Welcome to more of our IAAPA 2024 coverage, this time tackling redemption, simulator machines, and VR. Ticket redemption and prize machines continue to be a major revenue driver for most locations out there, thus many companies (if not all of them) tend to have at least a few products designed to cater to that part of the market. This post will partly focus on those companies where most of what they produce, or at least debuted at this particular show, fall on the side of redemption as opposed to “pure” amusement. Note that we use the term “videmption” to describe games that are video redemption machines, where the video screen is a major element to the gameplay. Most videmption games can turn tickets off and play like a regular amusement game, although often videmption titles have winning tickets as their primary focus.
For previous IAAPA 2024 coverage:
Part #1: Raw Thrills; TouchMagix; Amusement Source; Wahlap; Alan-1; Night Heron
Part #2: Bandai Namco Amusement; Sega Amusements; LAI Games; UNIS
Part #3: Pinball (Stern; Jersey Jack; American Pinball)
Part #4: exA-Arcadia, Indies, & More
Note that as of publication I am not finished editing videos together, so there will still be some content posting to YT for the next week or so.
Nothing from the IAAPA coverage has been dinged yet, but I’ve been uploading some videos over to the alternate YT video channels, particularly on a video I shot of The Princess Bride pinball after a dubious copyright content claim from some entity in Italy which forced me to put some idiotic auto-edits into that video. I don’t see how filming an already licensed arcade or pinball machine warrants a copyright violation in any instance, as the film or sound is going to be integrated into the game and not playing just that raw footage… and what little there is should be covered under Fair Use. But that doesn’t stop some claimants from being stupid about it. /rant
We also might do a final IAAPA recap once I have more shipping dates on product, although that could just warrant another livestream. It all depends on time… anyways, lets finish the rest:
Updates
For a few companies that have already been mentioned in previous IAAPA coverage, but now have videos posted about their booths/products that weren’t available before:
- Asphalt Moto Blitz DX [LAI Games/Wahlap]
- Bigfoot Smash [UNIS]
- Commando Sniper 3 [Yuto Games]
- Godzilla Kaiju Wars – Gigan Attack [Raw Thrills]
- Godzilla Kaiju Wars – River Assault [Raw Thrills]
- GoldStorm Pirates Level 2 [Bandai Namco Amusement]
- Fast Racing [Ace Amusement]
- Minions: Bullseye Mania [TouchMagix]
- Print Cases 3D printer phone case vending machine [Amusement Source International]
Also in case you missed the news, the update to NBA Superstars by Raw Thrills that was seen at the show is now available. Just make sure your game is connected and you’ll be able to get it for free.
Adrenaline Amusements
Adrenaline had a smaller booth this year compared to last, although last time there was a lot of empty space. This time, the booth was packed with games, although only one was new-new: Duck Derby. Just a note on that one – the games are over super fast. That’s where it is a great redemption piece – quick, unique, something physical (such as water and real rubber duckies).
I believe Duck Derby is shipping now, although I haven’t been able to confirm that yet.
- Duck Derby: Pump ‘N Race
- Hungry Hungry Hippos
- NFS Heat Takedown (SD & DX)
- Tomb Raider Arcade
- Twister
Amega Entertainment/Blue Motion Games
As mentioned in the IAAPA 2024 preview, Blue Motion Games did not have their own booth, but was set up with Amega. Their newest piece was World Rally Simulator, which is running the 2014 game, Assetto Corsa. Blue Motion is representing all Amega products in North America and plans on revealing some new arcade titles next year, but so far it’s too early to show those.
Andamiro USA
Andamiro USA had a lot of new games to show off, most of it being redemption as they tend to focus on. For video games, they had Pump It Up Phoenix 2024, a new “Ghost Coaster” ride for SpongeBob SquarePants VR Bubble Coaster, and Bobblehead Baseball Vs.
The new Star Wars pusher was perhaps the biggest deal for the company, although there’s one aspect about it that bugged me – it has few Star Wars sounds (from what I heard). While I can understand that this could easily be Disney being super greedy in what they charge, at the very least licensing the iconic laser blast sound for the TIE Fighter and X-Wings, since you do that every single time you “fire” a coin. Oh well.
