Welcome to the first part of our in-depth wrap-up coverage of IAAPA 2025, in which we take a company-by-company look at the major new arcade games and amusement innovations seen at the show. As is tradition by now, this initial instalment will concern Arcade Heroes’ faithful sponsors at the time of writing, whose support offers them advert spaces on the site and first priority in our trade show coverage.
In case you missed the little catch-up in the last Newsbytes post, there was a lot to cover at this IAAPA; in fact, there was more than I think I’ve ever seen since I first attended the event back in 2009. I did do my best at trying to capture and play everything, but I still I ended up missing some. And it was fantastic to meet several new people who regularly read the site. The thanks and support is greatly appreciated š
Left to right: Caris Baker & Brian Stabile of Astro Crow Games; Arcadehero; Nikita Mikros of Bumblebear Games
Now, onto the first batch of five companies:
Raw Thrills
First up, one of our longest-standing advertisers. Raw Thrills have been debuting fewer big new video games at IAAPA than they have previously done over the past couple years, opting to instead unveil the likes of NBA Superstars and Top Gun Maverick elsewhere; however, that doesn’t mean they rest on their laurels, as here they still brought plenty of games, primarily with new formats or content updates. Also, Betson had a few more non-Raw Thrills products at their booth than usual, which you can see in this:
To summarize what Raw Thrills had and if/when it is shipping, refer to the below list. Asterisks denote content updates, whilst bold indicates what was new to us. Only Godzilla isn’t shipping right at this moment, but that will change very soon:
- Godzilla Kaiju Wars Deluxe (shipping December)
- Jackpot Racer (shipping now)
- Angry Birds Boom!*
- The Wizard of Oz*
- Top Gun Maverick
- NBA Superstars
- King Kong II
- Fast & Furious Arcade (DX & Standard)
- Jurassic Park Arcade
- Super Bikes 3
- Marvel: Contest of Champions Series 2
- Halo: Fireteam Raven
- Minecraft Dungeons Arcade
- Big Buck Hunter Reloaded
The most anticipated title on their booth this year in video games was of course Godzilla Kaiju Wars Deluxe, the new non-VR edition of their kaiju-blasting shooter. This was not quite its world premiere, having first landed in China via UNIS at the GTI Asia China Expo, but excepting location tests IAAPA 2025 was its first appearance out West. As mentioned previously, it’s a great expansion on the original game, with more content and a longer gameplay time (it’s around double the VR one’s – which didn’t even appear here).
For another twist on an existing game, Jackpot Racer was Raw Thrills’ other main new product on show, kind of giving us a video redemption Super Bikes 3.5. Each Raw Thrills racer tends to build on a predecessor and this is no different, although it does come in at a simplified gaming model that is suited towards winning tickets. The biggest differences there being the two screens, and drastically shorter average gameplay time to accommodate the different objective of catching the titular ‘jackpot racer’:
Though the rest of Raw Thrills’ lineup comprised of existing games, there were a couple updates to mention. Angry Birds Boom‘s new software adding a leaderboard and jackpot was shown off, as well as a version of The Wizard of Oz with no marquee. However, I was asked to not film ABB, and though it initially looked like there would also be an update for NBA Superstars, that will have to wait now. It’s likely that will appear at Amusement Expo next year, alongside one or two other new surprises, but we’ll have to hang tight.
TouchMagix
TouchMagix has taken a recent pivot towards mechanical redemption over videmption (the latter being how they’ve mainly operated over the past several years). By all reports however, these new redemption pieces of theirs are earning pretty great, and made big impressions at the show.
The list of games they had there is as follows:
- Pickleball Toss
- Boxed Up
- Treasure Chest
- Minions: Bullseye Mania
- Crazy Prize
- Pudgy Penguins: Polar Challenge
- Pop It!
- Carnival Cups
Pickleball Toss is much bigger than I expected, and has a cool surprise bell feature – they are the same brass bells that are used in temples across India. It also has an automatic system that will ring when a shot is made, although I found that my skill wasn’t great (I got a ball into a lit target only twice). They also use projectors with star patterns to give the inside a little extra ‘pizazz.’
Operators can set it up to either vend regular tickets or specialized, printed ones that the location can take to give out one of the prizes that are actually hanging on the fencing inside; 1 ticket for a small prize, 2 for the medium, 3 for the large. The price on it was a little surprising, given that they were quoting approximately $12k – I would have expected maybe twice that given the size and presentation.
Boxed Up was their other new introduction, bringing a different of merchandiser concept to the table. Players stop its spinning tower at just the right time to win either a large or a small prize. It also supports two players at once, which can make this earn quite well if stocked with the right kind of prizes.
Then Treasure Chest plays the same as before, though does have some updates, as TM have increased its height and added more LED lights. It posted some excellent earnings on testing, landing in the top 15 of a 174 game room at an FEC here in the States. They also had a few of their older favorites on hand, including Minions: Bullseye Mania, Crazy Prize, Pudgy Penguins: Polar Challenge, Pop It!, and Carnival Cups. It would be good to see more videmption from them again, but in terms of cost these new ones are better.
