Next up on the IAAPA 2025 preview roster is UNIS. I remember first coming across them back in 2009, and they have come a long way since that time. They lean heavy into redemption & crane product, which is not our main focus here, so we’ll cover their new video titles first, then get into the prize/ticket stuff.
As is often the case, they have a lot of floor space at the show, with two big booth spaces, #1035 & #1335 (looks like each is something like 30×40′ in size). This is the same amount of space that Triotech has, although as we saw last year, UNIS really packs the products together. As it is, there will likely be games that they have that they have yet to detail at this time, so this is all to the best of our knowledge.
Spin City
First seen at the GTI Asia China Expo back in September, UNIS just listed this one on their website and appears to be all-in on promoting it now. We’ve occasionally seen these mega-trackball games pop-up out there, such as with indie exergames and Ace’s Dream Ball, but this is the first time that one of the “big guns” in the industry has gone that route. The balls here are big enough that they make the 49″ screens look small. Each station also has a foot pedal, which is for activating a turbo boost.
This is billed as a twin model (two single cabinets sold/connected as one), and it is also touted as playing for tickets. However, UNIS usually offers an option to turn those off, for the rare venue who may want to offer it as a video-only.
Monster Jet Riders
This next entry into the “Monster” series that UNIS is doing comes as they are still heavily promoting their successful Monster Kart game, which will also be at the show in it’s larger DLX format. If you would rather race on a hover jet instead of a kart though, this game is for you. It is unknown if the two games share the same characters or tracks, but as you can see here, this uses a Jet Ski style controller + motion base; in-game they also seem to be futuristic hover/anti-gravity vehicles:
From this video, the style of racing appears to be similar to Monster Kart, with boosts on the track, jumps and drifting, although this trailer doesn’t spend much time looking at the screen.
More
GTI Asia China also saw the appearance of some other games which have not appeared in any IAAPA preview that we’ve seen, including Turbo Nova, Dino Dash, Jump Master, and a few others that are likely set to not see action outside of China. These are wildcards which might show up, or they might not. UNIS did just today post a video about Jump Master on YouTube, so this is a stronger maybe than the others:
Another that is a little bit of a mystery which hasn’t been seen at any previous trade shows is one that was initially on Shaffer’s ‘cheat sheet’ preview list but then removed, called Ski Hero. In doing research, we found a photo of the game on a European distributor site, but this is the only thing that we can find about it:
Besides the familiar controls and vertical screen, the main difference this seems to have is it using a spring-loaded motion base underneath the platform. That’s a creative way of not using a fully-fledged electric motion base where it is convenient. Skiing arcade games go back pretty far in the business, as long back as 1977 in fact with Allied Leisure’s extremely rare Ski, but the undisputed champion of this microgenre has to be Namco’s Alpine Racer.
With the exception of a couple of similar games by Sega and Konami and a 2014 Alpine Racer revival done by Bandai Namco with Raw Thrills, there hasn’t been many more physical skiing games though, which is why it’s a little surprising to see UNIS doing this now. Whether or not it’s coming to North America after all, or whether will be debuting at another event, we’ll have to find out next week.
Redemption
UNIS continues playing a strong game with redemption & prize products, and we expect most of the products across both their IAAPA 2025 booths to fall into that category.
As can be seen in the above preview, this should include a number of emoji branded products and titles like Franken Slam, Toy Box cranes, and perhaps capsule machines, like they had last year:
I’ll be at the show to see for myself what UNIS have on hand; be sure to stay tuned to this site as well as the social media channels (particularly YouTube) for more. What from the stuff we know of, what interests you of UNIS’ IAAPA 2025 lineup the most?
