up is Neon Rush. We first saw this back at the GTI Asia China Expo in September 2024, being one of UNIS’ few new titles there that didn’t have a photo ban on it. It is by some distance the largest of these four games, using the stacked two-screen format originally seen with Fast & Furious Arcade and UNIS’ own Bigfoot Mayhem. It also features a motion base (similarly featured on the other two) on top of a swivel motorbike. With the strong futuristic theme here it would’ve been cool to see this one use the TRON license, but perhaps it was too expensive…
A single Neon Rush unit is quoted as $11,500, which is pretty competitive. On pricing for all of these please note that I’m sharing some MSRPs that I got from a distributor; pricing will probably vary depending on who you talk to.
Dino Storm
Next, we have UNIS’ stab at a rafting arcade game in the style of Namco’s Rapid River, Dino Storm. This brings that type of game more into the racing genre, seeing players compete against other rafters (both in the game and locally via linked units) on a selection of courses, instead of working together to get through a variety of scenes. To accommodate this it also has slightly different rowing controls, being stationed at the sides of the motion-based raft, instead of at the front as a two-sided paddle. There are two levels of motion effects that the player can chose from (casual or exciting), and some nice wind effects too.
MSRP pricing is at $9,500, which is a bit of a surprise given how infrequently we see video games hitting the sub-$10k spot now. As a quick note, there is also more footage of this game exclusively available to all Arcade Heroes channel members.
Monster Kart
Another motion-based racer here with Monster Kart, UNIS’ new karting game. Where Neon Rush and Dino Storm had futuristic motorbikes and rafts, this has a cast of colorful monsters in karts, using a motion go-kart style seat as a result. UNIS said they had a great reaction to this at IAAPA 2024, so it will be interesting to see how it fares against Mario Kart Arcade GP DX (which is still selling like hotcakes – apparently another order of 1k cabinets is taking priority over Taiko right now for Bandai Namco…).
The pricing is definitely competitive with MKAGP DX, at either $10k for the single standard or $13k for the “Deluxe” unit. Not sure if the difference is the motion (as we haven’t seen a standard model yet), but that would make sense.
Bigfoot Smash
Finally, we have UNIS’ third game in their officially-licensed Bigfoot range (complementing Crush and Mayhem), Bigfoot Smash. This was the first of the four games here that we heard about, originally appearing nearly one year ago at the AAA Expo 2024 in China last May. It seemed like this one was shipping already too, but it had simply gone up for order early on a few sites late last year. We’ve discussed it at length because of that, so here’s the IAAPA 2024 video in case you missed it:
The pricing for Bigfoot Mayhem is the lowest of the bunch at $8,000~. Note that UNIS is also shipping out a lot of their crane and redemption products now (such as the Toy Box range), which go for even cheaper, but as always our focus tends to stay on the video games.
That wraps up the UNIS news for now, but keep in mind that with Amusement Expo approaching fast, there is still tons more news to come – stay tuned for an update on Sega’s Maimai DX, and a big new title that LAI Games have in the pipeline… until then, what do you think of these new UNIS releases?
