For our next stop on recapping some recent arcade games, let’s take a look at the inaugural arrival of Cyberpunk 2077 into the arcade space. Cyberpunk 2077: Turf Wars debuted at Amusement Expo 2025, and it can already be found out there, although there is an asterisk to that at the moment. Read on.
In case you missed our previous recap, check out Maimai DX.
Cyberpunk 2077: Turf Wars – The Details
When we first realized what this game was going to be, it was a bit of a surprise. Myself and many others thought that if you were going to adapt a popular first person shooter (FPS) to arcades, that it would be a light-gun game like Virtua Cop or Time Crisis. While Turf Wars is technically an FPS, it does so as a Mixed Reality shooting gallery as opposed to a traditional light-gun video game. That means that the imagery is protected onto different surfaces (it has a staircase effect at the base, then around 48 targets you can shoot, where an image is dynamically mapped to each one).
It also isn’t accurate to call the controllers ‘light-guns’, as they use real pellets that are fired at the targets. The guns themselves feel realistic as they carry some weight to them, and the air/spring-powered firing mechanism adds that extra ‘oomph’ to it:
In addition to the Story mode (seen above), you have Versus, which is an interesting way to compete against a friend. Both can play in the Story mode, but Versus has specifically labeled/colored targets that you need to go for. This makes it a little bit more of a challenge as you see here:
Then there is a third mode, Sniper. This one is labeled ‘hard’ for good reason – you have a limited number of bullets and targets to shoot, but you have to judge where the shot is going by how the game & gun feels, as there is no scope or laser that you can use to figure exactly where the bullet will go.
Since Amusement Expo, there have been a few other details to point out and update you on. According to LAI:
- The game is currently a limited exclusive release at Dave & Busters.
- It will become widely available on August 1st.
- There have been some additions: “we’ve added video animations, and UI and story improvements that better fit the Cyberpunk 2077 universe”.
- LAI doesn’t provide MSRP, leaving that entirely up to distributors. From asking a couple, I would say expect in the neighborhood of $25k (possibly more).
It wasn’t specified in the reply, but I also hope that they’ve fixed some of the issues with the mechanical side of the game that I saw at AEI (gun jams or targets not resetting correctly). I am glad to hear that they’ve added some elements to the Story mode, as that did feel like something that the game was lacking from what I played. This image taken from the Dallas D&B seems to show that (also, don’t forget to activate Windows :P):
Per player reports, this is showing up at Dave & Busters locations starting this weekend, so if you’ve been interested in trying Cyberpunk 2077 Turf Wars out and you have a D&B near you, it looks like you’ll be able to give it a try. Let us know what you think!
