Stern Pinball gets a glowing profile in PARADE

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New arcade games might have a difficult time catching a break in mainstream publications, gaming and otherwise, but even then they have it nicer than the pinball sector. Most of the time when I see talk of new pinball games it’s discussing some silly video pinball game for the iPhone or the Wii while they ignore the existence of actual pinball machines. Very few sources outside of channels which already focus on pinball talked about either of Stern’s most recent games such as Ironman or have discussed the upcoming Avatar pinball but at least with a new article at PARADE, that will change just a little.

The article interviews Gary Stern about the present state of the pinball industry, takes a look at an industry which has diminished greatly from it’s glory days back in the 40’s and what pinball has to compete against these days. It’s a nice article whose parade (har-har) I have to rain upon slightly in mentioning that the Spanish company Marsaplay recently produced some pinball machines of their own and Retro Pinball will be rolling out their King Of Diamonds machine very soon. Obviously neither company is eating away at Stern’s market share at this point like Firefox did to IE, and both are remaking old games but they still are producing some pinball machines. Anyways, getting back to the point, the Parade article is worth reading over and they even mention Avatar pinball, which is already in production and should be shipping sometime within the next week or so.

Parade article: Keeping a Pinball Wizard’s Dream Alive.

Lazer Planet opening late September in Dexter, MI

Gary and Joe Ouillette of Lazer Planet. Via AnnArbor.com

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It’s been a long time since I have played lazer tag but I am pretty sure that you can still expect to see an arcade as a part of any LT facility out there. It certainly helps pass the time when are sitting around waiting for the next available game to arrive, which in some cases can be hours. If you live in or near Dexter, MI USA then you have a new lazer tag and arcade experience to look forward to as a new company called Lazer Planet will be opening its doors at the end of September. Unfortunately there are no details on what line-up of arcade titles you will find there except for “an array of ticket-redemption video games” but they will feature a modern lazer tag setup by LaZer Runner, a Canadian company that has developed a system that uses “actual laser beams”, as opposed to the standard IR lasers that are used in other setups. This page on the LaZer Runner site gives a rundown as to why IR lasers are generally terrible to use, and how their system differs in not only the lasers used but also with the addition of fiber-optics used in the vests and RF communication. Having worked in a lazer tag facility myself, I understand the many deficiencies most lazer tag equipment carries with it, so it sounds like LaZer Runner has it all figured out. Which is nothing but good news for customers of Lazer Planet.

Speaking of laser products, I wonder if LP will consider adding a Lazer Frenzy game to the facility as well.

More details on the upcoming Lazer Planet can be found here at AnnArbor.com

UPDATE: One laser tag operator e-mailed me to say that “Lazer Runner is the bane of the laser tag industry”. Here’s the other side of the story (and I don’t mean this to reflect poorly on Lazer Planet at all) below

BRD's Full Car Motion Simulator that we'll probably never get to play

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I wasn’t sure about running this story as in the description they state that this simulator is made for race drivers and thus not for amusement parks but that might not stop an amusement facility with a lot of extra cash on-hand from getting one, so we’ll take a quick look at this. The simulator in question is by Ball Racing Developments Ltd. or BRD for short. They have developed a new Forumla 1 racing simulator using “Simulator control technology that has been designed by racing drivers for racing drivers [and the] most realistic motion cues for professional racing drivers.” I’m not going to list all of the features it has here as you can just as easily read about it on the website for the machine but it’s worth noting that this simulator tries to reproduce the experience down to creating smoke from the tires. At least the chances of you getting to play this are slightly higher than that Ferrari simulator on the back of a huge robot arm but not by much.

BRD’s Full Car Motion Simulator that we’ll probably never get to play

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I wasn’t sure about running this story as in the description they state that this simulator is made for race drivers and thus not for amusement parks but that might not stop an amusement facility with a lot of extra cash on-hand from getting one, so we’ll take a quick look at this. The simulator in question is by Ball Racing Developments Ltd. or BRD for short. They have developed a new Forumla 1 racing simulator using “Simulator control technology that has been designed by racing drivers for racing drivers [and the] most realistic motion cues for professional racing drivers.” I’m not going to list all of the features it has here as you can just as easily read about it on the website for the machine but it’s worth noting that this simulator tries to reproduce the experience down to creating smoke from the tires. At least the chances of you getting to play this are slightly higher than that Ferrari simulator on the back of a huge robot arm but not by much.

