Shaggy the Atarian

Ah thank you, that is fixed. On Hyper Cross, Sega Amusements has been farming out a lot more development since they did their management buy-out. So most everything they're doing now is developed by someone like Baohui, IGS/Wahlap, and 3MindWave (the latter is doing the new Apex Rebels and has done a few other games for Sega already). Even most of their redemption games are being farmed out but by what I've been told it's been pretty effective for them. Their fiscal year 2022 was the best that division of the company has ever seen since it started in 1983 (kind of a weird history there but considered to be separate from Sega Japan).

I think what you lay out does prove that it takes money to make money though. DE is a $20m investment, but Wade isn't doing that and all of these other acquisitions just because he loves the Atari brand. There's a profit motive behind all business (some think that's bad, some good, regardless, it's reality). What you mention as fixes I would call polish but it still takes money to make that happen, as the talented people who separate an A-grade game from a AAA-grade game do not come for free or for cheap. A lot of people ask me if the Nintendo Switch port to Crusi'n Blast will ever get a content update that includes online play. Eugene Jarvis said that such things depend on how well the game sells. It didn't apparently sell at the level it needed to (I don't know what that number is), ergo, no content update. That's the reality for a such a thing across the board. You can find examples of plenty of games out there which were left broken, just because it didn't sell well enough. A company won't risk taking a loss on DLC, which never sells as many copies as the original game does, it's always some percentage. I haven't been following that too closely as I got my fill of promises made and promises unkept with the VCS But the principle of money still comes into play there. Everything half-baked ends up pretty subpar and it would have taken both money and good management to make it right in the first place.

A thread for helping track all the news from the IAAPA 2023 tradeshow, for anyone who might be interested in brand new arcade games that will be landing in arcades this Winter or 2024. I know not everyone here is into that sort of thing (new arcade games, you're just interested in retro), but in case you are, this should help track some of the news. Admittedly this will be a little self-promotiony, only because I'm one of the very few (or only) US-based bloggers out there focused specifically on new arcades. What is IAAPA? IAAPA is a trade organization representing the amusement industry (theme parks, arcades, FECs, etc). They organize several expos during the year all around the world but their annual IAAPA Expo in Orlando, FL is the biggest of them all. It fills the Orange County Convention Center and then some, with outdoor exhibitors too. Arcade manufacturers use this event as the launch platform for most of their major products for the coming year. Note that this is a very international show so not everything that will appear here will be limited solely to the US; much of it will be sold in Europe, the Middle East and Oceania. No Japan-specific titles will be there though. It's basically the E3 of the arcade industry. Here's a playlist of 77 videos I shot at IAAPA 2022; I will be doing the same thing for IAAPA 2023, with a livestream preview near the end of this week. This year's show is Nov. 14th-17th - it's always held the week before Thanksgiving. News While some headlines might not mention IAAPA, the games mentioned will be there, some as debuts UNIS Announces Lane Master Xtreme; Sega Bringing Hyper Cross & Zombies Ready, Deady, Go! To IAAPA 2023 New Cabinet Render & Info For Drakons: Realm Keepers Ritchie Returns With Elton John Pinball LAI Games To Roll Out Four New Video Arcade Games At IAAPA 2023 - I learned after posting that not all of them are video games, one is a coin pusher, the other a hybrid video coin pusher UNIS Jumps Into Dual-Screen Driving With Bigfoot Mayhem Air Strike Warplane Coming To The States At IAAPA 2023? - Confirmed that yes it is and in a different cabinet VR 360 Action To Hold Raffle Giveaway For Their $30,000 OMG Simulator At IAAPA 2023 - I'm going to try and livestream this event on Thursday, Nov. 16th Exclusive: Checking Out Gesture Art & Design With Their First Game, Food Flight - New company, debuting their first game at the show Wahlap Announces Their IAAPA 2023 Line-up IAAPA 2023: Sega Amusements To Showcase Apex Rebels Touch Magix Announces Their IAAPA 2023 Line-up I'll definitely be updating this thread with more stories throughout the week.

