The IAAPA Expo Europe 2024 Round-Up

The biggest IAAPA Expo Europe event to date has now wrapped up, and thanks to our sources that have been out there in Amsterdam this week (and some official social media channels), we can give you a post-show report. Read on to see the new arcade games hitting Europe soon that were shown off at IAAPA Expo Europe 2024 – these can also be seen as a primer for the larger IAAPA Expo in Orlando this November.

Huge thanks to Kevin Williams in particular for most of the photos and information you see here; The Stinger Report should have their own rundown of the show up soon too. A nod to Ted again also for sharing some additional sources and helping to draft up the post

IAAPA Expo Europe 2024

Though IAAPA organize several shows outside of the US now (their newest in the Middle East has just been announced for 2026), the one they hold for Europe is usually the biggest of those international branches. It also tends to bounce around the continent, whereas the US show has been locked to Orlando for many years and will continue to stay there until at least 2030. Last year it was held in Vienna, Austria, while this year they hopped over to the Netherlands. Next year will see it return to Barcelona, Spain (it was held there back in 2021), and it has been held in London on occasion too.

As mentioned at the start of the post, this IAAPA Expo Europe has been the biggest one to date, resoundingly breaking records in attendance numbers and several other metrics. Though not only for the arcade industry, that’s at least a good surface level sign of health for this side of the business, despite the more concerning trends in earnings we have touched on recently in some posts and videos.

Ace Amusement

Ace Amusement had a lot of representation at the show, from their own booth to their European distributors. They are getting out quite a bit of product out right now (as we also saw at IAAPA 2023), with some brand new games from them here that we hadn’t even previously caught at GTI Asia China Expo 2024. For those, they had a new Fast & Furious-like motion racer called Fast Racing seen here:

As well as that, Ace also showed off a new safari animal riding piece, Rush And Catch. Though not exactly like it (you’re certainly not racing around in a car here), shades of Jambo! Safari are abound here for those who remember it. This also seems to be playing on their last kid-friendly animal racing game, Surf League. If you scroll down to the UDC booth, there is another look at this game.

Then there is Skull Of Shadow, which we’ve mentioned on AH a few times by now. Here it was only available in the tethered 4-Player and mounted 3-Player editions, with no sign of the environmental 2-Player motion theater that was around at GTI earlier this month:

However, Cory at Amusement Source International did recently confirm that they will be carrying all three versions for North America, with just the 4P one on their IAAPA booth in November. Ace may well still have the others on their own booth though.

Bandai Namco Amusement Europe

As mentioned in our last post, the big launch for Bandai Namco Amusement Europe here was Angry Birds Boom!, which like all Raw Thrills product in Europe will be distributed by them there. From the looks of Kevin’s photos it was pretty popular at the show (he described it as “Angry Nerf!”):

For other Raw Thrills games, the standard two player models of Fast & Furious and Minecraft Dungeons Arcade were also there, and their latest VR works were represented well with both Godzilla Kaiju Wars and T-Rex Safari on hand, as seen below.

Alongside a smattering of non-Raw Thrills games from other companies that BNAE distribute into Europe (JET Games’ Mega Shot, Triotech’s Super Blaster), NBA Superstars was around too, although it’s slightly surprising considering the region. Perhaps a soccer game (UEFA Allstars?) would do better:

And BNAE did at least have one actual Namco product around too, making their booth not a total Raw Thrills fest (although it can only be seen in the background of this Minecraft photo – no head-on pics of this one). That would be their Gator Panic kiddie ride we’ve recently seen at some of the Chinese expos.

Epark

Like Yuto Games, this Chinese company posts a lot online (the below photo comes from their LinkedIn), and do also offer some pieces that should already be familiar to most for one reason or another… although the multi-puck hockey table Speed Hockey looks original at least (here’s a video of day 3 at their booth):

ELAUT

ELAUT’s booth had the company’s usual redemption offerings, such their E-Claw cranes, Superman Worlds United, and the new Popeye pusher we first saw back at Bowl Expo:

Electrocoin

Electrocoin brought along their regular stable of redemption and Dance Dance Revolution A20+, though the latter is looking increasingly outdated with everywhere else now two versions ahead…

ELMAC II

Italy’s oddly-named ELMAC II have a number of games we recently saw at the GTI Asia China Expo, though they are only really going to be selling them into their home country. That includes IGS and Wahlap’s Monster Eye 3 – it remains uncertain who will be selling it elsewhere, however.

