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Friday, March 23, 2012

Amusement Expo Part 2

Sega


Sonic is riding backseat for this cute kiddie ride and if your little enough to ride the car you know you want your boy Sonic backseat. Frankly, it would have looked strange if you could ride a giant Sonic. Operation Ghost is the next generation of Ghost Protocol. I found it harder to use the gun this time around. I like the previous version, the update has some fun place new locations and it's great to fight a new set of bad guys, but it might need easier control. Possibly it just takes time to master.


 The Super Monkey Ball unit where you control your monkey via a ball that embedded in the machine is fun. It is a balancing acting and you have to make sure you don't roll of the side, by the arcade machine and game are very colorful. Kids and older fans will enjoying playing it.
 Grid and Virtua Tennis 4 were just not the entertaining. Compared to Namco's Dead Heat Racer Grid was forgettable. It has a reset button for when you crash, which you shouldn't be doing since it slows down gameplay. Virtua Tennis 4 against a real person plays fine, but I don't think many kids or adults are going to be running over to the arcade to play tennis.
Sega Amusement like Bandai Namco had no new big machine show off what they can do. I thought they might have the Let's Go Island shooter to show off or maybe the 4 player Quad Air Hockey Table, but no. They did have an cotton candy machine that worked perfectly and made some good cotton they priced at two dollars, but were giving out free at the expo.

Sega has so many machines in Japan just like Namco it was sad to see they didn't bring anything big to the show. What's strange is a lot of their machines were at GameWorks nearby as they owned the place until 2011. The card system at GameWorks is still their technology it, Sega's logo is on the back of the card.


These touch screen games show what the markets becoming. My greatest fear for arcades would be how strong the screens are, how much damage can they take? They both play extremely well, with Fruit Ninja FX accurately following your movement to delightfully make a fruit salad from the fruit you cut up. It might need some more things to cut up, I don't know how many times you can cut fruit with the novelty getting old. There also isn't any leveling up or next level to go to. Infinity Blade FX simple story is still fun to get wrapped up in you have to take out spectacularly clad enemies to avenge your Father and defeat the god-king. I don't think I've seen many arcade titles where if you last you can buy upgrades with earned points in recent years. Gameplay remains simple with finger slashes and dodges.

 If you watched the video from Part 1 you got a glimpse of the touch screen music mashers. They are hard to master and you can fail at them immediately, maybe the iPhone and iPad generation will be able to master to these games, but music based games from Korea are quite too hard for me.
 Many recycled water games were playable like Water Park Splash from Universal Space which had many units for kids. What was enticing about Spalsh was it had a real video game screen that was protected from water, but could accurately sense where it was being hit. It has multiple levels to try that weren't that complicated, little kids can easily play it to. The other water unit you might have seen me playing has you rowing a boat for a monley which get kind of boring, but the banana squiting water gun will entice anyone to play. Who deosn't want to shoot a banana water gun?


 There was also a shower shooter called Stinky Feet from another company with a funny backwards facing sink and a toilet like seat to sit on. You shoot target on a bathing man, it's all clean, with a water gun.



 You'll be seeing these Spider Sense Spider-Man machines popping out all over the place with a new movie and cartoon series on the way. Strangely enough it's not modeled on either.
 This Batman game from Coastal Amusements captures his villains into whac-a-mole style game, but to not have a holder for your hammers, for shame. In the catolog for it they become Batma's fists, but for the show they had the hammers. Still don't know why there isn't some sot of place fist or hammers could be held.
 The eyeprize with touchscreen games has some knoeoffs of classic like Angry birds. Prizes fall out and are quite large compared to toher machines. What's great is the software in these can tell a buyer how many prizes are left and a bunch of other data to help maximize sales and to see what people are playing.
 Did you ever wonder wear people chose the carpeting for bowling alleys and arcade, well now you know.
 This brand of laser gun many people are using today.
 Want a robot showing up for an event that have that too. Of course it's just a person in a suit, but if your having a science fiction event it adds a lot to the party.