Ms. Pac-Man is tied up in a bizarre, decades long legal dispute, which prevents the game from being available for coin-op commercial use but can be done for home use. If you have a Pac-Man's Pixel Bash and set it to Free Play, Ms. Pac-Man becomes available. Thanks, it's impossible to track everyone and what games they get, so I'll see about correcting that. From what Taito told me, they only sold 7 DBAC units in English - I have one of them. One thing I'll need to check though is whether or not Barcade's DBAC is the Japanese EX version - there are a few places out there like Game Galaxy which has that. It's a slightly improved game but all the text is in Japanese. Option #2 is the most common but I'll see all three. Strangers playing together is uncommon but it can happen, depending on the game. I remember when I first discovered Gauntlet Legends - that was the perfect game for playing with strangers. It was brand new then so everyone was drawn to it and myself and three others ended up questing on that a lot. Too bad no one plays it anymore...

Agreed, I'm not meaning to dunk on what they did then which was good - but not good enough to keep the brand alive and ultimately they were all one-offs. Doesn't help that they don't have a character connected to them, although that could have been fixed. IMO, Commander Champion or Major Havoc could have worked as a starship or tank commander. IMHO, how Nintendo handles their IP is the gold standard as to how to keep a franchise going (or rather, how to turn a game into a franchise). If Bentley Bear's Crystal Quest had been released on the 7800 in 1988 instead of 2015, then had also released maybe a puzzle game starring Bentley on the 7800 and the Lynx, then a 3D Crystal Castles on the Jag; Having Adventure II and III or whatever on those consoles, another Haunted House back then, etc., that's the kind of thing they needed to be doing. I also do like that they did weird stuff like Ninja Golf, it's just it was you needed more games like that and fewer like Jinks or Trevor McFur. Or as @roots.genoa explained, making games good There is also the whole thing about the arcade side as you mention as you can't translate 70s/early 80's arcade games over to how modern console games work and expect it to do well, but I could write a whole blog about that More polish is something that many Atari games have needed over the years that is there with lots of Japanese made games but often lacking over in Atariville. But in terms of imagination, a creative vision goes a very long way. There's a reason why Japanese companies keep original creators in charge of franchises for so long - they understand why the game works with the masses and they are also creative enough to remake them in fun new ways as opposed to simply cranking up the graphical fidelity and maybe throwing in a new scoring system. It might not be technically difficult but this is where budget comes into play. "You get what you pay for" and not every coder is Shigeru Miyamoto, Yu Suzuki or Ed Logg.

Yeah, there is some opportunity there. I've had a few "what if" ideas that would take certain popular genres and apply them to a few particular Atari classics - but I need to study up more on how to code to start making anything like that a reality But perhaps Atari will go in that kind of direction soon.

I think their strategy makes sense at the moment - Atarians like you and me are their "base," kind of like how a political party or candidate has a base of support. If we're not happen, that drags the brand down, and I think that's what its been like for a long time up until recently. If they keep doing moves that make us happy, we'll evangelize Atari to others and it can grow from there. I just imagine that for the brand name to really grow outside of the AtariAge bubble, they will have to create some really good original games to get there.

Haha, I'll have to try. The problem is that the ball was dropped under the Tramiels. If the 7800/ST/Lynx/Jag had pulled the Nintendo thing of refreshing certain games, maybe taking them in similar but different directions (i.e., Ocarina of Time is still Zelda but it was very different from Zelda 1 or 2 on the NES), then it might have got there. Then of course you also had that void in-between the Jag and pretty much now with a lot of half-hearted, forgettable attempts to reinvent games. Remember the mobile version of Night Driver or Ninja Golf? No one else seems to either.

