September sees the start of the next big trade show season for the amusement industry, and one of the two major shows kicking it off is IAAPA Expo Europe 2025. This comes along in Barcelona, Spain at the back end of the month (with the GTI Asia China Expo happening just before it), but some companies are already starting to reveal their lineups. Chief among those is Sega Amusements, who are going to have their biggest ever presence at the show with numerous new product launches. Let’s take a look…
Ubisoft All-Star VR
First off, the biggest surprise of the bunch (albeit not completely). Back in late May we received word that LAI Games were testing out a new Ubisoft virtual reality piece by the name of Ubisoft All-Star VR, following the success of their Virtual Rabbids. Given Cyberpunk 2077: Turf Wars still being pretty fresh, it didn’t look like this would be officially announced or debuted before the main IAAPA show in November at the time, but evidently LAI have decided the best place for it to make its world debut is in Europe.
For those curious about it, this allows riders to play as characters from “Assassin’s Creed, Splinter Cell, Just Dance, and Far Cry”, but it is doing so in a much nicer 3D presentation than had been previously seen with Ubisoft’s browser/mobile All-Star Blast game. This is loosely based on that (it appears only in style of the Mii-like character designs), but otherwise this is a completely new product. It is also interactive, with a mounted gun that is said to be LAI’s “patent-pending Axis Haptic Controller”.
There are two cabinets that will be made available – the 4-Player you see above, which appears to be linking two 2-Player units together. They’ve got quite the impressive presentation going on with those large 17.4’ cinematic LED walls. The motion seats are powered by D-BOX G5 actuators, but the VR headset type is not mentioned yet. I presume it’s by DPVR, but we’ll have to wait and see.
The game is already listed on Segaarcade.com, pre-empting LAI’s own website, although for anyone wondering why Sega Amusements is unveiling it, they operate as both a manufacturer and a limited-territory distributor for companies like LAI and ICE in the European and Middle Eastern regions. I’m sure LAI will have it on their site soon, and it should certainly be at IAAPA 2025 on their own booth too – I imagine that it may be shipping before that time in November given that it is getting this treatment already.
Apex Rebels Standard
The other products we have to talk about today are not exactly new-new games, but for one of them we have got a smaller, more affordable package that I imagine will be nice for smaller venues. That would be Apex Rebels, which we’ve covered several times before. When this game was first unveiled, there were some mentions of a smaller model, but those disappeared pretty quickly, placing focus only on the deluxe model. A cheaper model wasn’t completely taken out of the equation however, given how other Sega games like ATV Slam had the same treatment, and following a few recent tests it is launching once and for all.
This cheaper Standard version of the title nixes the motion base and dot matrix video marquee, as well as using a smaller 43″ screen, whilst preserving everything else. The marquee is now a “multicoloured glimmering 3D header”, which sounds like what they did for Alpha Ops VR Strike with 3MindWave too. It would be nice if the game got another track or two in an update alongside this as well, but that would likely bump the price up a little more again, and nonetheless what’s there is already pretty good…
Subsoccer Arcade
Here’s something from the social entertainment side of things that actually debuted at IAAPA Expo Europe last year, but only via a special exhibit from North American distributors Primetime Amusements, so it is now getting wider representation in Europe. Previously available in both free play and pay-to-play options, Sega Amusements are touting the latter for their sales of Subsoccer Arcade. This supports tap to pay (and if I recall correctly, is compatible with existing card systems); it also has a really cool fog glass top, which frosts over when not paid for, then becomes transparent when the timer is running. Here it is at IAAPA 2024:
Interactive Mini Golf
Also in ‘socialtainment’, 501 Fun’s Interactive Mini Golf will be on hand following its debut earlier this year at EAG. We did cover this one in detail only recently, as it just began shipping a short time ago. Thus, it probably isn’t in too many places as of this time, but the extra promotion will certainly give it a boost.
Other Games
Proving it to be their biggest ever IAAPA Expo Europe presence, the games don’t stop there at Sega Amusements; as well as the aforementioned Ubisoft All-Star VR, they will additionally have their recently-released Alpha Ops VR Strike. This will be one of the first trade show appearances for the release version out West, which should include all the improvements made to the cabinet (e.g. the new marquee design and more expressive lighting system), and the completed software package with all three stages.
501’s SMARTS darts system is also to return alongside their aforementioned mini golf, and in redemption, there will be the new Mini Cube Prize World series of stackable cranes/merchandisers, the Allstars Sports range, and ICE’s pieces. There is also a promo in this month’s InterGame Magazine mentioning Cyberpunk 2077: Turf Wars and a new 2-Player version of On Target, but these oddly aren’t listed in the article on Segaarcade.com, so not sure whether those will be there too. Perhaps they’ll add them a little later.
As for the pricing on these games, we haven’t heard what the price for any of them will be at this time – it’s a safe assumption that Ubisoft All-Stars VR will be on the high end, most probably close to what Virtual Rabbids had been going for. It would be nice if Apex Rebels SD could bring a racer back down under the $10k level again, but most of those have more recently been in the $12k~$15k range (with the bigger DX games often coming in around $18k~25k, depending). So, we’ll assume about the same as others in the class, until we hear otherwise.
While we won’t personally be attending IAAPA Expo Europe, we do have many friends at AH who will be, so stay tuned for more information from that event once it happens. Which of Sega Amusements’ new titles here interest you most?
