IAAPA 2025 Wrap-Up Part 6: Redemption, Simulators & More

Welcome to the sixth and final part of our IAAPA 2025 wrap-up, the group of posts covering all the new amusement showcased out in Orlando exactly a month ago. It feels a little strange to realize that this amount of time has passed already, but it is a testament to how much there was at the show. This shows strength in the sector as far as opportunities go, although there are other economic headwinds that have been present for a while now that are still causing problems for many operators out there, myself included.

As part six, this is to wrap up the many “loose ends” that haven’t been mentioned already: redemption, simulators (mostly of the immersive variety), a few Chinese companies who had their own smaller booths, and everything in-between that’s worth a mention. These companies will be ran down in alphabetical order.

As I previously noted on the blog, there was a strong pull back on VR developments compared to previous years – this felt more like IAAPA 2016 in that regard, when there were a few around, but not a ton. When it comes to such attractions, we’re seeing a stronger shift towards Immersive Reality Rooms, and that includes everything from projection mapping to giant LED pixel floors, to LED matrix panels. Again, I’m not saying that VR is dead, but it is more focused to a few companies rather than several dozen.

For the previous five parts of this wrap-up, find them at the links below:

• IAAPA 2025 Part 1 (Raw Thrills, Wahlap, Alan-1, TouchMagix, Blue Motion Games)
• IAAPA 2025 Part 2 (Bandai Namco, Sega Amusements, LAI Games)
• IAAPA 2025 Part 3 (exA-Arcadia, AVS Companies, JET Games)
• IAAPA 2025 Part 4 (Andamiro USA, Pinball, UNIS)
• IAAPA 2025 Part 5 (Amusement Source International, Coastal Amusements, Ace)

If you’d prefer ingesting everything that has been covered in a YouTube video instead, the Arcade Heroes channel will soon have a livestreamed rundown of these posts; I had hoped to get to that and this final part sooner, but I’ve been sick with some kind of virus for the past two weeks and it’s partially affected my voice (I certainly could not handle 3-4 hours on a livestream, which is how long they usually end up being on there). My thanks to Ted for helping on these and some other posts in the meantime.

Bay Tek Entertainment

Bay Tek had three major redemption games that were the focus of their booth this year – Dippin’ Dots Drop, Nailed It, and Perfect Pump. Of those, Nailed It was fun; I just seemed to only catch it when no one else was playing, and it’s strongest with four people going at it at the same time.

I heard Perfect Pump brought up by others the most, although I was not the only one who came away a bit shocked by the price that I was hearing get quoted – not sure if that was accurate or going to hold, but what I had heard (well above $10k but not quite $20k) seemed extremely steep for a game of it’s caliber. The cabinet build was fine, with a cool marquee, but I just find it hard to believe that the cost has to be that high for something this simple. It will be sold in both single and dual models.

It’s also worth noting that they also had a new zombie shooter game for their HYPERDECK VR system, called Rotten Dead. This is one of the few new VR games that was at the show, although I should note that I did not get a chance to see the new Terminator game that Hero Zone had going:

ELAUT

While Elaut Companies (Elaut USA, Benchmark Games International, Coast-To-Coast Entertainment) don’t tend to focus much on video games and more cranes/redemption, they are still a big player in the market. Their new unveil, which was behind a wall (spoilers for the thumbnail below), was their eClaw 2.0 system, which won an IAAPA Brass Ring Award. As noted in the video, they had other product there as they also have a distributor in the States, although I’m not exactly sure how that all works (often there are distribution networks that cover international clients who represent a number of games at IAAPA, like Bandai Namco).

They did have a new video game (of sorts) on hand too – Shuffle Board. I suppose you’d call it half video/half physical… although maybe half videmption/half physical is more accurate in this case. This has three modes and it can function as a “normal” arcade game, where you play for points/fun, not tickets.

Epark

I found this Chinese company at random while walking around, but we have heard of Epark before, and their online presence has been very consistent in recent months. Some of that has been promoting ‘high seas’ product in the literal sense, however this original pirate-themed shooter they had doesn’t infringe on anything. The video below is brief, but it looked fun and the graphics were okay.

