Another busy week is in the can, and as things are at the moment, I should be a little less busy this week. To update anyone who cares about my second arcade location, I received a shipment of Sega games on Wednesday, but one of them posed quite a problem. This was because the game was shipped fully assembled and on a pallet, so we were extremely fortunate that there was a free forklift to use on-site to get the game off of the dock, then off of the pallet afterward.
Anyways, here are your Newsbytes for the weekend:
LAI Games Resurrects My Slam N’ Jam
Back when I was selling games, there were certain products that we a bit of a challenge to describe to prospective buyers, as very little distinguished them from one product to another. “What makes this x model different from this y model and why such a price difference?” people would often ask. Sometimes it could be obvious, but at others, not so much. Pool tables were the worst, but arcade basketball machines weren’t much better. Yeah, they looked different, but often the manufacturers wouldn’t bother to detail how gameplay might be different from other machines.
Fortunately, we now live in the age of the video screen being added to mechanical games, which is changing up the dynamic. While this isn’t listed on their website yet, LAI Games has brought back one of their old basketball titles, My Slam N’ Jam, and given it a video screen backboard. As the video explains below, the screen makes it more of an intuitive and interactive experience than before, as players progress through different stages. This is a sleek looking machine, and if a distributor is already promoting it, then you should start seeing these out there soon. Thanks to Jdevy for finding this (and don’t worry, a story about King Kong VR is coming on Monday):
Retro Raccoons Gets A New Trailer
The next indie arcade release is just around the corner, the Retro Raccoons Drinkcade by Glitchbit. I’ve covered this one a few times, but this trailer highlights the latest edition that is posed to launch very soon for arcades and bars everywhere.
Unboxing A Guns ‘N’ Roses Pinball
Buffalo Pinball got a great opportunity to unbox a new GNR pinball machine from Jersey Jack Pinball, and here you can check it all out along with gameplay; JJP released this trailer to showcase the LE version that you can watch here.
ICE Launches Homearcadegames.com Site
As mentioned in previous coverage of ICE taking aim at the home market, the company launched its homearcadegames.com website, where you can purchase certain titles for your home. As expected, the pricing is not in the range of Arcade1up, but the quality of these games is going to be commercial-grade, whereas the stuff you find at Wal-Mart is not. This is also showing that ICE is kind of operating as a distributor, given that they are selling games that don’t carry the ICE label, such as Arcade Legends 3, Arachnid dartboards, Stern Pinball machines, and so on.
Per the Arcade category, they have not listed the home Jurassic Park game yet. We’ll keep our eyes peeled.
Japanese Info Trailer For Shikhondo Red Purgatory
exA-Arcadia posted a new video to their YouTube channel today, the first public view video that they’ve done (the rest have all been unlisted, but embedded into the product pages on the exA site). It’s available in 4k@60fps too:
Speaking of exA, there is an update from our post the other day – Vritra Hexa was pulled from the pre-order page, and replaced with a Limited Edition EXA board with DoDonPachi True Death EXA Label art. They don’t say how many of these are being produced, but it won’t be many. The system will also include various art assets that will not be available otherwise.
An Arcade From 1969
It probably sounds strange to think of arcades pre-PONG, but they did exist as separate, but inspired, entities from amusement park midways. This video shows some arcade stuff from 1969, three years before video games would come along to change everything forever. Unfortunately, much of the video also shows casinos, but if you’re really into coin pushers, you can see some early examples of them in action:
Amusement Expo 2021 Pushed Back To May
For many years now, Amusement Expo has taken place in March (maybe April), as a way to introduce new products to operators who may have missed IAAPA. Everything is different now, but instead of going the virtual route, it looks like Amusement Expo 2021 is still on – just a little later than we’re used to. The show will (tentatively) take place in Las Vegas from May 5-7, assuming that the pandemic is finally over by then.
Several Arcade Remakes Headed To The Intellivision Amico
We’ve mentioned Intellivision’s “new retro” console the Amico before and today the company demonstrated a new trailer of games that are headed to the machine which launches next year. As some of these games are remakes of arcade classics, some of you might be interested – games shown include new versions of Breakout, Missile Command, Moon Patrol, and PONG. They also show some titles that were certainly inspired by arcade titles, such as Battle Tanks (similar to Armored Attack), Snafoo (similar to the many Snake/Light-cycle games of the late ’70s), and Nitro Derby (similar to Sprint). I would not be surprised if one of these eventually find their way to a proper arcade as a videmption title.
Interestingly – or oddly – enough, the Atari remakes are 100% more exclusive to the console than what Atari has shown for their own “new retro” console called the VCS, which has zero exclusives announced for it as of this writing (and it’s supposed to be shipping out to backers this month). Neither of these consoles is a powerhouse, so their success will depend entirely on the quality of their software. That said, it seems to me that the Amico is going to fare far better than the VCS in this little console war:
Gaming In The ’90s Arcade Edition
Let’s end with a laugh. Purists, just ignore the occasional Pandora’s Box units and LCDs on CRT games in this video 😛
That’s all for this weekend. Note that if you know of any new arcade place that has opened their doors recently (not re-opened from the pandemic, but opened for the first time), let me know – the next Location Watch post is filling up fast!