For the games and their shipping statuses:
- Crazy Toy [Now Shipping]
- Crazy Toy Jr. [TBA]
- Guardians of the Galaxy [Now Shipping]
- Krazy Balls [Now Shipping]
- Pump It Up Phoenix 2024 [Now Shipping]
- SpongeBob Squarepants VR Bubble Coaster w/ new Ghost Coaster ride [Now Shipping]
- Spider-Man (single pusher model) [Now Shipping]
- Star Wars (coin pusher) [Now Shipping]
- Super Star 2 [Now Shipping]
- Talking Tom (whacker) [TBA]
- Tic Tac Toe Basketball [Now Shipping]
- Wacky Racers [Now Shipping]
Bay Tek Entertainment
Bay Tek always has a lot of occupied space at any show, as they have some of the biggest games around. This tends to require some “breathing room.”
The newest piece that was generating the most buzz was their new ICEE Slush Rush game. As mentioned, this and the indie arcade game Perfect Pour share the core gameplay, although this is targeting FECs. It was a pretty solid hit on the IAAPA 2024 show floor, often seeing lines of people waiting to play it. It is slated to begin shipping in April.
Pretty much everything else at the booth had been seen before, except for maybe the newest iteration of the Prize Hub. The VR was a little more prominent thanks to the Hyperdeck set up (previous years that had been at the Creative Works booth, but now that Bay Tek owns the HD company, no sense in putting the product elsewhere). As such, all of that equipment and everything except for ICEE Slush Rush, is available now.
- Big Bass Wheel
- Goatz ‘N Ropes [Single player model]
- Hyperdeck
- ICEE Slush Rush [April 2025]
- Prize Hub 2.0
- Rock The Rim
- Skeeball games
- SpongeBob Squarepants Dynamic Duo VR
- Ticket Monster
- Toilet Bowl Toss
Characters Unlimited
This booth was on the opposite side of the center from the Games & Arcade Pavilion, but being located right next to one of the outdoor entrances found a lot of attention. The creators of Zoltar Fortune Tellers were also bolstered by a Donald Trump Fortune Teller machine, which was garnering a lot of attention and social media shares. They have done Tellers for every modern President, including a bizarre “Alien Biden and Alien Trump” set up. That must have been a custom request. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Coastal Amusements
Coastal was set up in the same spot and shape as last year, although they had a number of games that were new. Any of their videmption games can operate as amusement only, but they still focus a lot on redemption:
The most prominent video game to debut here was Wave Riders X-Treme, by Ace Amusement.
They also debuted a couple of new cranes, one of which is jumping on the synched up multi-claw, with one joystick controlling three in the case of Claw Frenzy. What is unique aside from that aspect, is that you can move the claws side-to-side as well as back-and-forth; for Sega Amusements and JET Games’ multi-claw entries from Playmore and Leon Amusement, they only allow the latter. As such, Claw Frenzy is patent-pending. The other crane they have, Double Play, allows operators to run the left half with plush, the right half with RFID ticket rings.
They also introduced a new ‘budget’ version of their popular Break The Plate videmption game. This is still under development, where they will reduce the size (from 118” down to 96.5” in length). It also uses one large 65” monitor in the back instead of the four. “The game is now all digital with enhanced animation for when the plates break and there will no longer be real pieces back there. All of this is to reduce the overall cost of the game to make it more affordable as well as ease of play for younger children”. Then on top of that, the game has had a “Holiday update” that features various holiday targets, including Christmas and others. Apart from changing the music, it also allows players to “try to hit the snowman, elves, santa, and snowflakes. More holidays will be added throughout the year as they are coming up”.
All of these new games/models are shipping out in Spring, while their other games are available now. Paul at Coastal also mentioned that the videmption game Slide Up is available, although it isn’t listed on their website yet.