Atari IP has fame to it but when I say chasing nostalgia has its limits, its because not everyone on the planet has fond memories of Atari's games. The modern gaming public is something like 2 billion people. It was nowhere near that big back during Atari's peak. Some people were born in the era where Mario and Sonic were the big names and Atari was old already. In the 90s, Atari was pretty much a non-entity, so if you grew up then as a kid, you played Nintendo, Sony or Sega - not Atari. By now, its Minecraft or Roblox or Fortnite or Call of Duty or whatever else that a big AAA studio is putting out. Big streamers, which millions of gamers watch, don't play Atari games, they don't talk about them, nothing Atari does goes viral. Why would it? As we've sort of discussed, Atari hasn't done much to keep their IP alive in the minds of the public. Yeah they've done the recharged games, but these games are for old Atarians, not streamers and their millions of followers. When people think of Centipede, they think the arcade original not the Dreamcast version or Recharged. Nintendo on the other hand, has reinvented Mario and Zelda numerous times, so that when they release a new one, it sells millions of copies and every one out there, no matter what their age, recognizes those games. Put Bentley Bear next to Mario or Sonic and very few people will know who Bentley is but it would be a challenge to find someone who hasn't heard of Mario/Sonic, unless they were born yesterday. To that end, just because people have heard of Asteroids or Centipede or Yars Revenge doesn't mean that they like it or care that there is a new one around. Some may never have set foot in an arcade that had Paperboy or Marble Madness. If the fame was really that strong, then these compilations or Recharged games would be selling millions and Warner would regularly be milking those titles instead of maybe doing a remake once a decade. The VCS console would also have sold a ton more - has that even cracked 20k sales yet? This is anecdotal but in operating an arcade for 15 years, the number of times I've heard people ask if I have Pac-Man/Ms. Pac-man, Galaga or Donkey Kong or a Mario game have vastly outpaced any Atari IP. I have had a few and they usually are some of my worst earners 😕 In fact, last week, my Centipede/Millipede/Missile Command game made a whopping 25¢. Ms. Pac-Man made $12.50 which isn't amazing either, but I've never ever seen any of my Atari titles outearn Ms. Pac. (for the record, it has been kind of slow this summer & fall, but to also compare, my Jurassic Park Arcade from 2015 made $157.50, and that game is 8 years old already). YTD, Centipede has made $63.50, Ms. Pac-Man $955. If you were running a business with bills to pay, which one would you buy for your place? I wish I had the hard data but I wouldn't be surprised at all if actual sales on any Recharged game or compilation is way behind any similar thing that Nintendo or Sega would put out. That's what matters when it comes to licensing, porting, or remaking a game - so when I say that no one with sense is going to potentially put their company out of business on a game that costs $1m to license when you probably won't even make the license fee back, that's what I mean. It doesn't matter how much you or a dev loves the IP, that's just cold reality. Kids are the market you need to capture if you want to last culturally as opposed to a historical footnote. A very different approach would need to be taken to attract them to Atari's old IP. I have three kids and they're all into gaming. They don't play, talk/ask about, or watch streamers who play Atari games, even though in the same house there are hundreds of Atari games sitting on a shelf. They will only do so if I push them and they're bored. None of them ever say "hey, can we go play Star Raiders?" When I pass on, they'll probably just sell off my game collection and make a few bucks off of it, but I don't expect that any of them will hold on to it for nostalgia's sake.

Perhaps but I'm not sure what. If you go bankrupt on a labor of love that was the perfect game port that nobody/not enough people bought, that's fine for your resume or online prestige, but not so great if you have a family to feed or employees with families to feed. Yeah, that's why I think the DE acquisition was a smart move. I really liked what they did with Haunted House and Breakout on the Atari 50th - that's the sort of thing that Atari's needed to do with their old IP for years and years. The Nintendo pattern with keeping old IP fresh does work but it takes real creatives who understand both the original games and the fans to make that work. That's why the just-released Super Mario Wonder was worked on by guys who worked on the NES classic. They still get "it."