ICE

The redemption wizards at ICE debuted Odin’s Hammer Strike, which has an impressive presentation with a simple, carnival game premise – hit the target as hard as you can with the hammer. Surprisingly, this has a leaderboard function, which is accessed using the buttons on the panel. Not something that you see often, if at all, with games that are this simple and all-redemption focused.

Other than that, I was surprised that ICE didn’t have anything else that was new-new. They did have new marquees for their Smash-N-Win games, but that game started shipping earlier this year. I suppose they don’t need new-new titles as much with their current crop of games like Neon Bowling already doing pretty well, but they did have space for more, as you can see in the video above.

INOWIZE

With how busy things were, I did not get a chance to really venture out into other parts of the show until Thursday, where I came across INOWIZE and their latest QBIX games as is fairly usual by now. We’ve covered QBIX many times since 2022, and now they have nine games as a part of the platform, with a few I had not seen previously. The Sweet Scoops game was clever and perfect for the format:

The latest release they have for the platform is called Last Defense. Now I don’t play a ton of mobile games, but on the rare occasion that I have indulged, I’ve seen tons of the ads for those games where you control a small group of soldiers up against hordes; passing through gates to either give yourself a power-up or more guys as it seems to game out attrition. I never bothered to click on the promos and see what those games were all about, but apparently they are fake games – they take you to a completely different title. Aside from the false advertising aspect, it’s a bit bizarre to me that no one has made too many actual games like that. So, INOWIZE decided to go in that direction with Last Defense.

Now it’s not completely like that game either as you can see here – there’s more control and gun game action that goes on, probably because in this format, just running through gates as a group is not super compelling. But good on them for catching something that does have interest and doing something with it.

Leon Amusement

China’s Leon were already mentioned extensively in part 3, where we saw JET Games continuing to carry some of their product under different names for the West, but they also turned up with their own small booth behind LAI Games with a couple of exclusive pieces that haven’t been picked up yet. One of them, Flamestone Gun, is effectively a cardless four player extension of their Thunder Attack seen a year back, which Amusement Source International sold into North America. As ever, the guns on this are very impressive, bringing to mind the old Vulcan-M game by Korea’s long-defunct Rassen:

Leon also had a curious motion shooter in the form of Dragon Knight. This is on a similar path to Ace’s Dragon Kingdom in being inspired by Adrenaline’s Drakons Realm Keepers, but unlike Ace’s effort, this one is slightly more polished software-wise, and goes for a vastly different approach with its cabinet to the extent that it more closely resembles Godzilla Kaiju Wars Deluxe there. It’s not on par with Godzilla, but it is a definite leap over Ace’s game. This actually debuted earlier than Godzilla in China though, as our first glimpse of it was at the AAA show in May, before UNIS unveiled the non-VR Godzilla at GTI in September.

Shock Park Attractions

The below basketball attraction is only for FECs that Shock Park supply with a big enough budget and nice amount of space, but if all of that is applicable and you want to really stop people in their tracks, Big Hoops is one way to do it. It has a robust player system controlled by a touchscreen and their own software, although I got a long phone call that interrupted the more detailed explanation I was receiving about it.

Team Play

Team Play have been strongly focused on some video arcade-adjacent things in recent times, such as kiddie rides, mechanical redemption, and photo booths, but this time they did show off a new wheel redemption piece that will effectively replace their Carnival Wheel. Ghostbusters Wheel is a clever design that does not use physically spinning hardware in this instance, but with similar screen technology to the one found in Carnival Wheel (micro LED matrix panels), it has a convincing effect. I saw more than one person assume that the panels were spinning, such is the illusion. It was a nice touch that they built some mini games into this as well, giving it slightly more depth than the typical wheel spinner.

They also had a new polar-themed redemption piece, Ice Tour, aside from touting their other already available games like the Pix Place Photo Booth and Candy Forge.