The guns on this one take a small bit of inspiration from Raw Thrills’ Godzilla Kaiju Wars (namely in the multiple LED chain gun barrels):

ELMAC are also the first of a few distributors here who had the latest works by Ace Amusement on show. As well as Fast Racing they are among one of the earliest distributors to grab Skull Of Shadow; Air Combat was also spied in a recent InterGame ad of theirs, but didn’t seem to be here:

For another game not by Ace from ELMAC, here’s a new one by Tecway/Mecpower to the right here. Called Crazy Car, it looks like another multiplayer kiddie-focused racer in the Hot Wheels: King of the Road style. Tecway will be at IAAPA in November for the first time in a while, so perhaps this will turn up there too:

Game Castle

Here we have a distributor out of the Netherlands that doesn’t pop up on the radar often, though their booth was pretty big with a few notable pieces. Besides some passed through from Bandai Namco Amusement Europe and Sega Amusements, they offer a few Chinese games, plus Bay Tek’s Goatz N Ropes:

JNC Sales

UK-based JNC Sales have been distributing some lesser-known games out of China in recent years, with a lot of it coming from Nitto Game. Those have tended to veer towards ‘high seas’ territory though; Crazy Drone here by ZS Cheer is no exception, with it being a blatant rip-off of Sega’s Drone Racing Genesis…

Though not really visible here, they are carrying Leon Amusement’s recent Thunder Attack card/gun game in Europe, despite it looking like Electrocoin were going to previously. It also seems they have a trampoline game called Let’s Jump (similar to UNIS’ much older Pogo Jump), as seen above.

Magic Play

This a name we haven’t seen in a while – at one time they were frequently appearing at IAAPA in the States and often would debut a new piece. At this show they have Super Wings by Ace (seen earlier on Game Castle’s booth in a slightly different form), plus some newer redemption pieces:

More interesting though is Arcade Quest, one of the few stick and button cabinets seen at the show. Exactly what this has isn’t clear… although it certainly looks like a multigame cabinet, and the Pokemon-like artwork feels pretty brave (and lawsuit-baiting) considering recent events:

As a note, they are not presently listed on the expo map for IAAPA 2024, so it looks like they will continue to stick to the EU realm for now.

LAI Games

Though they had a lot more product shown over on Sega Amusements’ booth (seen later in this post), LAI did also have a smaller booth of their own like they often do – this photo coming from their Instagram. Besides showcasing their catalogue of existing games, the only one there physically was Ace’s Air Strike:

Leon Amusement

Recently mentioned in our GTI Asia China Expo coverage, Leon Amusement are one of the main purveyors of all the shooting gallery games we’ve been seeing out of JET Games and others recently (as well as Thunder Attack seen above). Lots of those have been video-based, but they also have huge electromechanical versions – like this OnTarget, which is now confirmed to be seeing distribution from Sega Amusements. This wasn’t on SAI’s own booth (more on that later), but it’s likely it will turn up in November.

PrimeTime Amusements/Subsoccer

Kevin didn’t take any photos from PrimeTime’s stand so this one comes from LinkedIn again, but they had a new coin-op/pay-to-play version of Subsoccer. Called Subsoccer Arcade, the non-coin version of this game debuted at PrimeTime’s booth last year and by all accounts that I’ve heard, it’s been a top seller. Aside from the fun concept, that can also be attributed to the low price – these are under $3000 – although I do not know where the commercial version lands on that scale yet. PrimeTime will also be at IAAPA 2024 with this:

If you can access it, here’s a video on LinkedIn of the game being played at the show. The way you keep score is certainly old school… the honesty system, as opposed to sensors. I suppose that’s the only way it can really work though, since a user may inadvertently kick past the goal, thus setting the sensor off.

Retro Arcade Remake

This one is a little bit of a surprise. We’ve covered Retro Arcade Remake from time to time, as they have been to plenty of trade shows in the US. This is the first time that they have gone overseas though (as far as I am aware). For this event, they brought their Ice Cold Beer remake, which has been available for a while now, but it was accompanied by two new pieces. The first is an official remake of Taito’s Zeke’s Peak. The concept behind that is the same as Ice Cold Beer, just without the alcohol theme.

The other game is hard to see in the above pic, but thanks to this tweet, you can more clearly see the two cocktail Atari cabinets, one holding the brand new Food Fight Frenzy that was unveiled back in April, and the other I presume is the Warlords remake. Unfortunately, I have no idea whether either of these games are available yet, but I would assume that they are or will be soon, given they were at this show. That said, RAR has brought games that aren’t shipping soon to shows before, so we’ll see if I hear back from RAR.

