On the weekend of March 29th, Adam and I spent a day at the Amusement Showcase International, a coin-up vendors’ convention held here in Las Vegas. While Street Fighter IV, the primary reason for our attendance, wasn’t anywhere to be seen, we did come across a pleasant surprise or two.
Adam’s much more timely account of the event can be found on his site, and my own assortment of ASI photos, a month after any of this may have possibly been news, after the cut.
Amusement Showcase International, at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Smaller shows like this are nice, the parking’s easy.
MarioKart Arcade GP 2. I didn’t even know this existed.
A pretty crazy stomping game, as you can probably tell from the sweet blurs. Crush characters and score big points!
The remake of Midway’s 1976 Sea Wolf, now designed as a ticket redemption game, with pretty much the same gameplay as the original. The radar ping is your aim indicator, the lights above it displaying loaded torpedo tubes.
Paradise Lost, an okay Operation Wolf-esque gun game. Those counters on the back of the guns were supposed to track kills, unfortunately it was only a level or two before the count went beyond two digits, rendering them useless. I was kind of afraid to take this picture, but I love it so.
Primeval Hunt. While the concept sounds nice – murder dinosaurs while navigating with the touch pad below – every gun on every cabinet was horribly uncalibrated, to the point of being unplayable.
Blazing Angels, the mediocre Xbox 360 title, is now Blazing Angels, the mediocre arcade game!
GAME FEATURES INCLUDE: Perform loop de loops
Air hockey, but with a field like real hockey. Awesome idea, and fun to play, but super-dangerous. The puck was flying everywhere.
The highlight of the show for me, Stern’s Indiana Jones pin. Who knew the Ark of the Covenant was filled with pinballs! The multi-ball mode in this game was insane: something like a dozen pinballs would dump out of the Ark into the playfield. Adam managed to break it, causing the machine to go bonkers until it was reset.
Close-up of the playfield. Embiggen here.
Also from Stern, the Family Guy pin. A decent machine, but the coolest part was the mini Stewie pinball machine inside in the top right corner.
Neat, eh? When the mode was opened, a tiny little pinball dropped, the tiny little flippers controlled with the main buttons. We were impressed, until…
What the hell? It’s the exact same board, with Shrek characters! Foul!
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Guys,
Great coverage of the show – cheers.
Just for your information your dates of the show are wrong.
Good catch, thanks. I was going by what they’ve got on the ASI site currently, and didn’t realize that was actually 2009 show dates. That makes these photos two weeks less late! :]
Wow I honestly thought most companies had stop produceing pinball games after midway had spun that divison off and subsequently ceased opeartions a few years back. I have to wonder though with the popularity of PC’s , and home consoles if arcades will stick around in the united states.