Pac-Man makes the obligatory energy drink appearance

Street Fighter got an energy drink recently so why not the other great arcade icon, Pac-Man? Well, I wouldn’t have cared had Pac-Man never been used in marketing energy drinks but since he has, here is the mention of it. It’s cherry-flavored only – which is too bad as they could do all of the edible items in Pac-Man and really go all the way. I’m sure that Pretzel or key flavor would do really well – at least they wouldn’t vary much from what energy drinks usually taste like. 😛

[The Pac-Man Energy Drink @ Perpetual Kid] [Discuss on the Forum]

DDR:X making an appearance at ATEI 09

The ATEI 09 news continues to trickle in, now with news on Konami’s DDR:X machine. According to the press release, the game is slated for a world-wide release in “Spring/Summer 2009” and include the largest track list for a DDR game ever with 350 songs. It also has been testing very well, despite having incomplete software. Expect to see more on this with our ATEI coverage next week and of course if any of you get a chance to play it at the show, leave some comments here on what your thoughts are about the game. Hit the post break for the press release.

Justice League to be unveiled at ATEI 09

Global VR has announced that they will be showcasing their latest title, Justice League: Heroes United at the upcoming ATEI 2009 show. With the press release they also have included some pictures of the cabinet, which comes in two flavors, standard and deluxe but pricing and availability are currently unavailable but should be revealed soon. We also should have some hands-on information about it straight from the show so if you’ve been wanting to know more, stay tuned. It certainly is good to see someone trying out a brawler for arcades again, the last one I know of was Asian Dynamite in ’05. For more info on the game, check out the press release after the break and discuss it on the forums.

Adventureland premiering at the Sundance Film Festival

The one of the several things I can enjoy about the Sundance Film Festival currently going on in Park City Utah is that it’s close by to me. Unfortunately, I missed the last arcade related film shown at the festival (which I think was the King of Kong) but if I am lucky, I will get a chance to go up and see Adventureland, a coming of age film where a recent college grad gets a low paying job at an amusement park. It’s based upon the real-life experiences of the writer/director of the movie, Greg Mattola (director of Superbad) and it premieres in a few days. I have a friend up at the festival right now and he’s going to find out when it premieres so perhaps I’ll be able to post a review of the film on here in a few days.

To find out more, along with a preview clip showing some sweet 80’s games, hit the link below.

[Adventureland – Slashfilm] [Discuss on the Forum]

City thinks taxing arcades is good idea for their local economy

Kotaku ran a story today discussing a small shop in Hampshire Illinois called Name Your Game where they sold items like clothes and candy and they had a small collection of arcades there which brought in a bit of business. Unfortunately the city decided that it wanted a piece of the pie from any arcades in their zone and enforced new taxes (which they called “fees”) on arcades in the city, which proved to be too burdensome for

The owner of Name Your Game

the small business in question and they had to pull the games.

It’s unfortunate that this is still going on in some cities and it is still common to find such burdens placed upon arcades in many cities in the US and elsewhere – most are holdovers from the old days when arcades could be found everywhere. When I opened my own arcade last year I shopped around the different cities to see who would treat my business the best in this regard. While I could have gone to a city with a higher earning population, I choose not to as the fees they would apply on machines in that city would have been too great for me to bear, especially starting out. In the case of the business in this story, called I think it provides and excellent case for why this sort of thing does not work (which I also think can be applied to new tobacco taxes coming down the pipe). If you punish business, the economy will not prosper – we should have learned that lesson in the Great Depression but sadly most people forget or ignore history and repeat the same mistakes over and over again (on a reverse note, if you reward failures like we have been doing with bailouts, that will end up to be a dismal failure as well – free markets are about sorting out the winners from the losers and without that occuring, it will just cause more problems, in addition to the crushing debt we are letting ourselves get into).

Anyways, enough political ranting for now, I know that’s not what you come here for. I do hope that things can turn around for Name Your Game, perhaps the city will backtrack on their policy at one point or loosen it a bit. Hit the link below for the original source.

[Video Game Tax driving teens from their Hideout – The Courier News] [Discuss on the Forum]