Some might be, although it's really hard to figure out which games might reach that level. I don't think that any do, even Area 51 and SF Rush. That's because as time marches on, the value of nostalgia fades with it. Millions of kids find other things to care about and develop nostalgia for. Unless the AG games were to come along with some hot new hook, they will only appeal to an ever-dwindling sales base. That's been borne out by ports. We've seen a lot of them in recent years but have any done that well? Admittedly without sales numbers we can't say for sure, but we can look at things like Sega ending their Sega Ages program after 19 releases; Jeff Minter complaining that a new remix of Frogger had outsold Space Giraffe by a healthy margin or there was that time where Sega took a major financial hit on porting Jambo Safari! to the Wii. When I was once attending an arcade trade show, I was talking old IP with the head of Sega's R&D and he brought up OutRun 2's poor sales on the Xbox as to why they don't like to support ports anymore(among some other more industry-specific reasons). Chasing nostalgia has its profitability limits, unfortunately, and if it costs a ton of money to license, it becomes a non-starter. To also give you an idea on licensing, I was once told by a VP of a major arcade manufacturer that the license from a single major Japanese car brand to use a few of their vehicles in their game cost them almost $600k. This game has several car brands and a bunch of cars in it, so all together, licensing on that was not cheap but I have to imagine that brand new sports cars are seen as more valuable on the licensing market than any single arcade game from the 90s. That's why I feel like Warner's demands on licensing fees (if accurate to what I've been told), are completely out of touch with reality. IMHO, nothing from the AG library should top $100k to license out - most of it should probably cost a lot less.

Gimmick has done all right but its main fault is being a single player game - which in turn answers your other question - multiplayer rules the day, as far as arcades go. That's why I focus a lot on those kinds of cabinets. They always can earn better than a single, just from being able to accumulate more tokens at the same time, whereas single limits that. I also think that this is part of the problem with pinball. Sure, every pin supports up to 4 players - taking turns. It's just not able to do all at once, due to its nature (although some have tried to do head-to-head pinball but I think those are too chaotic to catch on). This does remind me though - I have a 4p exA cab but I really do need to get more 4p games for it. Perhaps P-47 Aces will do well, or the upcoming Jitsu Squad.

@roots.genoa - Since Midway bought Atari Games in '99, it's all the same, legally speaking But I know what you mean. Warner did do a new Gauntlet back in 2014. That's been about it. They want to maximize profits, especially given the condition they are in under Discovery, and as far as they seem to know/care, that's been Mortal Kombat. It would be awesome if all of the AG IP could be back under the same umbrella, it's just that I've heard from industry insiders that Warner would want a minimum $1m just to license some of those old games (each). Maybe it's hyperbole as I can't imagine that they're so inept to think that Paperboy should have the same cost as Thunderjaws, but perhaps their greed says otherwise. That could also change depending upon who is in charge of their licensing. Nah, as has been pointed out many times over the years, the main cake for the Tramiels was computers. If they understood anything about the arcade market, it was very, very little, and it operates in a very different way from computers or consoles. If Jack had ended up gutting AG like he did with the home side, then we probably wouldn't have got a lot of the games that people remember as he likely would have laid off some of their most creative people like Ed Logg. Operating an arcade company by outsourcing development doesn't make the same kind of sense that it might with consoles, that's something you want to keep in-house. That's why I think they passed up on it and ultimately I think that was the better decision to make at the time. Now I do think that they should have been more friendly with AG and should have worked to get Tengen support for the 7800 or better support on the ST, maybe have locked in some exclusives there. I think that could have made the 7800 more enticing as a platform, just like it did to have some AG titles on the Lynx. Not many know this but Namco took part ownership of Atari Games around '86 or so - that's why you got games like Assault, Pacmania, Dragon Spirit, and Splatterhouse released via AG here in the States. But AG never owned those IP, they were essentially just a distributor and cabinet maker for those games. Anything else originating from Namco would not able to be a part of any Warner deal (Dig Dug, Pole Position, Final Lap, Rolling Thunder, Galaga '88). But Gauntlet, Paperboy, Area 51, SF Rush, etc., would be. Another possibility that makes any deal very difficult and very expensive is that Warner might not care enough to understand the differences or the history in the IP they hold - if someone legit approached them and said they wanted to buy the IP, Warner might not want to do an odd piece meal deal that takes just part of the package - they might want all or nothing. Including all of the Williams/Midway stuff would make that exponentially more expensive, probably a few to several hundred million dollars (from what Warner thinks they have, even though there's plenty of IP there that probably isn't worth more than a few thousand $$$ each) 😕 If the opposite was true though and they were willing to piece it out, then Atari could possibly get a few of the lesser known games and work their way up.

