Welcome to Newsbytes, our staple series of posts at Arcade Heroes that curate news from around the world of arcades and pinball. It’s been almost a month since the last of these, and with there being no posts on the site this past week we have got a few things to cover for this weekend, so let’s hop straight to them before the IAAPA news cycle properly heats up:
Note that we had intended to post this earlier so that it would be fresh on the BBWC news, but a site snafu made for a delay.
Big Buck World Championship XIX
As of writing this post, the 19th Big Buck World Championship (one of the biggest arcade game tournaments out there) and Buckfest 2026 has just completed in Milwaukee, WI, and it was quite a show. 128 players descended upon Brew City to compete for big cash prizes, using their skill on the virtual hunt to crawl up the leaderboards. The event was livestreamed on BigBuckHunter.com; both today & yesterday’s streams can be found below in case you want to catch up. Last year did see some new content for Big Buck announced, and whilst there’s been no sign of that in 2026’s, that doesn’t mean another Raw Thrills and Play Mechanix title isn’t seeing any action there (keep scrolling for that).
While we had meant to get this out sooner, we now know the 2026 Big Buck Hunter World Champion – Kattey Pass. This marks the first time a woman has won the full tournament. Congrats to Kattey, who is not just a little richer than before(especially as she also won the Ladies Tournament prize of $5,000), she’s now the best Big Buck Hunter in the world.
They also announced that for next year’s 20th WC celebration (Big Buck itself is older than the World Championships), they are returning to Chicago, while also looking to offer the biggest cash prizes ever – $200,000 total will be awards to players, with the Champion nabbing $35,000. Not bad for playing a video game, amirite?
For the streams:
A New Minecraft Dungeons Arcade Update Appears
Since Big Buck Hunter is developed by Play Mechanix and Raw Thrills, they also tend to bring some of their other games to BBHC events for people to enjoy. News for those doesn’t often come out of them, but on this occasion, it turns out that they have brought a new update for Minecraft Dungeons Arcade that adds a new level, Howling Peaks, into the mix. Federico (who sent this in) has stated that the game is additionally advertising itself as now having 169 cards available, which would indicate that this is a part of a new Series 6. It’s possible that this will be at IAAPA 2026 in a few weeks time; since I sold my arcade’s Minecraft machine off, I’ll have to see about grabbing a direct capture of the gameplay there (if it’s possible):
Penlalive On Location Test Again
Over in Japan, the first announcements have been coming in for their Amusement Expo just before IAAPA next month, and as part of that, a Bandai Namco title we first saw on test some time ago has resurfaced. Ahead of it appearing at that show, their new pen light ‘wotagei’ rhythm game Penlalive is receiving a new round of location tests over in Japan, with updated software and a tweaked cabinet. The main change seems to be that there is now the inclusion of a QR code scanner for save data, where there was previously no in-game progression to speak of. These are how a lot of games in China (and a few Western titles like StepManiaX) have been operating for that purpose, rather than using Japan’s dedicated networks like ALL.Net, so this is an interesting little shift to observe. It still seems unlikely this one will come over here any time soon, but if it did, it is well placed to expand on that side of things at least.
Holler Shot – Cyberpunk 2077 Turf Wars Without The License?
Just yesterday, Jdevy alerted us in the Arcade Heroes Discord to a post by Timezone Australia mentioning several new games they are rolling out to their locations. Among them is a game we haven’t seen before, but should look pretty familiar: Holler Shot. For those paying attention to recent arcade releases, this looks very much like a redressed, non-licensed version of Cyberpunk 2077 Turf Wars‘ augmented reality shooting range concept. Timezone are of course under the same parent company as Turf Wars’ makers, LAI Games, which is where this makes sense for it to be official still. It’s also been alleged that the license came late to that piece, so perhaps this is what it was originally going to be before. This may mean LAI are already looking to no longer have the Cyberpunk property attached to it altogether, though:
More From Pinball Expo 2026
Though we did not attend the event in person, we did recently have a recap of the latest Pinball Expo in Schaumburg, IL, and those who were there have continued to push out videos for it. These include Retro Ralph, who reviews the show and asks which pinball machine stole the limelight here. Stern Pinball themselves have additionally posted this video straight from their booth.
2026 Arcade Releases (So Far)
Over at the Arcade Heroes YouTube channel, the Arcade Update videos have been coming in thick and fast of late, but this week has seen the return of our semi-regular new arcade release summaries in the form of Shorts. Q3’s releases can be seen below; we also have a revised version of the Q2 releases here. Don’t forget that all of these can be found in one place on the site too 🙂
Headlines
GTI Asia China Expo 2026 Saw Over 100,000 Visitors Last Month – More than double what IAAPA’s best has seen, which tells you a lot about the Chinese amusement market
Wahlap Are Bringing Over Nine New Games To Their IAAPA 2026 Booth
uPlay America Debuting New Boxers At IAAPA 2026, Including Boxer TV – They don’t have a page mentioning this, just something that I got in an email.
Leon Amusement Will Have Their Own Online Boxer Machine For IAAPA
Will Bob’s Space Racers Debut A New Kind Of Whack-A-Mole At IAAPA? – The “nod to where it all began” hints at some kind of WAM connection
Sega Amusements Tout Go Go Ducky Redemption Game Ahead Of IAAPA
Bay Tek’s IAAPA 2026 Line-Up Revealed
New Render For Resident Evil 2: Arcade
M2 Launch Shottriggers On Sega APM3
exA-Arcadia Has A New Events Page
Want To Subject Yourself To Some Mind Punishment? The ’94 Street Fighter Movie Is Available For Free (with ads) on Pluto TV – Do yourself a favor and download the Rifftrax commentary track for $3 and then it will be hilarious instead of cringe
[Home Headlines]
Ace Driver Victory Lap Comes Home Via Arcade Archives – One particular jingle from it should be very familiar to viewers of the YouTube channel…
The Ocarina Of Time Remake Is Almost Here
BioWare Shuts Down – Just because you made great games a long time ago doesn’t inoculate you for eternity. Aside from people changing in & out from positions, even one flop can bankrupt a company.
Housemarque’s Saros Zenith Gets A Major Update, And It’s Free
Pricing On The Next Gen Of Consoles Is Crazy – Excepting Nintendo so far, but this could crash things hard enough that the Big N & PCs might be the only ones left once the dust settles. The smarter play would be to not release a console until component prices come down.
The Atari VCS Is Dead – The only W it had was making it to market after missing their stated release dates 3 or 4 times. Otherwise, this was the most pointless cash grab console ever made.
Nintendo Switch Sports Resort Is Now Available – It’s weird to remember how Wii Sports was one of the biggest games of its day
Ten New Physical Games Available For Retro Systems At AtariAge
The Vectrex Mini Is Launching Next Month, With A Special Event In London
If You Have A Switch 2 And Love Resident Evil, This Package Is For You
The Mortal Kombat Port To The Atari Jaguar Still Appears To Be Happening
That’s it for this Newsbytes; which of today’s stories (e.g. Big Buck World Championship XIX) interest you the most?
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