JAMMA 2010: New games, hardware and ideas that could shake things up

The 48th JAMMA Expo is now underway in Japan and with that comes a flood of news concerning future projects that Japanese developers will be bringing to the market. AM-Net has a number of photos that they have published from the event, with more to come and here are some highlights including new Taito arcade hardware, more 3D gaming from Namco, Sega’s new Pengo and an online content delivery system from Taito that could revolutionize the industry called NESiCAxLIVE. Read on!

UDATE#1:More System Board Y3 details including glasses free 3D display made for arcades; Namco’s Dead Heat goes 3D; Sega and Namco introduce new IC card system called AiME; added a few more pictures + some videos

UPDATE#2 – Videos added by Gigazine

UPDATE#3: AM-Net and Sega have updated galleries of photos showing crowds gathering around the various booths. I’ve added a few select photos below, including a shot from the new VF5, The Tablecloth Hour and more

UPDATE#4: This Youtube user has posted a number of videos from the event. http://www.youtube.com/user/Puyo432343

UPDATE#5: Segaonline.nl has some direct screenshots of Initial D Arcade Stage 6AA, Shining Force Cross Raid and Border Break 2.0, a couple of which I’ve added below

UPDATE#6: Just when you think we’re done, we have more content from the show. Thanks to Fillmore Games, a distributor in Japan for providing more pictures of the show. From them we find out that Vulcan-M and Heat Up Hockey were there as well.

SI Electronics develops hardware for glasses-free 3D arcade games; Sega bringing Pengo to JAMMA

Y3 in action on a 3D glasses-free display made for arcades

Newsfeed 921 via

When news began to trickle out about the upcoming JAMMA show in Japan, we found out early on that SI Electronics was planning on showing off a new arcade hardware platform called the System Board Y3 but beyond the name there were no details revealed about that hardware – until today. AM-Net linked to an official SIE document detailing the hardware specs on the Y3(also picked up by Andriasang) and the big surprise is that it’s been developed with glasses-free 3D games in mind.    Here are the specs:

■ SYSTEM BOARD Y3 Overview (tentative)

CPU: PowerPC 800MHz
Memory: DDR2-800 1GByte
Graphics: 2D Drawing up to 18 billion pixel/sec
Polygon: Drawing up to 10 billion pixel/sec
Movie Playback: Supports Full HD video (implies 1080p resolution)
Sound: 32ch
Media: Undecided
Output: Video, Analogue, D-Sub 15pin x 2
Sound: Stereo 2ch, RCA Connector
Game I/O: JAMMA Connector, JVS I/O Connector
Serial: 1ch
GPIO: 16ch

The board will be at the Kaga Amusement booth, but we don’t know if they will have a game to show off using the technology or it will simply be a technology demo. Hopefully this will not be interpreted by anyone as some new game console but the chances of that are pretty low since SIE isn’t known as a console maker to begin with.

On another JAMMA related note, Sega has revealed that the new multiplayer Pengo arcade title that was recently tested in Japan will be at the show. The game uses the Ringwide hardware but the page the announcement was made on suggests that it will be a four player game as opposed to an eight player one (which is was tested as). Perhaps they’ll have a unique cabinet made just for the game instead of putting it onto stock machines and such a design wouldn’t work out for the eight player concept. But the screenshots on the announcement page still show 8 players as being possible so they may not have ruled it out quite yet. As Pac-Man Battle Royale will be at the same show it should be fun to see the two games compete since they will be gunning for each other. I’m surprised that Sega hasn’t enhanced the graphics beyond giving it a widescreen but that should mean that development costs for this are quite low. It’s similar to Sega Racing Classic in a way but that didn’t stop them from charging way too much for that game. Hopefully the lesson was learned and we won’t have to see the situation repeated with Pengo.