The Dragon Quest theme park

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While the popular Square Enix RPG series Dragon Quest has been known primarily as a console game, that hasn’t stopped the company from taking the series into the amusement realm. One of the first posts on Arcade Heroes, way back in 2006, discussed the revelation of a new Dragon Quest Arcade game which was released the following year and now a theme park in Japan called Tokyo Dome City has made the Dragon Quest series the main attraction there. In a country where a low birthrate makes life difficult for a business that thrives off of younger customers, they see the Dragon Quest series as a way to break through that problem as adults enjoy the series just as much as kids. The recognizable character Slime greets customers as they arrive at the park and inside he’s been turned into a number of different food items. Other characters and items from the series have been turned into merchandise which is being sold at the park and they’ve converted their rides to fit into Dragon Quest themes (which from the video just appears to be adding graphics of Slime to the sides of the rides). Even a water fountain at the park gushes to the rhythm of popular Dragon Quest songs, which is a nice little touch.

Here is a video giving a rundown of the park

Source: ChannelnewsAsia

Sega unveils Initial D Arcade Stage 6 AA, Shining Force Cross update, other games for JAMMA

With the 48th JAMMA Expo nearly upon us, that means that companies are beginning to reveal the game they will be bringing along to the show and today, Sega took the veil off of what they have been working on. The  newest title to grace their line-up will be a new addition to the Initial D series, Initial D Arcade Stage 6 AA.  Players in Tokyo will get a chance to try the game out before JAMMA however, as it will hit the location test circuit next Tuesday at the Club Sega Akihabara. The RINGEDGE powered game (no, not the mythical Sega game console made up by people who can’t read properly) will offer new cars, characters and courses as expected but it also add Tag Battles for 2 v 2 play and it will use online play, which makes it the third racing game we’ve seen this year take the online route.

But if you’re tired of racers, Sega has other titles in the works as well. One of the few arcade RPGs on the market, although it’s been limited to Japan as far as I know, Shining Force Cross

Not a direct screenshot but awesome nevertheless

is getting another update with Shining Force: Cross Road. They’ve added support for up to six players now, a new Elf species, new monsters, items, weapons and skills to make the game more complete and enjoyable. The new update will be released in “Winter 2010” and continues to use the RINGEDGE platform (this was the first title to use the arcade hardware). I’ll just take this opportunity to once again to express my desire about wanting an arcade RPG that’s not localized to Japan. It’s been over 10 years since Gauntlet Dark Legacy was released and since then there has been little else in the genre outside of Japan. There was Oriental Legend 2 but that also has no English translation and was in Chinese (excellent brawler/RPG though). We’ll keep holding out the hope here, someone has to be ballsy enough to give a try once again.

Sega also has a new version of their music title Project DIVA Arcade, the details of which are outlined in detail on this page. The update begins rolling out next week.

We’ve discussed Sega’s other titles they are bringing to the show on the site before: WCCF 2009-2010, Samurai Wars, Border Break 2.0, VF5 Final Showdown,  Heat Up Hockey, Let’s Go Golf(formerly Go Go golf),  the animated Transformer games for kids and even the new Let’s Go Kids Elephant game. If you’re wondering why GRID isn’t on the roster, the same thing happened with Sega Rally 3 since the game was developed outside of Japan.

JAMMA begins on the second week of September, we’ll be keeping our eyes open for any other JAMMA related news in the meantime.

Visit the Sega JAMMA website

Source:AM-Net

Pentavision and Pipeline Games merge to become Pentavision Global

Photo of the merger being finalized via CoinOpToday

A short time ago I noticed that the Pipeline Games website was completely down and it seemed to be staying that way. That didn’t bode well for the brand new company who had brought some quirky games to Amusement Expo earlier this year. The disappearance of the website has been solved today however as another amusement company based in South Korea, Pentavision, announced that they and Pipeline Games have merged to create a new company called Pentavision Global.

If you are not familiar with Pentavision, they are the company who has given us the DJ Max Technika series but not much else beyond that particular game and it’s sequels. Pipeline doesn’t have a huge roster of content either – there was a novelty video product called The Grip Strength at Amusement Expo, bowling game and a mini-crane machine which will be released soon. With the merger, it is mentioned that the new PG will focus on “in‐house product development and strategic licensing of coin operated amusement games” but we will have to wait and see what those will be beyond the upcoming DJ Max Technika 2 (which was announced for a December release today BTW). This should guarantee that anything that Pentavision does will be making it’s way to the US as the Pipeline offices will be converted over to the US arm of Pentavision Global. We’re not sure where that leaves PM Studios, who have been taking care of DJMT in the US previously and whether they will continue to work with Pentavision on that.