- Bullseye Crackshot (1 & 2-player models) [Now shipping]
- Break The Plate New Model [Spring 2025]
- Claw Frenzy [Spring 2025]
- Dinosaur Era [Now shipping]
- Double Play [Spring 2025]
- Jumpin Space [Spring 2025]
- Level Up [Spring 2025]
- Ring Toss [Now shipping]
- Showtime cranes [Now shipping]
- Surf League [Now shipping]
- Tilt A Wheel [Spring 2025]
- Wild Things [Now shipping]
Elaut USA
Elaut was a little bit off the main Games & Arcade Pavilion path, but it seems that they were able to take advantage of some ample space. The game mix at their booth was the same as Amusement Expo, with a couple of Popeye related exceptions: Popeye Boxer and Popeye Dizzy Divers. Both of these are shipping now, as are all of the other titles that Elaut has in their armament:
Unfortunately a few videos for others suffered the same fate as my original Elaut booth tour, but I’m mitigating this as best as is possible.
ICE
For a while, it was looking like ICE wasn’t going to bring anything new to IAAPA 2024, but the week before it commenced, a few products popped up on the radar and ICE ended up having a more interesting booth than I was anticipating. The main draw was their new Neon Bowling, which is much bigger than your typical alley bowler. Instead, it falls into the “mini bowling” category of games, with one of the models really pushing it in terms of size, getting close to Pro size (but still falls short of going that far). They also debuted a few new redemption pieces.
- Double Dribble [Now Shipping]
- Down The Clown [Now Shipping]
- ICE Ball FX [Now Shipping]
- Monopoly Roll-N-Go [Now Shipping]
- NBA Hoops [Now Shipping]
- Neon Bowling [Jan. 2025]
- Smash N Win [TBA]
- Stop The Drop [TBA]
- Whack A Clown [Now Shipping]
- Win-A-Ball [TBA]
- Yeti Go [TBA]
INOWIZE
I only got a chance to visit INOWIZE briefly at the very start and very end of the show, initially thinking “oh, I’ll have enough time for a revisit.” Lesson learned for next time. That said I did manage to shoot a little bit of their sixth QBIX game release, Mummy Twist, which incorporates some team play puzzle elements together within a mummy/ancient Egypt motif. The QBIX has been available for a while and Mummy Twist is available for locations that have one.
JET Games USA
JET Games USA had made a huge splash at IAAPA 2023 with their Big Shot & Mega Shot games, which were at IAAPA 2024 in all of their glory, now joined by a few new redemption pieces. Two videmption titles that made their debut this year were Quick Bounce and Clown Hit, which you can see in the video here.
Quick Bounce uses a personal trampoline to control the jetpack-equipped character and the kid I saw playing this really got into it. Graphically it looked nice for a kids game, although I heard through the grapevine that trampoline controlled games don’t do so well at trampoline park arcades – but do great everywhere else. Clown Hit is a simple whacker game where how hard you the target determines how high the clown goes up to determine the tickets you win.
As mentioned above with Coastal’s tri-claw game, and previously with Sega Amusements’ five claw machine, JET had something to one up both with Big Six from Leon Amusement (who seem to have made the originals of all their ‘Shot’ range and ASI’s Thunder Attack) – six claws. Functionally it’s just like High Five, but with one extra chance to win.
Everything is shipping, although a few games including Big Six will have a 30 day lead time
- Big Shot
- Big Six
- Cannonball Drop
- Hit The Clown
- Jet Darts
- Jolly Roger kiddie rides
- Mega Shot
- Quick Bounce
- Quick Toss
OVRDRV Games
I have to admit that when I came across this company, I had not heard of them (or in my age, forgot about them – sorry). They said that they’ve been around since 2021 however and they have grown enough that they bought out VR 360 Action. They fit with all three categories to this post, offering both simulator and VR titles, which support ticket redemption.
Their most prominent licenses are Rollercoaster Tycoon and NASCAR, the latter of which appears to be a reskin of VR 360 Action’s Crazy Racing simulation machine.
Player One Amusement Group
One of the most talked about booths of IAAPA 2024 was Player One (also known as P1AG), as they were the place to encounter wrestling/fighter celebrities such as Jacques Rougeou, Georges S’Pierre, Adam Copeland, and Hulk Hogan.
