Sega USA releases Clay Challenge and Bass Fishing Challenge kits

click on the image to enlarge

Sega Amusements USA has updated their website with information on two new arcade releases for the US, Clay Challenge (which we revealed in our AMOA 2008 coverage) and Bass Fishing Challenge (which we revealed in our ATEI 2008 coverage). Both releases are in JAMMA kit form and can go into a standard JAMMA cabinet as well as in an Atomiswave cabinet; the latter is intended to go into any cabinet that uses a trackball (like Golden Tee). I imagine that both games will be at ASI in a couple of weeks and it’s always good to see a few more kits coming along as that really helps out street locations. Now they just need to offer a Rambo kit so we can convert HOTD4 into that.

I have added both games to our “Already Released” category on our Arcade Game Release list for 2009.

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And the kid stuck in a crane machine today comes from…

While we don’t see these stories of toddlers getting stuck in toy crane machines terribly often, they do seem to show up with some moderate frequency and today the story comes to us from New Zealand. Fortunately for this kid’s mother, the guy with the key to the machine wasn’t too far away so they did not have to wait very long to get the child out although it sounds like he was quite happy to be in there (at least he doesn’t have claustrophobia, right?).

check out the full article below. Tiny pic of the event above taken from the same source.

[Via nzherald.co.nz] [Discuss on the Forums]

Razing Storm gets a few more details with a press release

Namco’s latest light-gun shooter will soon land in arcades (release is listed for March 2009) and in advance of that, Namco America has issued a press release on the game. There isn’t a lot of new information on the game that we didn’t know beforehand but, I did not know that this was put together by the same team who works on the Time Crisis series and they get into a little more detail on how the digital surround sound system works. I just hope that the machine guns won’t cost nearly as much as Crisis Zone’s gun did, which was (and still is) a bit of a joke.We also have a new screenshot of the game, click on it on the right to enlarge.

Also for a brief note Namco America’s arcade portal, namcoamerica.com has been updated with a new look. It’s probably been like this for a while so I admit that I missed out on it but I’ll look at keeping an eye on it more often.

Hit the post break for the press release

Virtual On heading for XBLA

If Sega’s Border Break news has wet the appetite for some mech action, then your in for another treat as Sega are bringing the classic  mech game; Virtual On to Xbox Live Arcade. Not any old VO, but the final release Oratorio Tangram which was the final release for the Naomi. The game is pencilled for an April release at 1200 points. Can’t wait, but one thing that does concern me is the more and more common 1200 point price tag for XBLA games. Are Microsoft gradually sneaking them up, me thinks? 

[via Kotaku via Famitsu]     [Discuss on the Forum]

Pics of "24" pinball now online

[Thanks to IcePagoda on the forums for the tip]

Stern’s latest pinball game, “24” is soon going to hit the streets and with it, Pinball News has got their hands on a prototype of the game and have snapped some shots of every angle imaginable of the machine, as you might expect from them. Up close the game looks better than I thought it would based upon the blurry shot we had of the playfield beforehand – I just wonder if Stern is ever going to plan on doing a little more with their games and go as far as adding a multi-color dot matrix display or something along those lines. Of course the consideration of changing something so sacred and established as that might be blasphemy in some circles so I suppose they must tread carefully.

Click on the image above to enlarge.

[Pinball News] [Discuss on the Forum]

Pics of “24” pinball now online

[Thanks to IcePagoda on the forums for the tip]

Stern’s latest pinball game, “24” is soon going to hit the streets and with it, Pinball News has got their hands on a prototype of the game and have snapped some shots of every angle imaginable of the machine, as you might expect from them. Up close the game looks better than I thought it would based upon the blurry shot we had of the playfield beforehand – I just wonder if Stern is ever going to plan on doing a little more with their games and go as far as adding a multi-color dot matrix display or something along those lines. Of course the consideration of changing something so sacred and established as that might be blasphemy in some circles so I suppose they must tread carefully.