Triotech

Triotech had a press conference that I missed, where they had unveiled a large immersive game room attraction, a multi-room attraction, and a new Augmented Reality go kart product. Those will launch next year, but they did not have examples to try right at the show. They did have the new 2-Player model of the Super Blaster however, which can work for smaller FEC locations compared to the QUBE and other Super Blaster model. If you’re looking for top-of-the-line graphics in the arcade, here you go:

UNICO USA

This company was my very last stop at the show, but they aren’t the last video to make at this point. Similar to last year but in a slightly better spot (last year they were very tough to find; this year they were in a slightly better spot in the water rides area). UNICO’s booth here featured their latest LCD screens (4:3 30″, 25″, and 19″), the U3 Raiden Nova Blast cabinet, and some of their handheld retro game devices. On the U3 Raiden cab, it’s intended for home use (the license on the Raiden games including not covering commercial), but since it’s using their Nova Blast cabinet, it can operate JAMMA or JVS games too, and comes with a coin slot. Pre-orders for it are open now, with shipments coming in Jan/Feb. of next year:

Valo Motion

Like INOWIZE and a few others, Valo was in an area of the show where I did not have the chance to spend much time, but at the very least I did get to capture a little bit of their exergames, which were drawing some great attention from a group of kids. This company has always embraced Augmented/Mixed Reality over VR, and they seem to have been ahead of the curve, given where things are headed:

VEX Solutions

Another company in that FEC area who did start off purely as a VR company, but is making a pivot is VEX Solutions with their VEX Party Dash. This had debuted early in the year at IAAPA Expo Europe and as far as MXR attractions go, they’ve got a excellent system going here. It blends the idea of projection mapped walls – without projectors (LED dot matrix panels) – as well as the various solid color LED panel systems that were seen at the show (I heard of four others being exhibited – Hyper Grid is one example). While the expense from these panels is much higher, the versatility of setting up two giant screens that you can step on and touch over just solid giant pixel colors is pretty self-evident.

IMHO, this is the direction that we’ll see the industry move towards, as this truly creates something that you can’t get at home and it comes without the headache/hassle of wearable tech. That isn’t to say that all arcade games will go this route, but it certainly will replace VR arenas.

Yuto Games

Finally, my apologies to the Yuto crew – I did pass by them a couple of times, but I was on my way to a couple of other appointments when I did, and unfortunately I did not get the chance to stop by and check their stuff out. I did hear that their Big Beast Hunter was different in how it works from Big Buck Hunter, and I was curious to play both it and Crazy Drive for myself, but alas, I’ll have to wait until next year most likely. Fortunately, they continue to be keen on using Western social media, so here’s their own highlights:

Overall

Summing the show up as a whole, IAAPA 2025 was a success, and the busiest one for me that I’ve ever been to. It was also the most attended IAAPA event in history, and that was in spite of some clients from certain regions not attending (I heard that there were some known companies in both Europe and the Middle East who were unable to attend – I’m not sure if that had to do with the US government shutdown, which had been disrupting air travel close up to the show or if other factors might have been involved).

Unfortunately, how busy I was meant that I did not get to meet with everyone and missed a few people I had said I would connect with in advance. I also missed out on a couple of get-togethers, although one of them was due to some emergency requirements with one of my jobs that had to be done last minute and kept me up until 2am. My sincere apologies on all of that, as it is important to me to show up when I say I will.

There are still more videos to edit from the event, with only a few more to go, so stay tuned to the channel for those and a streamed rundown of all six wrap-ups. There should also soon be an exA updates post with some of the newer videos of their games, and news on one or two of them shipping.

Overall I am hopeful that 2026 will be panning out well with these new games, although from the perspective of my arcade and not the show, this year has sadly been much slower than I had anticipated. Business continues to follow an uneven decline from past years, and while a few things out there have come down in price, the cost of games hasn’t, which makes investing more difficult. The bottom will be reached eventually, although for myself, a lot depends on the location. I am looking into some possibilities to change that for my own place, and have also taken steps in getting a card system, although I’ll still be operating both tokens and cards for a while. If one possibility I’ve been looking into works out, then I will be getting several of the games that debuted here too, so that could be exciting.

What did you think of IAAPA 2025? Which of the new arcade games showcased at the show interest you the most? Sound off on one of our social media channels about it

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