I did stand in line and get some autographs, asking them about their favorite games were. Hulk said his is the JAWS pinball by Stern (and he mentioned he has a WWE pin at his house); Adam Copeland said Dr. Mario.
Here’s a LinkedIn video showing the unveil of the game. Then one of the Hulk ripping his shirt off for that launch promo.
As for the game itself, it was designed by Premiere Arcade Games and it is a bit niche, being a single prize drop game that has a signed champion belt inside from the wrestler/fighter who adorns the cabinet. Since they are all separate machines, I suppose the idea is to have a venue buy all four of them and bank them together, but seems like the kind of game you would want to make as a four-sided piece and a different fighter on each side.
Playmind
Playmind was tucked away between some non-arcade booths, so I almost missed them, but to make things…unfortunate, my increasingly faulty camera caused the footage I shot of the new Carnival edition of their Playbox game to go up in digital smoke. Fortunately I caught an earlier version of this at Amusement Expo 2024, but the version at IAAPA 2024 was noticeably more polished (so don’t judge it on this). This is shipping now:
Team Play
I did get a chance to check out Team Play, where Brian was kind enough to give me a rundown on their new redemption piece that was there and their Pixel Pix photo booth. The redemption game was named Magic Factory, however, chances are it will change some things about the theme and thus the name. It was a neat conveyor game where all these “gems” are moving around the belt and you have to pull the lever to make the gems fall into the targets. We’ll probably see its final form come Amusement Expo 2025.
Triotech
While Triotech didn’t introduce anything new-new at IAAPA this year, they had a large booth space (I only managed to drop by for a few minutes on the last day). They also won an IAAPA Brass Ring Award for their interactive roller coaster ride, Primordial which exists in my home state of Utah at Lagoon Amusement Park. I got a chance to ride it earlier this year and the only downside was the wait time (thanks to the day we went), otherwise the ride itself was definitely award worthy.
We’ll do a separate post about this soon, but Triotech does also have a new VR arcade title out on test that wasn’t at the show…
Zooom Studios
I did stop by and film a lot of Zooom’s products for PrimeTime, although this is one place where I first started having some issues with my camera and at least two videos I shot ended up unusable. Regardless, they had a lot of new products to show off, all of them with bright LED lighting and vibrant colors. This was also the debut of Open Ice Air Hockey, which is the spiritual successor to the Galaxy Collision by Barron Games (Zooom now owns Barron, for anyone who missed that development earlier this year).
Everyone I Missed
Even though I stayed an extra day over the usual, I still ended up missing a few companies. My apologies on that…you would think that being in town for five days would be more than enough time to catch it all (although technically four, as often there’s little you can see on Monday, or all the games are set up and off). But, when I tell people that IAAPA is a huge show, I don’t exaggerate.
Those I missed: Creative Works, Hero Zone VR, Hologate, Holovis, Really Big Crane Co., Rilix, Smart Industries, Superwing, Zero Latency.
IAAPA 2024 – Final Wrap
A month after IAAPA 2024, we’ve finally finished it up. It usually doesn’t take this long to finish the site coverage but then I have been a lot busier than normal in life, which made getting timely updates out a challenge.
Regardless, it was a great show this year, with a lot of energy and enthusiasm. I don’t know which game will be the best seller of them all, but there are a lot of great games that venues can already order to bring into their venues here soon.
I’m still stuck in paying off debt mode at my location, although I am very happy to report that this November was a complete turnaround from November 2023 (which had been my worse month of that year). This year had not been great, with it being a very slow Summer and Fall, until Nov. rolled around. Still, it’ll take several more months of things going great or better than they were for me to properly climb up to a better situation.
In case there is a stream update covering all the confirmed shipping dates and prices, keep your eye out for a link or update on the site and our social media channels. For now, which was your favorite new arcade game seen at IAAPA 2024?
The post IAAPA 2024 Wrap-Up Part 5: Redemption, Simulators & VR appeared first on Arcade Heroes.
Go on.... treat yourself to a new game.