Sega Amusements International

The main two new pieces on Sega Amusements’ booth here were High Five (the multi-claw crane game developed by Playmore that we have talked about previously) and Allstars Ultimate Shot, a new disc toss redemption game that can be seen more clearly in this LinkedIn post. Otherwise, the focus was more on all the existing pieces they represent only in Europe from ICE and LAI (like Bandai Namco, Sega Amusements also serve as an equipment distributor across the continent):

Alongside their own Zombies! Ready, Deady Go! out of shot here, SAI did also have IGS/Baohui’s Hyper Cross and their most recent collaboration with 3MindWave, Apex Rebels. SAI do tend to unveil their bigger new games at either the main IAAPA show in November or failing that EAG, so this less eventful booth isn’t too much of a surprise to see. It is possible that their next video piece is already testing out there somewhere in the UK though, we just haven’t seen any photos of it yet…

Stern Pinball

Though they are represented by Electrocoin in Europe, that doesn’t stop Stern from having their own small booth too. Here they showed off their existing games and their latest effort, The Uncanny X-Men:

Superwing

Another company that were last mentioned in our coverage of GTI Asia China Expo, Superwing have been starting to place their own direct presence at some IAAPA shows of late. Here they showed off a couple of new games that we did not touch on in the GTI coverage; Skywalk (an Air Strike clone) and Marksman (a Bullseye Crack Shot/Mega Shot clone), as well as the older Happy Ocean fishing videmption game.

The amount of shooting gallery games like Marksman around nowadays is pretty big… wonder if we’re reaching the end of this trend or if it’s still to hit the peak:

TouchMagix

Kevin did not get any photos of TM, but as they were there and are an AH site advertiser they do get a mention. Nothing new-new from them either, though:

UDC

UDC are another company that are very cosy with Ace Amusement, though in terms of their new stuff all they had was Rush And Catch. The rest of their booth was taken up by their other regular offerings, including StepManiaX (with the Step Revolution crew on hand as usual).

For another look at Rush And Catch, here:

UNIS

Despite not having a proper European base yet (much of what they do is sold there by distributors like Instance Automatics), UNIS had their own booth here at IAAPA Expo Europe. All of what they brought was existing games though – none of the new things we saw at GTI this month.

Considering it was at GTI and is simply a smaller version of an existing game, you’d think they’d at least have the new cost-reduced edition of Bigfoot Mayhem – but nope:

Valley-Dynamo

Valley-Dynamo came over from the US to Europe to appear, though like UNIS they didn’t have anything new-new either – just Jet Hoops and Jet-Pong, plus some other social entertainment offerings of theirs (which as Kevin has pointed out is booming right now in Europe, though this particular photo actually comes from an early setting up post that they shared in AH’s very own Facebook group…):

Wakee Amusement

This was not the only booth which had the “new wave cranes” (trademark KWP!) out of China, but as Kevin sent this one specifically, here it is. Wakee Amusement’s duck-themed neon cranes are just a few of many, which seem to be increasingly muscling in over video games, immersive experiences, and even traditional ticket redemption these days at some locations… low cost + super high ROI/profit wins the day it seems.

WIK

WIK are one of the select manufacturers in Europe producing their own pieces, which have been sold by the likes of Bandai Namco most recently. One such example of those is their ball rollers, which BNAE have put out as Pac-Man Roller. Besides that they have a few others here, including these air hockey tables.

Immersive Reality Rooms

Here are a couple of what were first dubbed “Immersive Reality Rooms” on AH in a Newsbytes a couple months back, after some thinking about the technology and what it could be called at the IAAPA INOWIZE QBIX press conference last November. Regarding this space, INOWIZE have reported some of their most successful results with the QBIX over here, with a couple new experiences in the pipeline.

Then another company pushing this technology is NeoXperiences, who posted this video of their entry into it on LinkedIn. The start of that shows a second new example of the Angry Birds IP being used for amusement in their ball toss rendition of it, and a different one towards the end as well.

VR

Lastly, we have a few virtual reality pieces of news out of the show. A lot of the announcements there are in the arena-focused and attraction side of things now, such as Hologate’s new wireless-based HMD setup that was shown off on their booth. But as well as that, Mack Rides unveiled their new Coastiality FLOWRYDE system, which combines VR with a new motion platform of theirs:

In terms of some more VR arena setups, VEX Solutions were also there with their offering, though this one has been around for a little while now. With the exception of what Raw Thrills are doing and the occasional piece from other companies, these do seem to be where the tech is prevailing in amusement now.

Overall

In summary, IAAPA Expo Europe 2024 has looked like a definite success from afar. When it comes to some trends in arcades that we can highlight, Kevin has pointed out to us that, as mentioned, the neon cranes are indeed everywhere, to the extent that they are outstripping ticket redemption… but the biggest thing going on for us would probably be Angry Birds Boom! getting its first showing. That one is also notable for being among a few examples of that IP currently in amusement, alongside others.

Besides that, social entertainment is gathering pace in Europe too, and in terms of video again, one thing really jumping out here is just how much new product Ace Amusement are getting out there. This was already becoming obvious at last IAAPA in Orlando, but it seems even more pronounced here, even from a distance. Hopefully their quality is improving with this as well.

Thanks once again to Kevin Williams of The Stinger Report for sharing many of the photos and information you have read here. Which of the new arcade games of IAAPA Expo Europe 2024 interest you most?

The post The IAAPA Expo Europe 2024 Round-Up appeared first on Arcade Heroes.

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