If anyone could make a site work in Norway, Gamestate would probably be it since they understand the market dynamics there - but there could also be something else that makes it too expensive/difficult to open an arcade in your country, such as regulations. I know of several countries on the continent (Germany being a prime example) where the regulations and fees make it too much of a headache, or at least they have done so, historically. On the exA, I think they need to hire a marketing person for the EU and another for the US who understands what gamers want in those markets and focus on them. You mention their biggest fault, that they are very Japanese-centric in their marketing (funny enough, most of their team are Americans, but most live in Tokyo). Yes that marketing works for the JP market, but it doesn't work here. Another example is how most of their tweets are in Japanese, when it needs to be parsed out according to specific markets and consumers. As it is, it's up to me to market those games to my customers through my own arcade channel. I'm starting to work on that but it's a little tough in that I can't overdo just exA games, I still need to promote other games like my Sega and Raw Thrills stuff.

I think this is the real problem when it comes to the Atari brand. A tiny segment of the human race remembers Yars Revenge or Crystal Castles or Haunted House - not enough to push millions of units sold, let alone hundreds of thousands. Even my 3 kids living under my roof are mostly indifferent if I try to get them to play Atari stuff, as it isn't relevant to the culture they are in, and what their favorite YouTubers are playing. So many of Atari's legendary IPs work best in an arcade, not on a console too. You almost have to start from scratch on some of these properties, although you have to be careful, otherwise you upset the fans who will be your biggest promoters or detractors, depending. I think Digital Eclipse did a fantastic job on doing that with games like Haunted Houses, Vctr Sctr, and Neo Breakout. If anyone can expand on the old IP like it needs, I think they're best equipped for it. And that will not be cheap

The attract mode might be part of it but this is a very challenging thing to accomplish. One thing I try and tell indie arcade devs all the time is to NEVER have the screen fade to black, even for a second. As an op, I see this on Japanese games all the time and I think the game's broken...only for the next screen to pop up after a couple of seconds. The real issue is that when people are walking through an arcade, they're usually looking for something specific and not paying a lot of attention - or they're browsing and each game gets maybe a half-sec or full sec of the person's attention. If the attract mode is not showing something attractive all the time, you can easily miss that sale. With multi-games, conveying that it has all these games to pick from, one of which you might like, in that window of time, is extremely difficult to pull off. Yeah, I could see those as being positives towards it. #1 is a great selling point with what are called street locations - basically any place that isn't an arcade as its primary purpose, but maybe has an arcade game or two in the lobby (a convenience store, restaurant, bar, gas station, etc). #2 also makes sense - it's also going to be more economical to go that route. For where you're at, I do wonder if a company called Gamestate might open in the region here soon. They've been expanding across Europe over the past couple of years. I have both the Neo Geo MVS and a couple of exA-Arcadias as I also want to provide my players options. The latter, the exA, has brand new games like fighters and I like to promote "hey, I have brand new fighting games...and shmups...and platformers." Unfortunately, so far it's been a dud though and not made the money it should be making to warrant the cost. I need to take a new marketing approach with it, which I am starting to do with Samurai Shodown V Perfect (going to be promoting each character with a YT short profile, see if that brings in any attention). But it would be nice if they had a marquee that worked like the MVS marquee did. Some operators I know have an exa but only use it with one game at a time. As for the size of my arcade, it's decent sized but nothing enormous. I presently have around 64 games and a little space to expand. Here's a super outdated video tour - perhaps I'll do a new one here next week as currently the space is a little bit cramped with cabinets(I've gotten over a dozen new games since this video and sold some off, like the Cosmotrons in the thumbnail):

