NEW Eugene Jarvis on the bright future of arcade games

That pac-man LED game. Man. Reminds me of the Deptford Mall, NJ arcade that had a Pac-Man and some other games on early front-projection TV's (the kind with the 3 huge RGB cans). Cost $1 to play but for the time it was like holy-shit to a kid :)

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That pac-man LED game. Man. Reminds me of the Deptford Mall, NJ arcade that had a Pac-Man and some other games on early front-projection TV's (the kind with the 3 huge RGB cans). Cost $1 to play but for the time it was like holy-shit to a kid :)

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I can't even imagine what the burn-in would have looked like on front projection TV with Pac-Man.
 
"That's when we bring out our superpower: the power of real," Jarvis says. "There's only so much you can do in a four-inch screen that's all virtual. We have real stuff in the arcade: Skee-ball, basketball hoops, simulators with real cockpit controls, gas pedals, real leaning bikes, force feedback. And we have the power of big: Massive sound systems, and humongous 4K screens."

Know what the power of real is? The price (btw, their new Jurassic Park game is over $12k). And that's why arcades are a mere shadow of what they used to be. Ops can't afford to buy super-expensive games b/c there's no way in hell they can ever make enough to pay it off, let alone make a profit, which is why most now either lease them, or sell them while they're still worth something.

And yeah, the "World's Largest Pac-Man" game is neat, but .... it's still just Pac-Man. Why not at least include a few other Pac-Man sequels, or other Namco games?
 
spent an evening at a dave n buster's this past week.
had all the raw thrills games, ghost busters, luigi mansion.

annnnnndddddd, the best game in the place was the basketball hoop shoot.

I see absolutely nothing innovative going on with the new arcade games and the race games don't feel as responsive as the consoles. isn't that odd?
 
So it seems the World's Largest Pac-Man also has Galaga on it. But Pac-Man isn't the same Pac-Man you remember:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOesfH434vA

At first glance it might seem to be, but there are some major changes were made. The bonus fruit now roams around the screen ala Ms. Pac-Man, and cycles through all the different items while it's doing so. Also, the monsters don't act remotely similar, plus they don't start back at the center when you die! Buddy of mine played it recently and couldn't get past the 2nd level b/c they're ruthless (even more than Baby Pac-Man's). There's also an achievement/tally screen between levels now. Yeah, no longer Pac-Man, but rather Pac-Man Remix or whatever you want to call it.
 
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Raw Thrills are the biggest pieces of junk. If EJ really wants the future to be bright, he needs to make better quality games. Spending thousands on games that don't stay working and are really expensive to repair is only going to last so long. Add to that you have to go through Betson to have anything from RT serviced and you have the perfect recipe for failure.
 
Scratch Galaga and replace it with 2-player co-op and ... ads.

http://arcadeheroes.com/2016/05/27/worlds-largest-pac-man-available/

And the machine reportedly costs 10,000! World's Largest Joke more like it...

I've heard from several distributors that the final price is between $12k-$13k :/ I've repeatedly asked for details on if they will add Galaga but nothing. It is very odd as the screen should be able to handle any number of classics just fine and both Galaga and Dig Dug have done co-op before.

If its any consolation, I do know a big operator in Washington who said he bought one and it was pulling in about $500/wk which isn't bad (and a little surprising to be honest). But I can't imagine it would do more than $300/wk at my location, if not $150-200.
 
Earlier builds had Galaga but no Pac-Man co-op, with the company saying the software wasn't "finalized" yet (which is rather sad, since we're talking about a game that came out in 1979). Yeah, that 120" screen sure is nice, but it would be a waste if all you could play on it was Pac-Man. I'm guessing at some point in the near future, RT will offer different software packages, so in essence, the software will never be finalized (much like how new pinball machines are). So ops will either need Internet access at the location, or get thumbdrives for upgrading them.

If that Pac-Man game can pull in $500 per week, I'd like to know what location its at, because I can't imagine that lasting long enough to pay it off, let alone make a profit. And just wait until someone decides to mate a bottle or pool stick with it...
 
David Bishop is the VP of marketing at NAMCO (Level 257 restaurant guy) and he's friends with Raw Thrills since he has been in the industry going way back to Atari. Whatever licensing games come up for this new thing you are talking about would likely be collaboration with NAMCO.

Warner Bros. owns most of the cool titles which they bought up generically for movie potential. It'll likely never come up that any of those games will be licensed nowadays, unless it is on those crap compilation discs for consoles called Museum collections.
 
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