Wahlap
Next up, we have one of the biggest names around out of China, Wahlap. After an initial stab at the US market alone in the early 2010s, they tended to spread their games across various big name distributors (e.g. Amusement Source International and Sega), but that was less the case this year, with only LAI Games additionally showcasing some of their product. It seems that they are making more of an attempt at a direct presence again, with at least one of the below titles going straight from them through to Betson for North American sales (not sure about Europe, though they have been stepping up things there too).
For the full list of what they had and their status with relevant distributors where applicable, see here (everything after NASCAR Pitstop is either a crane or prize game):
- Storm Racer 2Ā (Betson)
- Phantom VanguardĀ (LAI Games)
- Kaiju Rampage UniteĀ (LAI Games)
- CyberHoop Basketball
- Asphalt Moto Blitz DX (LAI Games)
- Asphalt Legends 9 Arcade DX (LAI Games)
- NASCAR Pitstop (LAI Games)
- Getter Spin D
- Bi-Grab
- Tri-Grab
- Track X
- Super Hunter
The biggest new release Wahlap brought was definitely Storm Racer 2, the sequel to their original racing games from the 2010s. Co-developed with 3MindWave, who made Apex Rebels among numerous others with Sega Amusements (and have several developers that worked on the first Storm series games under Wahlap), this brings it well and truly into the 2020s, with massively improved Unreal Engine graphics and of course its new vertical screen format, on top of a sleek, slimline motion cabinet:
Owing to 3MW’s work on the aforementioned Apex Rebels, you can feel the DNA of that coming through, with similar menus and UI (Apex itself has a lot in common with the original Storm Racer games too, considering the experience of some of the people involved). Gameplay-wise though, it feels closer to Fast & Furious/Cruis’n than the closed loop racers Apex aims at. Also, despite being constantly promoted alongside it online and in China, Storm Rider X was oddly not there; maybe next year?
One game that was on hand was Wahlap and IGS’ new Phantom Vanguard, another new title they previously unveiled at GTI in September. This was available both at their booth and LAI Games’, owing to the latter’s distribution, but the game deserves an early mention here while relevant. Though it looks great and the gun combo mechanism is pretty novel, the game content could be a little more exciting and characterful, but it still provides a good alternative to those looking for action-packed warfare shooters.
Along the same lines was also Kaiju Rampage Unite, an upright four player version of IGS’ Kaiju Rampage (called Monster Eye 3 elsewhere). Using tethered pistols does make it feel a little different from the previously released 2P environmental model, although gameplay-wise it’s essentially the exact same as that one – hold the trigger down and it just keeps on firing, no need to reload.
Finally, Cyberhoop Basketball is a decent alternative to other video basketball machines out there, although I should have sought out more details on how it plays and who might be selling it over here. From what I observed, there are multiple rounds where the hoop will behave differently.
Wahlap did also have an extensive selection of cranes on hand, as well as their NASCAR Pitstop redemption game done with LAI; they had been promoting their pushers like Rocket X online a lot recently too but they didn’t turn up here (or with a distributor), which was a little surprising.
Alan-1
Alan-1 was unable to be in the Games & Arcade Pavilion, however, they weren’t far away, and managed to bring a rather diverse booth compared to last year. This saw two of the Atari Recharged cabinets (Missile Command & Gravitar) and the return of the Atari PONG coffee table, while also debuting Liquid Death. Dr Pepper Soda Slam! was also available to try out over at the AVS Companies booth.
The full list of their booth’s games looked like:
- Liquid Death
- Butts On Things
- Cosmic Spin
- Missile Command Recharged Pro+
- Gravitar Recharged Pro+
- Atari PONG Mechanical Coffee Table (non-coin op version)
The main new Alan-1 release here was the latest variant on Soda Slam!, Liquid Death, themed around the canned water brand. This doesn’t have any changes to the main gameplay action, but does have a new preponderance of 2D skulls, in keeping with the Liquid Death house style and artwork:
Aside from that and their new Cosmic Spin merchandizer also joining the fray, A1 saw some big success with the Butts On Things crane machines and toys. That notably included the attendance of the actual BOT artist himself at the show, Brian Cook, who shared the official toys amongst his Instagram followers and helped bring even more attention to the new cranes and merchandise range.
Blue Motion Games
Lastly, for our most recent sponsors, we have Blue Motion Games. You may recall that they debuted at Amusement Expo 2025 in Vegas with two huge FEC video games – Cannonball Jam and Desert Chase. This show, they eschewed their own booth and joined fellow Canadians at Player One Amusement Group to show off the new, smaller release of Desert Chase. This also has some neat new LEDs on the controls:
BMG didn’t bring anything besides that, but they did indicate what their next big title would be, and it’s going to have a major IP license. This will have to wait for the next Amusement Expo in Vegas though…
That completes this first part of our IAAPA 2025 wrap-up, but make sure keep it locked to the site and YouTube channel, as there is still lots more content to come from the show. The next post focused on the big names of Bandai Namco, Sega Amusements, LAI Games and UNIS will be out sometime soon this week. Until then, which of the new arcade games shown off at IAAPA 2025 seen here interest you most?