Some others: -Arcade Legends 3 by Chicago Gaming Company (non-coin only, 150+ games) -exA-Arcadia (mainly for commercial-coin use, like the Neo Geo MVS, holds 4 games at a time) -Pac-Man's Pixel Bash by Bandai Namco Amusements (coin and non-coin) -Polycade (I heard they just declared bankruptcy but they also just announced the Sente cabinet after that - has existed in coin/non-coin) -Big Buck Hunter Reloaded (coin and non-coin, features more unique gun games than just Big Buck Hunter at this point) From your list, the only one that's legal for arcades to use would be the old MVS but that doesn't stop people from throwing some of those into arcades here and there. I cringe though when I see an Arcade 1up or something like it in a professional arcade. Zoyous pointed these things out but mainly due to those machines being made for home use. If you go to a professional arcade, you don't go there expecting to find the kinds of machines that you can go and buy at Wal-Mart/Best Buy. You expect to find very sturdy, commercial-grade games. It'd be like going to a Michelin star restaurant and they're serving you fast food. Sure it's familiar, but not what you expect to pay for Also as I've learned in operating an arcade for 15 years, multi-games are never super popular in an arcade setting. In part, it's confusing to the consumer as all the other games they encounter are 1 game that is being advertised. Arcade goers are like impulse buyers on everything, they don't gravitate towards selection-per-game, but more the spectacle. The more games you throw in there too, the more confusing it gets and the less that the game gets played. 4 really seems to be the max that consumers can tolerate, but I've known of places that limit multi-game units like the 60-in-1 to only one game, as they perform better that way.

They are, but that sort of thing has diminishing returns at some point. I only grabbed Centipede Recharged because it was free on the Epic Store; I am not buying Atari compilations anymore because of Centipede but maybe some others are As a part of a wider collection it could be more palpable to work, sure. But still don't know if they (Play Mechanix) can contractually do it, or if have any appetite to spend resources on porting it, unless Atari funded all of it. I haven't seen numbers before but do these collections sell poorly? I agree that future collections need more unique stuff. Atari 50th was mostly interesting to me because of the six original games, not because of titles I've already purchased 5 other times over the years

Like @GraffitiTavern mentioned, Atari licensed it to Play Mechanix (the developer) and ICE (the manufacturer) to produce for arcades. The game does have a non-ticket/amusement mode where you can play it more like a normal game but it's still not something you could charge probably more than $10 for, just due to the thin content. Play Mechanix is owned by Raw Thrills, which is run by Eugene Jarvis - while I occasionally have personal contact with the people at both companies, they rarely talk about things like exclusivity agreements. But on top of that is demand - there's likely not enough demand there to warrant a port for Centipede Chaos. I get the sense that Cruis'n Blast on Switch didn't sell too well and if that can't sell, then there's little financial incentive to port something like this over. There's also the existence of Centipede Recharged - Chaos releasing now would potentially hurt that, although maybe not to a huge degree since it's been out for a while - but some people might also feel like Atari would be milking it too much when they just released that, then they come along with CC, which isn't enormously different. In most cases, arcade game makers prefer to keep games exclusive for several years, as this helps their own sales of the game and helps arcade locations that buy one. Ports kill both of those so it's not the best move to make from a marketing perspective like it used to be. But, CC has been out since 2018 or so and it's no longer in production. So I would never say never, it's just that due to the factors in the paragraph above, I don't think it is likely.

I didn't see it mentioned but Dishaster deserves a place on this list. Like several "games" mentioned here it's a challenge to call it such as there's no challenge, no fun, no point. I'd rather play E.T. for hours on end over that crap. Or anything by Mythicon, as many have stated over the years

Ah, just got word that Cruis'n is no longer in production. A standard version of Fast & Furious is trickling out to some early customers and that will replace the game. When I'm rubbing shoulders with Raw Thrills at a trade show next month, I'll see if they will talk how many sold. Back on topic, I saw that Atari is bringing Spring back with NeoSprint. As an upright machine, that might work with the right adjustments; Someone did do a Sprint-like game for arcades some years ago, although it's kind of rare (you could link up to three units for six players):

