More footage from the 48th Amusement Show

UPDATE: Please note that for the latest news, go to ARCADEHEROES.COM. The site made a major move after the post below but we have kept doing the same thing, reporting on the world of arcades.

While we eagerly await news from the Sega Private Show to come about, including more information on GRID and Let’s Go Island, let’s take another look at the recent JAMMA show that took place in Japan.

First off, Taito released a video featuring an overview of their booth, which includes the first footage of their new racing title, Battle Gear Spin Wheel. This one won’t have any trouble earning it’s place on the list of “quirky” arcade titles as you will see briefly below.

Here is a brief look at the Sega and Namco booths from SankeiNews, which shows a quick clip of Deadstorm Pirates 3D.

This user, wx4058, has posted tons of videos from the show, content includes Gundam Extreme Vs., Blazlbue Continuum Shift II, Initial D AA Arcade Stage 6 , Shining force Cross Raid, Pengo, Pac-Man Battle Royale, Darius Burst and more. To get to the JAMMA stuff you’ll have to scroll down past all of the Tokyo Game Show videos.

I am surprised that no one tried to get any video of the autostereoscopic displays that were there, at least as a means of discussing the topic.

Tekken Tag Tournament 2 Announced, coming Summer 2011

With the move just about complete (please let me know what you think of the Theme – the one we had been using doesn’t seem to be available so I’m changing it up) I have some time to post about the big news that came out while we were moving the site.

The producer of Tekken, Katsuhiro Harada made an announcement while TGS was taking place but more specficially at the Super Battle Opera, a popular fighting tournament in Japan that we’ve covered in the past. To everyone’s surprise it was a new Tekken game that wasn’t exactly Tekken 7 but instead, a followup to Tekken Tag Tournament. TTT2 will be coming out in arcades next Summer in Japan, prior to the release of Street Fighter X Tekken and Tekken X Street Fighter (in that order). The Tekken 6 engine has been modified for this game to allow for the extra characters on screen and the control scheme will be like that of the first Tekken Tag Tournament.

2011 will be an excellent year for fighting games although for us arcade purists the probable console releases loom over that positive outlook for next year. Hopefully Namco will be able to release TTT2 for much less than they did T6.

Here’s the trailer, it’s actual in-game footage. Fingers crossed I can get the Youtube embedding to work…

[youtube::hvL9TOUuDb8:]

Also since we’re on the subject, Kotaku has the footage of the new SSFIV Arcade characters Yun and Yang (thanks Phil)

Website change

We are moving the website to some new hosting services which will hopefully give us some extra flexibility as to what we can do with the site. I’m not sure how long the site might be down for but it shouldn’t be for too long and hopefully it will work out properly and nothing (except some really old videos we had uploaded to WP ages ago) will be lost.

-Adam

If Marvel VS. Capcom 3 was an arcade game, it would look something like this

We’ve been having a lively discussion about Capcom and their attitude towards the arcade market in the SSFIV Price Tag comment thread and surely this will continue to stir the debate. Capcom has already stated that there are no plans for Marvel Vs. Capcom 3 in arcades, which is something we heard about early on about SSFIV as well. Now we have this video from Japanese news site Gigazine that shows a very arcade-like setup for MVC3 at what I assume is the Tokyo Game Show. We still can’t get our hopes up yet – if it were a real arcade release we would expect to see it in a VEWLIX cabinet and I haven’t seen any “MVC3 coming to Arcades” announcements yet . As such this looks like an ‘arcadified’ kiosk, similar to what we saw recently at PAX in the US so all we can do is dream (or I’m sure people will be planning their own MVC3 home-made arcade cabinets). Once again, this is where the Game Gate VU can come in handy, as that has a modular control panel where you can add arcade sticks to itassuming that MVC3 will be a part of the iGames license which includes Capcom games.

Speaking of TGS, there is some arcade love there at Konami’s booth, who brought Love Plus Arcade to the show and unveiled another arcade title that appears to be a variation on Love Plus called “Happy Daily Life”. More details on that @ 4Gamer.net

Shining Force Cross Raid trailer

Today is trailer day it seems. Here is a trailer for the update to Sega’s arcade RPG, Shining Force Cross Raid. This is best seen in HD. I can see a few elements from another Sega ARPG, Quest of D, which came out back in 2003 in Japan only as well. While the chances of seeing SFCR outside of Japan are pretty low since the game is tailored towards the Japanese market and the player’s taste there, I still hold out a strong hope that someone will give us an ARPG again that will be able to grace the international market. If it was done at one point with something like Gauntlet Legends or even the Capcom D&D games, then it can be done again.

Blazblue Continuum Shift II trailer

Arc System Works has released a trailer for their upcoming fighter, Blazblue: Continuum Shift II, where it showcases a few of the new characters that will be joining the roster. Unfortunately the video quality isn’t that great, which is strange since it’s coming directly from the company itself and BBCS2 is an HD title.

We all know about BBCS2 being the essential “launch title” for Taito’s new digital distribution service, NESiCAxLIVE and I’ve found out a few more details as to how that works. If an operator wants NESiCA, they need to purchase a server for 89,000¥ (about $900). Then as I understand it, they can then purchase something like BBCS2 online for a few hundred dollars less than a PCB (ex. BBCS2 is about $2000USD digital, abt $2300 PCB), although you will need Type X2 board to load the software onto. Taito mentions that some services will be free on NESiCA, others will cost a fee and playing a game downloaded via NESiCA is one of those activities that will be fee-based. It’s comparable in this manner to the CoinUp side of the Big buck Hunter games – the game let’s you pick between an online and an offline mode, if the player wants online then the cost of that is higher by a couple of coins. The big question is how will players take to that extra fee on NESiCA?

