Continuing our coverage of the IAAPA 2025 trade show that took place in Orlando, FL, we are now taking a look at three companies who have a fairly strong connection to one another: North American distributors Amusement Source International and Coastal Amusements, and Ace Amusement. The latter has become a bigger player on the scene recently with their output behind fellow Chinese factories Wahlap and UNIS, providing some of the content that both ASI and Coastal bring over.
For previous coverage in case you missed it:
- IAAPA 2025 Part 1 (Raw Thrills, Wahlap, Alan-1, TouchMagix, Blue Motion Games)
- IAAPA 2025 Part 2 (Bandai Namco, Sega Amusements, LAI Games)
- IAAPA 2025 Part 3 (exA-Arcadia, AVS Companies, JET Games)
- IAAPA 2025 Part 4 (Andamiro USA, Pinball, UNIS)
Reminder that games listed below in bold mark the first time we’ve seen them at a North American show.
Amusement Source International
Amusement Source International are relative newcomers to the industry, only coming along at the very end of the 2010s when Cory Haynes (former manager at Dave & Buster’s and CEO of GameWorks) founded his own company, but they have quickly become one of the key import distributors on the US scene since (they ran adverts on the site here for a little while). Through their various partnerships with other manufacturers, mainly Chinese ones with the occasional European name, ASI have already brought out a lot of product; this has mainly been redemption, but there are some interesting pieces they carry.
The games they had here included:
- Rooster N Bro 2DX
- Wild Hunting
- Fortune Zombie
- Skull of Shadow
- Space Travel 2
- Colour Star
- The Container
- Lucky Chicken
- Madball Fury Road
- Gem Master
- Balloon Fest
The main new video game ASI had this year was Ace Amusement’s Wild Hunting. This is one we’ve known about for a little while, and has had lofty ambitions and expectations a Big Buck Hunter competitor. It looks very similar to BBH in several ways, but instead of pure hunting with the goal to get skill shots on three bucks, you are supposed to shoot the many infected beasts that are chasing after the normal ones (I don’t think they are zombies, but if there was an explanation given I didn’t catch a story). You can hit them anywhere and they go down; shooting a normal animal doesn’t end your round, it just penalizes your score with a subtraction. However, there is limited ammo and no reload or pump action, just pull the trigger to shoot. ASI had a four player model on hand, with each player station represented by AI-looking characters that have dialogue. The software could do with slightly more polish (note the “FREE PALY” misspelling in the video below; the screen also randomly cut to black at one point), but the cabinet mostly looks fine.
For a new videmption title following the lead of Perfect Pour and Soda Slam!, there was Sunflower’s Balloon Fest. This doesn’t actually borrow from drink pouring gameplay, instead having you fill balloons to a limit. The main problem is that you don’t know what that limit is until you get to a random fill up point, where a dashed line appears, and instead of filling the balloon straight to the line, you just need to let it linger there for a moment, then it rewards points. Only if you go above that line does it pop, which you don’t want. It’s a little confusing at first, as there’s no telling where to pump to; seeing where the dotted line is from the start would alleviate that problem, much like the glasses in Perfect Pour already show what the limits are.
One game that ASI had hoped to bring to Amusement Expo in March but didn’t quite make it was ZS Cheer’s Rooster N Bro 2DX. This is a whimsical shooter for kids that I saw getting a lot of play at the show. While sometimes kid games don’t care much about smooth frame rates, this looked fine, and the gameplay falls into something akin to Ice Man. Right up behind RNB was Huatong’s Fortune Zombie, although that one’s frame rate does need work. The gameplay was very different, with players needing to shoot various creatures that wander onto the screen, as opposed to going through dynamic on-rails levels.
ASI also had Ace’s Skull of Shadow again, following its debut last year. This time it was in the two player environmental cabinet, rather than the previous iterations we’d seen with both four and three player options. This one features a motion seat and wind effects, making it one of the few environmental options out there.
You could find video screens on a few other pieces ASI had too, although those were redemption focused titles where the screen is not necessarily the main star of the show. They also brought several new mechanical redemption pieces and merchandisers; I could see games like The Container doing well.
ASI also had their ever-popular Print Cases vending machine back again (now competing with one by UNIS), while being joined by another vending machine, DIY Souvenir Coins. This has a similar premise, in that users can print a cherished photo to a coin instead of a specific brand phone case.
Finally, there were two other games that ASI had at the show, but not at their booth: Trick Pong and Box Stack. Trick Pong involves throwing ping pong balls at lit-up targets for points, while Box Stack is a mechanical redemption game that also uses a screen. Since I didn’t see this one, I’m not entirely sure how it works, but here’s the flyer:
Coastal Amusements
Coastal on the other hand have been around a long time now, dating back to 1988 as a manufacturer, importer, and distributor. As time has gone on they’ve wound down most of their own developments, shifting their focus to importing and often carrying Chinese titles that they have localized for North American markets. They have always had a stronger focus on redemption games than video games too, with video always having a redemption option available. Coastal did bring a few new titles to show off here, most of which were mechanical redemption pieces, with two or three new videmption pieces in the mix too:
The relevant titles they had here, missing out some of the redemption:
- All Star Golf
- Justice League (pusher)
- Hot Wheels: Ultimate Speedway
- Roll-N-Win
- Sports Legends
- Vortex
- Wave Riders X-Treme
- Wild West Shootout 2
- Zombie Invaders
- Cranes, merchandisers etc
It should be noted that Coastal’s main attraction was still their Hot Wheels: Ultimate Speedway, which netted 1st place in the coveted IAAPA Brass Ring Awards for Games & Devices. It was released to the industry earlier this year, and they had five of them all lined up and prominent on their booth.