There are code updates but it's usually just bug fixes, not content related. I wish it was the latter - if they released some sensibly priced content updates, that is DLC I could get behind. But such a thing is exceedingly rare in the industry for some reason. I'd pay $1-2k for a new set of levels on Jurassic Park Arcade or for 5 more Cruis'n tracks. It never happens though. The only time they really changed the content for Cruis'n was when the licenses ran out and they had to change the cars. This felt like a downgrade to me so I avoided it; If you come across a Cruis'n with these cars then that likely means the game was sold from 2020 onwards:

I haven't heard numbers on Daytona but I would guess that it did ok for Sega but nowhere near OG Daytona numbers (best guess is in the 2~3000 range for sales) Cruis'n has sold over 10k units per Raw Thrills, which I think they said back in 2020. Around there they had to increase the price to $10k a unit from $7300~7500 so I imagine that sales on that have slowed considerably but it's possible that they have managed a couple more thousand sales since then. It's been the only race car alternative one has from Raw Thrills unless you want to spend $25k a seat on their new Fast & Furious. Eugene once mentioned in an interview I did with him that he'd love to tackle Rush 2049 as he gets requests for it all the time too...just sucks that WB would want far too much money to license it

I think that GW style would work out best for anything vector related. It has to feel like the game is "alive," with sparks and pixels flowing around like fluids to the vector lines. Otherwise, it's just stale. I do enjoy Vctr-Sctr, I guess it just would need to move the Lunar Lander part to the very end. Add some extra GW-style effects and maybe it would work but I guess I'm just getting more and more jaded after investing thousands into retro flops I hate to say it but even my Donut Dodo Do! which is a very fun game and "Atari" in its vibe is also barely moving the needle, despite my constant promotions about it. Thanks! I'm kind of surprised that Atari never pursued the Outlaw IP further in the arcade space. As tech advanced, it could have been a hit with the right design, especially back when Westerns were still a thing. Seems like they're making a comeback though - or just drop the elements into something like a Future Retro/steampunk setting. That's a good question - maybe to compete with Pac-Man Battle Royale but I would like to know if they ever did test an upright. If they did, they should have ditched the old button controls in favor of a dual stick like Vctr-Sctr uses, that felt much more intuitive to me I once was putting some thoughts about doing a wildfire/fire fighting game in the style of Rampart but I need to graduate from paper designs to actual designs one of these days I thinking about it, the concept really hasn't been used by anyone, even BITD there weren't many/any Rampart clones. Shame. One that would immediately get attention would be a remake of SF Rush. When Cruis'n Blast came along, I saw a lot of comments about "where's Rush?" I guess the trouble is (apart from Warner Bros) that no one likes closed circuit racing in arcades anymore

It's an interesting thought, it's just a bit of a challenge for anything that isn't light-gun/racing to get noticed in the business. There was a 4-player version of the Electromechanical Pong called PONG Knockout which came out a little bit ago. But I haven't seen it pop up at all on earnings reports and it appears to already have ceased production which indicates it wasn't a good seller. Even with crazy-good graphics, ball-and-paddle games are a hard sell. I have a Minecraft Dungeons Arcade game, which has one of the biggest licenses in the world attached to it and it does 'meh.' It's a joystick game and those just generally don't do well anymore. Now if you had an 8-player Pong game with trackballs, or a new version of Tank 8, Sprit 8, or do an 8-player Centipede...that could be cool. It just has to be implemented correctly(most challenging problem with big multiplayer games is managing chaos), otherwise you end up with a dud. But it is doable, as 8-player Pac-Man shows. It would be nice for the possibilities but I just don't think that having an online cross-location feature would move the needle much. As mentioned, there are games out there which do this but very, very few people use that feature. There is a new dance game called Pump It Up Phoenix which does this and it uses a camera so you can see your opponent - perhaps it's a hit, but I haven't heard anything chatter about that feature yet. There are also a few games in China and Japan which do that too but most people prefer local play. Those players just want to insert coins/swipe card, have fun, move on to the next, not get bogged down in making an account, signing in, waiting for a match to start, etc. The arcade is better for just instant play with friends or strangers right there than in another place.