NASCAR Team Racing updates roster with Roush Fenway Racing team

GlobalVR has added content to their NASCAR Team Racing game once again, adding the popular Roush Fenway Racing team to the roster of drivers. If you are not familiar with them(as I wasn’t), they are a pretty big deal in the NASCAR world and you can visit their website here.  While no game tweaks have been made in the update, the addition of four Roush drivers from that team is one way GVR seems to be using to keep NASCAR fans continually interested in the game.

I haven’t been keeping track but NASCAR seems to be one of the most frequently updated arcade titles in recent memory as they constantly add new cars and drivers. I can think of a couple of other games I’d love to see receive some content updates to give the game more to explore.  As for GVR, I am wondering what their next game might be, so far the new content they delivered this year was shown at Amusement Expo and that has been it so far. IAAPA is right around the corner though and there is usually something new to talk about there, especially since AMOA is no longer around in September. It would be great if they can have NTR online at IAAPA, I haven’t had a chance to play that “in the wild” so to speak and try out the online mode against another human player(s) and I’m still curious to see how that plays.

As for the NASCAR update, for more details check out the press release below.

Super Street Fighter IV Arcade gets a price tag

It wasn’t long ago that we heard that Super Street Fighter IV would be getting a December release. Now we have a price tag to chew on as AM-Net reveals the following about the kit:

HDDROMKIT4セット\1,912,000(税別) Set HDDROMKIT4 \ 1,912,000 (U.S.)

In a currency converter, 1,912,000 in yen is around $23,000USD. That can’t be for a single kit – you might recall that the first SFIV Arcade was sold in packages of four complete cabinets for around $40,000 and the HDDROMKIT4 seems to indicate that these kits are being sold in fours as well. That would put the kits individually around $6000USD per unit and of course for an operator to get a 2 player setup going they have to purchase two since Capcom seems to think that the VS. configuration is perfect for everyone. I’m sure SSFIV will sell to those who already plunked down a several grand to get SFIV Arcade the first time around, assuming they still have the funds for such a purchase but I have a hard time believing that Capcom will really obtain sales on the scale of thousands that they are looking for at such a price. What would make far more sense is to A) offer a decent price for the game and make a build for 2p on 1 cabinet(ex. the new Blazblue is going for a little over $2k per kit) or B) offer the game on NESiCAxLIVE for a download, which eliminates the costs of hardware that SFIV operators have already invested in(it’s all running on the Type X2) and it could be sold at a reasonable price that many more could afford. Seeing how several other fighters are being made available on NESiCA including Blazblue Continuum Shift II, KOF98 Ultimate Match, Samurai Spirits Sen, Battle Fantasia, and KOF Maximum Impact Reg. A, it’s not like SSFIV should be out of the question. Then again I have heard that NESiCA will charge a small fee per game (like CoinUp does on Big Buck online games) which will increase the cost of each play which can be a hindrance on the users end depending upon the price per credit. Of course there is always C), which is available now – get a Game Gate VU and purchase a copy of SSFIV for the 360 or PS3 and you get a 2 player arcade setup for much less.

Promoting indie games with an arcade cabinet

Newsfeed 924 via

At the Penny Arcade Expo we saw how a few companies decide to give their games an extra edge by putting their console game into an arcade cabinet. The games which were showcased in such cabinets probably won’t ever see an official release but the understanding that an arcade cabinet attracts attention in a way that a standard kiosk setup does not was certainly highlighted. Now the same idea has moved over to the indie games scene where a small group of independent game developers found a way to grab some attention towards their games at the Fan Expo in Toronto. By using an old arcade cabinet, they converted it to play a number of indie games that were brought to the show and as a result it helped give those games some extra attention them might not have received otherwise. As it turned out, the indie developers got a taste of what an arcade location test can be like, which is different than putting out something like a public online beta. Maybe one of them will consider making an indie arcade title, although that can be a whole new challenge in itself as not everyone makes it there either since you need a way to get the game out there which involves selling hardware in addition to software and that takes funding.

Which takes us on a tangent for a moment, this is where something like Taito’s NESiCAxLIVE digital distribution system could prove useful. It does limit what could be done with the controls which are often one way arcades stand out on their own but it would save a developer from having to build a cabinet, I/O board, PCB and all of that to sell.  There are still issues that would need to be resolved for that idea to work everywhere (Taito has the advantage in Japan of having a standard cabinet like Vewlix and clones/variations on that) but I think that something like it could be done elsewhere. Make something like the Neo Geo or Atomiswave, with a standardized cabinet, modular control panels and standard hardware that connects to a robust online delivery system and you could create a new dynamic in the market, which is why I think NESiCA can be a revolution for this industry.

Anyways getting back to the indie games, you can read more about how that event went @ Ars Technica

Konami readies Road Fighters for release

It’s been almost a full year since we first revealed the development of a new Konami racer called Road Fighters and now Konami is finally ready to bring the game to market. It has changed quite a bit since the first test, adding 3D support and a slick cabinet and soon we’ll see how the 3D additive helps the game compete against other technical racers such as Initial D and Maximum Tune. The new page for the game mentions e-Amusement support for keeping track of player data as well as online competitive play. They also tap into Konami’s plentiful Bemani library for the background music, which might be a way to help pull in Bemani music fans who don’t mind playing racers either. To round it all off, the game lets the player pick from a diverse line-up of licensed cars, six of which are shown on the product page(click the link below). Road Fighters will be released in Japan next month; there is no indication at this point as to whether this will be getting an official international release and that seems quite unlikely given the game’s hefty price tag of around $35k per unit (that is per AM-Net, unsure if $35k is for a package of four units like we saw with SFIV or just one).

[Konami Road Fighters product page]