AAA 2026 Day 2: China Unveils More New Arcade Games

Welcome to the second day of Arcade Heroes’ coverage on AAA 2026, the first major Chinese amusement trade show of the year. Today brings us two of the other biggest companies on the Chinese scene: UNIS, then Ace Amusement. The former is comparable to Wahlap in that they have been around a while now and are part of various global partnerships, whilst Ace are newer, but have grown a lot since first entering the market in the late 2010s.

Expect to see North American and European releases for most of the new arcade games covered below, as both of these companies have presences over here. Thanks once again to our half-Welsh true blue Arcade Hero, who attended the show and provided us with most of the photos you can view (though several of Ace’s came directly from one of their posts on a Chinese platform). In case you missed the first day of coverage on Wahlap and Bandai Namco, find that here.

UNIS

When it comes to UNIS, both Wahlap and them celebrated big anniversaries last year, and in keeping with investment and momentum, means that they had slightly more new products on show in 2025 than now. That especially goes for UNIS this time, as they recently chose to reveal two of their latest titles at Amusement Expo International in Vegas this March instead. Still, both of those have returned here, alongside a few games that couldn’t make it over to that event due to some shipping issues, and some  releases that are Asia exclusives right now. Per the norm, they have a whole heap of ticket redemption and prize merchandising titles too, but they are adding on some pretty high profile licenses – it’s not really our focus here, but they did notably have some new My Little Pony machines here in that area of product.

Like Wahlap, UNIS have also posted a highlights video from their booth too:

Cyberpunk 2077: Chrome Rush

For the first and biggest of those two aforementioned AEI reveals, Cyberpunk 2077: Chrome Rush had an even more prominent showing here, with a six player link-up and a ton of booth babes. The version at AEI was not complete yet, meaning the one here is further along in development, likely very close to final given it is currently on track to release in June. We don’t know the exact differences the version seen at AAA may have had, but it does look as if there were some minor cosmetic adjustments to the cabinet design. Also as they tend to do at these Chinese events, they to a big kind of unveil/press conference about it using a bunch of hired dancers:

If you didn’t catch it when it was originally posted, we do have plenty of footage of the version seen back at AEI on the AH YouTube channel, including this first play video of the Night City stage. From looking at the photos we were sent, the only changes to the cabinet are in translated text – everything else appears to be the same. Most who have played it with good arcade knowledge seem to agree it’s a little like Sega’s Motor Raid but for the present day and age:

Pickleball Rivals

The Chinese version of UNIS’ other recent AEI debut, Pickleball Rivals, also appeared here in both its twin and single models (the twin one was in English and back to back with these two). Though it doesn’t have a license, this did attract plenty of attention at AEI too, being the first motion-based sports game we’ve seen in arcades for a little while, and the first time that pickleball has become digital for arcades. This has reportedly seen some demand from FECs, in part due to some FECs opening up real pickelball courts to jump on the trend. Now, you don’t have to make that expense:

Ski Hero

One of the games that couldn’t make AEI due to the shipping issues was UNIS’ Alpine Racer-like Ski Hero; this was also originally previewed for IAAPA, but didn’t appear there in the end either. AAA has now turned out to be its first trade show appearance, and it came here in both the vertical screen cabinet seen before and a new landscape one to boot. From this pic, the new model seems to have almost twice the footprint:

Others

The rest of UNIS’ lineup wasn’t all redemption; they did have a dedicated area for large experience games, most of them coming from their partnership with Raw Thrills to sell and manufacture their bigger machines in China (Wahlap tend to take the smaller ones, though they have also sold Halo Fireteam Raven). Next to them is also UNIS’ own Turbo Nova racer, which was another among those that unfortunately missed out on being at AEI. It is available now.

Since they don’t sell Raw Thrills’ card games, UNIS have been going in hard on making their very own (e.g. Amazing Universe and a new one that can be seen in the booth photo at the start) although none of these have released outside of Asia so far. They have been promoting one of them in particular (Picture Book Land) online recently for passing the 3k mark in sales, which just goes to show the strength of the market there alone. There’s no indication that these will see an overseas release.

