Chalk this up to the big surprise of the month (so far) but way back in 2007 a new kart-style racing game appeared on location test at the Trocadero in London called Wacky Races. The
Wacky Races as last seen at ASI 2008
game was based upon an older Hanna-Barbara. cartoon(now being distributed under Warner Bros.) of the same name and had a slot-machine style lever on it that dealt with power-ups(that lever was removed on US cabinets). I got a chance to play this game back at ASI2008 but after that show the game completely went off the radar for some reason, even though it was pretty much finished. I don’t know if it was just available in Europe or if it was available in very limited quantities in the US – either way I had forgotten about the game until today. Strangely enough it has reappeared on a location test in Japan, once again under the Banpresto logo and once again with the lever seen on the European versions of the game. I wonder why this game is making a comeback two and half years after it’s initial reveal and whether or not they have made any improvements to it while it’s been off-the-radar.
Small Room Aries has a little more info on the Japanese location test for this game, including some location test info for Konami’s new Pop N’ Music Tune Street game.
Here’s the location test video that AH editor Twisted Supreme grabbed from the game back in 2007:
Chalk this up to the big surprise of the month (so far) but way back in 2007 a new kart-style racing game appeared on location test at the Trocadero in London called Wacky Races. The
Wacky Races as last seen at ASI 2008
game was based upon an older Hanna-Barbara. cartoon(now being distributed under Warner Bros.) of the same name and had a slot-machine style lever on it that dealt with power-ups(that lever was removed on US cabinets). I got a chance to play this game back at ASI2008 but after that show the game completely went off the radar for some reason, even though it was pretty much finished. I don’t know if it was just available in Europe or if it was available in very limited quantities in the US – either way I had forgotten about the game until today. Strangely enough it has reappeared on a location test in Japan, once again under the Banpresto logo and once again with the lever seen on the European versions of the game. I wonder why this game is making a comeback two and half years after it’s initial reveal and whether or not they have made any improvements to it while it’s been off-the-radar.
Small Room Aries has a little more info on the Japanese location test for this game, including some location test info for Konami’s new Pop N’ Music Tune Street game.
Here’s the location test video that AH editor Twisted Supreme grabbed from the game back in 2007:
Last of the big names is Konami. I have to say thier stand was a bit on the sparse side. Guitar Freaks & Drum Mania V4 where present and attracting a lot of attention from players. Wacky Races also made an appearance on the stand, although, as I have said already this was on various stands around the show. Finally Silent Hill rounded off the rest of the big games on the Konami stand.
As you may remember I’m already familiar with two of these game from the location tests I checked out last year. For those of you who missed these posts, which included photos, videos and my impressions, why not check them out;
[Have now added Guitar Freaks & Drummania V4 videos submitted by You Tube user “bigaloo”]
Guitar Freaks V4
Drummania V4
Wacky Races
Now this one confused me. The game is made by Gamewax and Banpresto (Banpresto is owned by Namco, well that’s what I thought ?). However Wacky Races was on the Konami stand as well as 3 other distributors stands? Either way Wacky Races was at the show and it was good fun. Some of you may remember that I played this a few months ago when I found it at the Trocadero on secret location test. You can watch that video here.
While we weren’t sure about it at first, The Stinger Report confirms that Wacky Races will be at ATEI this year at booths U2240 and U2110. And also thanks to TSR we have the flyer for this game, click on the thumbnail to see the full thing along with a nice look at the cabinet. Just that in itself should can the attention of a lot of people.
We’ve already heard from Sega and Konami so it was only a short time before Namco threw their hat into the ring of what to expect from them at ATEI.
From the press release it is obvious that redemption is quite important to Namco, and they will be showing off a number of new redemption titles including games with titles like ‘Barber Cut’, ‘Battle Forge’, ‘Hollywood Reels’, ‘NFL 2 minute challenge’, ‘3-in-a-row’, and ‘Crazy Typhoon’. From the looks of it, the redemption titles will outnumber the video selection but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be little to look forward to on that front.
Namco will of course be showing off the popular Maximum Tune 3, Time Crisis 4 and the highly anticipated Tekken 6 (which when I was talking with my local distributor today apparently still has no set release date here in the States). But Raw Thrills’ will finally be demonstrating one of their new 2008 titles – ‘Safari’ which is “an African-themed shooting game modelled on the proven Big Buck Hunter phenomenon.” This is the first time Raw Thrills’ will be debuting a title outside of the US. Whether this is one of the titles that Specular Interactive was working on or not remains to be seen but at least it’s not another Fast and Furious game. There is no word in the press release if they will be showing off Wacky Races but we’ll know soon enough.
We’ve already heard from Sega and Konami so it was only a short time before Namco threw their hat into the ring of what to expect from them at ATEI.
From the press release it is obvious that redemption is quite important to Namco, and they will be showing off a number of new redemption titles including games with titles like ‘Barber Cut’, ‘Battle Forge’, ‘Hollywood Reels’, ‘NFL 2 minute challenge’, ‘3-in-a-row’, and ‘Crazy Typhoon’. From the looks of it, the redemption titles will outnumber the video selection but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be little to look forward to on that front.
Namco will of course be showing off the popular Maximum Tune 3, Time Crisis 4 and the highly anticipated Tekken 6 (which when I was talking with my local distributor today apparently still has no set release date here in the States). But Raw Thrills’ will finally be demonstrating one of their new 2008 titles – ‘Safari’ which is “an African-themed shooting game modelled on the proven Big Buck Hunter phenomenon.” This is the first time Raw Thrills’ will be debuting a title outside of the US. Whether this is one of the titles that Specular Interactive was working on or not remains to be seen but at least it’s not another Fast and Furious game. There is no word in the press release if they will be showing off Wacky Races but we’ll know soon enough.
I’ll have to apologize for the shakiness of the video. This is not down to me being on a bender last night, more to do with the fact that I was on my own so I had to play the game and film and not get caught doing so. Funland is a bit funny about people taking pictures, so I had to be discrete.
As I said in my previous post the game has been made by Gamewax and Banpresto. The cabinet also had the Warner Bros. logo on it which is obviously down to the Wacky Races license.As far as I know this is the first showing of the game, it’s strange that Wacky Races has not made an appearance at any of the recent shows. I suppose it was not in a showable state or they wanted to get some income figures and player feedback before showing it to the trade.
The only things that seem to be missing from the game were two of the tracks. The whole cast of Wacky Races seemed to be there, as well as the sound affects and one-liners from the cartoon. As you can see for yourself in the pictures the cabinets got some nice touches; the seat is modeled on Dastardly and Muttley’s car for instance.
Received a great tip yesterday from site reader Jimmy Beech. Read on….
Yo arcade dudes!
Thought you’d wanna know that I saw a new racing game at Funland today, some guy there said it was on secret testing and it was Wacky Races. You know with Dasterdly and Muttley and it looks pretty cool. I was going to get you a photo with my phone but a guy told me I couldn’t take photos. Dunno how long its going to be there so maybe you wanna check it out.
Well you’d be right there Jimmy, so I did.
Check out the photos I managed to grab below and above. The game is by Gamewax and Banpresto. For for those of you who don’t know, Banpresto are owned by Namco Bandai. Stayed tuned because I managed to snag about 10mins of video too! Impressions of the game in the next post as well. Enjoy
Arcade Heroes 
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