Zombie Invaders is one that’s been promoted by its developers (High Fun) on LinkedIn a lot following Chinese trade shows, and it is now showing up on our shores. One of the people behind it had been previously working at Wahlap and is now going independent. This might remind you of the old Spider Stompin’ redemption game, although a lot of the presentation here is on the screen, where you want to stomp the zombies. This has multiple levels and a nice look, easily attracting kids to come and give it a play.
All Star Golf from Ace is the second new golfing game we’ve seen this year following Sega Amusements’ Putt It! Par-Tee, but this one goes for a vastly different approach. You control a small mechanical golfer who hits a real golf ball down the ramp at a rotating target. If you get the right shot, it can cause the target to rise, offering more options. There is a screen on this one, although it does seem more secondary to the overall game than the focus; Roll-N-Win also by Ace beside it was similar, though not golf-themed.
This show additionally saw the return of Ace’s Wild West Shootout 2, which Coastal has been wanting to launch for a while now, but they decided to hold off while getting other games in (consolidating what they can with tariffs I’d assume). This was at Amusement Expo 2025 before it got pushed back; one change since then is that it now surprisingly has black guns across all player stations, instead of colored ones. Gameplay remained the same though, so I didn’t capture any new clips of it in action, aside from what you see in the booth video up above. Here’s the AEI footage I took from back in March:
I’ll have to check on this, but I think that the mechanical Sports Legend game seen in the booth video above is also by Ace; if not, then there are some striking similarities with All Star Golf in how the molded characters look and function. I’d note on that however that the baseball one needed some work – maybe I just sucked at it, but it seemed like it was impossible to get the ball into any more than just one target.
As one note, Coastal’s Freeze 5 merchandiser uses a concept that is gaining steam in popularity out there – I’d seen this last year with Zooom Studios’ Space Race, where you’re supposed to push a button to stop the fast moving timer at the precise microsecond to win the prize. Bay Tek had their Perfect Pump game doing this, as does Freeze 5, with Coastal’s version giving you five prizes to choose from, instead of a giant one or tickets (although I’m sure you could put a ticket card or roll on one of the spindles). Just noting this as I have a feeling we’re going to see many more games with this mechanic popping up soon.
Ace Amusement
While Ace produces a lot of content that gets picked up by others (like the two companies above), they also setup their own booth space at IAAPA. It isn’t quite as large as what they offer at ‘home turf’ shows like AAA or GTI, but they have enough games that it ends up needing some overflow, as it were. Their booth this year had fewer games available than last year, and some notable absences that I’ll mention below; however, I believe that is due to more of their games being carried by US distributors.
For the games that were at their booth:
- Bikers Madness
- Crossbow Fishing
- Dragon Kingdom
- Racing Xtreme
- Ace Striker
- Rush And Catch
Of that group, Racing Xtreme had the better software presentation, being a racing game very much in the Cruis’n or Fast & Furious Arcade style featuring a motion base and 60fps graphics across two screens. This is sold as a twin model, with their Bikers Madness following the same format. The graphics aren’t bad on both, with the edge going to RX for having a more consistent frame rate from what I saw. Standard models of these also exist (with vertical screen alternatives too), but were not on hand here.
Perhaps it was still an early build, but Dragon Kingdom didn’t enjoy anywhere near the same visual polish that Ace’s racers did, with the frame rate struggling to reach even 20 in this case. This is odd given the polish seen in Skull of Shadow. If it could be brought to par with SoS, then it could give Adrenaline’s Drakons: Realm Keepers a run for its money; it does offer more character interaction than Drakons does at least. The designs remind me of the old Eragon novels, with a dash of How To Train Your Dragon in there too. But that frame rate really needs to be fixed if it wants more Western attention.
Crossbow Fishing is an interesting spin on fishing games, reminding me of Yuto Games’ fisher that was at IAAPA last year, but this is put together in a different way and comes with a nice visual presentation – on par with Racing Xtreme, just without all of the bombastic racing action. Granted, I’m often perplexed by why most fishing games we see out there from various companies have poor frame rates or use 2D graphics, as these aren’t exactly pushing the envelope of such things, but here Ace shows what a good fishing game can look like. The scene transition was a nice little surprise that also seems to have been done just to show off. Given how this plays, I’m a little surprised that ASI, Coastal, or another Western distributor hasn’t picked this one up. Maybe the fishing game market is a little saturated out there?
Speaking of surprises, there were a few newer Ace games that oddly weren’t there but had been seen at recent Chinese shows, including Hover Rush and Dino Attack. I did forget to ask about those specifically, but perhaps it was just that there already was a fair amount of content from Ace to be found at the show. Every company has to be mindful of what will be their most effective sellers, and when you have too many options, it’s easy to end up prohibiting your sales as opposed to maximizing them.
That wraps up this part of our IAAPA 2025 coverage, but believe it or not, there’s one more part to come. Much of this will entail companies who focus much more on redemption, such as Bay Tek and Elaut, and a few other “LBEXR” items. “Pixel Floors” are one big upcoming trend, something that looks like it is looking to uproot the many VR arenas that have mostly disappeared, but there are a few other things we’ll be discussing on that too. Until then, what new arcade games seen here interest you most?