Either way we hope that the merger will lead to more innovative games hitting the arcade market in the near future, so good luck to the new Pentavision in that endeavor.

More info: Press release @ CoinOpToday.com

Pentavision website

Dino Survivor by Belrare

Today is the first day of the GTI Asia China Expo and that means more arcade games will be coming to light, especially as the Chinese arcade market has virtually exploded in recent memory (perhaps it helps that consoles are technically banned there where arcades are not). Unfortunately arcade news coming out of China can be very hit-or-miss, sometimes screenshots and video are plentiful for a game (like Crazy SpeedArcade) but most of the time it’s a miss with the only thing we get is a blurry shot of a random cabinet at a trade show or we get a thumbnail shot of a cabinet on a webpage. This will be another post of the latter as Chinese developer Belrare once again has a new product to show off but it’s nowhere to be found on their website, they haven’t responded to inquiries on their content and whether we will see it at IAAPA is completely unknown.

The new game is called Dino Survivor. It looks similar to Let’s Go Jungle or Deadstorm Pirates but this time it’s about hunting dinosaurs. One thing to help this stand out could be that it uses stereoscopic 3D which many other Chinese games have been pushing lately and it also has mounted gatling guns (ala Vulcan-M). It also appears that they may be giving this one a good push in the graphics department where terms like “normal mapping”, “dynamic ocean lighting effects”, “3D particle system”,  and others are part of this game’s visual resumé. So that gives us something to look forward to if we ever get a chance to see the game in more detail and see if it uses any of the modern techniques properly. At least the cabinet looks awesome, I like the vivid artwork it has although it could use a larger viewing window to help avoid the “den of iniquity” problem these kind of theater cabinets tend to run into.

More details here @ the GTI site

Belrare website

Arc System Works to release BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II this winter

Despite all the love that fighters get with 3D graphics these days, there are a few games which still stick to the genres 2D roots and it’s even better when they stick to the genres arcade roots as well. One of those games is the BlazBlue series by Arc System Works. I’ve actually had a number of requests for a BlazBlue arcade title at my own arcade as the there is one decent side-effect of an arcade game getting the console treatment and that’s potential player awareness. So it won’t be a surprise when Arc System Works takes their latest arcade announcement and gives it all sorts of love and support in a console release just a short time from the arcade release. That release would be the new Blazblue: Continuum Shift II which will making it’s first public debut at the JAMMA show next month. While few details have been given on the new title, we know it will still run on Taito’s Type X2 hardware; it will keep the 2D graphics style; it will have an 8-way joystick w/ 4 buttons and it comes out this winter at an undetermined price. They also will be including a new character that has been released as DLC for the console versions of the game.

I wonder what kind of support the company will be giving the game internationally as with the first BlazBlue they had sent kits to sell in the US and Europe but with Continuum Shift I didn’t hear of the same effort being put forth for the arcade version. It’s one of those things we’ll have to wait and see on.

[BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II anouncement]

Source: AM-Net

UPDATE: Also more at Japhei Game Blog

DDRX2 location testing in East Hanover, NJ; Southend,UK

DDRX2 on test

I was starting to get a little anxious as it’s a much slower news cycle at the moment than usual but there is some welcome news coming our way via Bemanistyle.com with a report that Konami has begun their first location test of the new Dance Dance Revolution X2 arcade game in North America. The game has already been released in Japan and it has been known for some time that it should be getting an international release but we weren’t really sure when since Konami is still keeping things pretty low key in the US market. As for the location test, if you live anywhere near the Funplex in East Hanover, NJ you may still have a chance to check the game out before it disappears as location tests can last either a day, a week or more depending upon the developers wishes. As for details on the game so far, the pictures @ Bemanistyle show keypads, USB ports and e-Amusement support although it’s highly doubtful that it will include Paseli support that Konami is using for DDRX2 in Japan. The game also has new footpads which should avoid the issues that the terrible DDRX1 pads had.

More @ Bemanistyle.com

UPDATE: Thanks to Dan’s comments below here’s an addition: DDRX2 has been testing in the UK for a few weeks already, somewhere in Southend, UK. I would have reported that earlier but I didn’t know about it until now. DasBacon from BemaniStyle says that the UK test is using the old, disliked pads which can certainly affect the test.