Click on the image above to enlarge.

[Pinball News] [Discuss on the Forum]

Arcade games owned by Michael Jackson going up on the auction block

[Thanks to Phil on the forums for the tip]

I’m a few days late on this but it’s still newsworthy. Michael Jackson will be auctioning off his rather impressive collection of arcade games on April 24th in California, via Julien’s Auctions. They are auctioning off a lot of other non-arcade related stuff too but there is enough arcade stuff there that they get a whole day to themselves. Some notable arcade titles in there: The Sega R360, Galaxy Force, Rush 2049, Jumbo Safari, Super Street Fighter II, Crazy Taxi High Roller, The Simpsons, HipHop Mania Complete Mix 2, X-Men, Guitar Freaks, Dig Dug, Crystal Castles, Donkey Kong, Mocap Boxing, Dance Dance Revolution and much more. Strangely, he does not have an arcade copy of Moonwalker in the collection.  

There are also some pinball games to be bought, from the Simpsons Pinball Party, to Star Trek The Next Generation and Terminator 3 to the first Indiana Jones pin. He also has some kiddie rides and life-size figurines of comic book characters (including an unusual Michael Jackson as Batman figure) that will be on the auction block so overall you could easily start your own cool arcade if you picked up all of this stuff.

Check out the arcade catalog for the auction here.

[Discuss on the Forums]

Arcade game plots in reverse

On the increasingly popular site Twitter (I did set up an account once but I haven’t really bothered to use it), some people are having a little game of writing about movie plots if you witnessed them in reverse and that same idea is being applied to video games. This includes a few arcade classics like Asteroids, Robotron 2084, Pac-Man and others. I suppose it can be fun (especially when news is slow) so if you have an idea, put it in the comments below. A couple I had off the top of my head:

Gauntlet Legends: Skorne has too many runestones cluttering up his temple so he enlists the help of four warriors to hide them while they reanimate hordes of evil monsters and level down.

House of the Dead 4: Two agents for People for the Ethical Treatment of Zombies cruise the city removing bullets from zombies’ heads so that the zombies may roam about freely exercising their desire for the consumption of brains.

SMASH TV: Two guys leave the Pleasure Dome and go on a crusade to giveaway millions of their dollars and 2600″ TVs to bat-wielding people on a national gameshow . 

Not the best but it’s a start I suppose. More reverse plots (including some of those aforementioned arcade ones) at JustOneMoreGame.com.

[Discuss on the Forums]

Some proof that plenty of people still love arcades in Japan

Sorry about the lack of updates for the past few days, everyone is busy and there has been little internet time as of late.

You might recall that over the past year or so, there have been reports of big arcade companies in Japan closing a bunch of arcade locations to streamline their operations. When this happens some assume that it must surely mean that everyone is content just sitting at home playing their Wii so arcades must be in decline there. Or you can consider that maybe there are other factors involved. Either way, attendance was quite high at AOU this year and as some photographic proof (and you might also notice in the videos we posted below that every game has a bunch of people around it) here is a picture of the line waiting to get into the show.

UPDATE: AM-Net is reporting that attendance to the show was 45,160 people. It sounds like they had a nice handful of attendees there to me.
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Listen to sounds from an arcade circa 1982-1988

If you grew up playing games at arcades in the 1980’s then this is bound to bring back some nostaligic memories for you. My earliest arcade memory was from about 1987 or ’88 but at the time I never had the opportunity to really hang out at an arcade. But for one guy who did, he decided to take a tape recorder with him to his local arcade (the Space War Arcade in Ithaca, NY) and he would just record what went on while he played. He has recorded kids playing tons of games from 1982 up to 1988 and I don’t know what it is about these recordings but I find it completely fascinating to hear people playing games “back in the day”. It’s kind of funny on occasion too, such as on the recording of Berzerk from 1982 where you hear the player die and then a kid declares “You suck!”.

Check out the recordings at Coinopvideos.com

[Discuss on the Forums]