Ace Amusement

Ever since they released their earlier games like Wild West Shootout in the 2010s, Ace Amusement have been shifting huge amounts of product into the market, mainly through distributors like Amusement Source International, Coastal Amusements, and UDC. This has been generally centered on deluxe racing and shooting games (with some redemption too), and has improved over time, but there is still some titles of theirs that could do with slightly more polish. A lot of what they make wears its influences pretty clearly on its sleeves too, though there has been the occasional piece of theirs like Super Drill that stands out. They are also looking into advertising on the site and YouTube at some point, though that won’t be done as majorly as some of our other sponsors.

Thunder Jets

For an example of something very much influenced by another game on the market, Ace’s main debut here is closely following Top Gun: Maverick‘s trails in the sky, being a more straight fighter jet game than their previous pieces in the genre (Air Strike and Air Combat – in fact, the latter seems to have used the same seat make as this). The main thing setting it apart from Top Gun though is it coming in twin vertical screen cabinets, as opposed to that game’s single machines with stacked monitors, and first-person view combat on certain instances.

Ace do also have a short preview trailer of this one on their YouTube channel, however it’s the only one up for the new games they had here. Oddly, this is mixing up fighter jets from completely different generations:

Cold Trigger

Again with titles derived from other recent ones, Cold Trigger is pretty clearly taking aim at Phantom Vanguard with its military theme and use of swivel mounts to insert its wired lightguns into. The twist here is that they now have their own subscreen displays, which can be used for a tactical view of the action. They are not attached to the gun however (which is something that Konami once tested waaay back), but to the mount. It’s a neat concept, but one that will probably require a lot of maintenance given there are four of them for each player (another upgrade over Phantom Vanguard, which is for two players).

Here’s a close-up of the gun. The monitor appears to operate when you have the weapon holstered, presumably for heavier firepower:

Dragon Kingdom VR

An existing game that Ace have out on the market is their grab at Drakons, Dragon Kingdom (available through Amusement Source International in North America since earlier on in the year), and now they are giving it a virtual reality upgrade with this model.  It uses a similar looking cabinet to most other VR shooters out there, but only with one screen for bystanders. They are a little late to the arcade VR party, and this is one of the few VR pieces we’ve seen at the show, so it’s surprising they have chosen to do this technology only now. Perhaps the market for it is still pretty big in China, but greatly reduced output of new VR games seems to indicate otherwise:

Others

Regarding Ace’s other new games, there is an interesting one here in that it uses an officially licensed property, namely Ultraman. This would be the first major instance of Ace doing that, given most of their game IPs up to now have been their own riffs on others. There have been many other Ultraman games out of China by different companies, but it seems that some were illegitimately licensed, whereas this one has gone through the right route to be 100% official. With it, they have combined a lightgun game with emblem vending, a mix that to their credit has rarely (if ever) been done before. Given the lack of an English name on this one it doesn’t seem likely it will come outside of China(it was a bit of a surprise when we saw some at AEI’25, but those disappeared soon after), but perhaps they’ll reuse the formula in another title.

Then a couple games Ace are releasing in a new form factor are their Racing Xtreme and Hover Rush drivers, which originally released with the stacked two screen format, but are now getting a single monitor option. These still have motion bases on them, but are also available as single cabinets now instead of twins, so they will be significantly cheaper nonetheless. Hover Rush in particular is a recent one that we still haven’t seen much of out West, which is odd as it does have a relatively unique concept of being a water hovercraft racer, but Ace clearly want to push their other games more than this one (of which there are many to market instead, in fairness).

Day 2’s coverage may be over now, but make sure to check out our final post on AAA 2026, which will run through all the other companies and new games of note that appeared at the show. By the time this gets published it will already be over out in China, which means we have the complete picture from our sources to sift through and pick out the highlights (bear with us if this takes an extra day!). In the meantime, which of UNIS and Ace’s new arcade games here interest you most?