Newsbytes: Japan Amusement Expo; VEX HyperDash; Multimorphic Ships Portal Pinball; More

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Welcome to Newsbytes, a series here on Arcade Heroes that covers quick news from around the world of arcade and pinball gaming. The summer lull is officially over now, with more big stories centered on the upcoming trade shows going to press; there is still a few more waiting in the wings, but in the meantime, we have a few smaller happenings that are already out there.

I also want to introduce a new writer to Arcade Heroes by the name of Jack Frost. He hasn’t posted anything yet, but he will be contributing more to our pinball and game review coverage in the near future. He will also be interviewing John from “I (heart) Pizza” in Indiana this week. We’ve already learned some very interesting things about that business, although it’s not exactly what you would call an arcade.

Now, onto the news:

Japan Amusement Expo 2025 Announcements

As well as the upcoming IAAPA shows and GTI Asia China Expo that have been mentioned on here of late, a fourth major trade show is near. Since 2023, Japan’s Amusement Expo has been held in November, and that scheduling is continuing here (which does have the unfortunate effect of making things difficult for the few who want to attend both it and IAAPA in Orlando that month, but what can you do…). As such, we are starting to see a few early announcements for the event trickle out, the biggest of which being a first look at what Taito’s booth will be like. Their site is still dry on specific details, but it’s good to see them out there:

Other announcements have included Sega and Bandai Namco opening their own sites, and a special exhibit for 60 years of the crane game in Japan. Also, alongside the aforementioned closeness to IAAPA, one of the biggest complaints last year for most overseas people coming to the show was how the Amusement Music Festival (their dedicated concert sub-event bringing Sega, Bandai Namco, Taito and Konami’s rhythm game wings together) handled its own ticket sales, requiring anyone buying them to have a Japanese phone number at their disposal. They have now taken steps to make that process much easier, which is pretty good to hear. Of course, more will be forthcoming on this event as it approaches, so be sure to stay tuned to the site.

UNIS Launches Monster Jet Riders

UNIS are currently ramping up production on a number of games as we approach the upcoming trade shows, and they have also dropped a new racing game by the name of Monster Jet Riders, which we first saw at AAA 2025 and IAAPA Expo Asia earlier this year. It comes in addition to that new Top Speed Legend game we saw earlier, and it appears to be in the same “universe” as their hit Monster Kart game. At first I thought it was all about watercrafts, but while the motion controller platform makes it seem that way, it’s actually a futuristic jet-engine craft… and the video shows ground courses instead of racing in the sky. Since it’s on their website, it should be available and shipping now.

I would also note that UNIS has also launched a few more emoji redemption games. In case you’re interested in those, you’ll want to talk to your UNIS distributor.

VEX HyperDash

A common theme we’ve seen with many once-VR focused amusement companies of late is them expanding beyond that into augmented/mixed reality, and we have a major example coming onto the scene. A common feature of many recent FECs has been Mixed Reality or Immersive Reality Rooms (either MXR or IRR if you like acronyms) like Valo Motion’s ValoArena, or Inowize’s QBIX. Now, VEX Solutions (previously known for their VR arenas) are launching their own take on the idea with their first ever arcade game called HyperDash. This one is closer in its application to TouchMagix’s Magix Floor, which is much more of an MXR piece than an IRR one, with the interactivity appearing to be mainly with the floor. This will debut at IAAPA Expo Europe in a couple of weeks. Read a little more about this at Intergame Online.

Another Look At Superwing’s Mini World

One game that got mentioned in our post dedicated to several new games out of the country at the end of July was Superwing’s Minecraft-lookalike Mini World shooter. At that time they had only released a trailer for the water gun-based version of the game. Now, we have a deeper look at the bigger motion theater version with this one. The gameplay is certainly Minecraft-adjacent, although seeing this does show that you could do a proper Minecraft-light gun game and that would have probably done pretty well. I’m not sure if the capture card is at fault for the gameplay footage or if the frame rate is actually that choppy… if it’s the latter, I would tell them to upgrade the graphics card in that machine ASAP.

Multimorphic Ships Portal Pinball

The next few pieces will cover pinball, so I hope that you like to read. This is a blog after all For the first of these, way back in March, we ran a story that Multimorphic Pinball would be launching Valve’s Portal as a part of their modular P3 Platform. In doing some research into this, it appears that a a few people have received their kits, however, the game is still nearing full production. This is why it is still listed as something that you can pre-order on their website. As such, you might be able to find it out there if you are super lucky – it isn’t clear from the checking that we did if any of those kits have ended up on location yet.

But also, things became confusing this weekend when a few users from the Japanese side of Twitter/X started noting the presence of a pinball machine on test over there running a Portal theme. At first, I thought that it was Multimorphic’s, but that turned out to not be the case; it appears to be the super-elusive commercial version of Zen Studios’ Pinball FX2. Back in 2016 I came across a version of this at IAAPA, but Zen never replied to their emails, and if it went anywhere, it was very much under-the-radar. It still isn’t clear what this is we’re seeing here – whether it has official backing and is being tested for mass production, or not. But we’ll keep an eye on it nonetheless. Since posts from Twitter/X won’t embed: source #1, source #2.

Turner Pinball Ships Merlin’s Arcade

Turner Pinball is one company that we haven’t mentioned much on here, as most of the “boutique” pinball developers don’t focus much on the commercial side of the market. Part of that is born out in how they don’t attend commercial events like IAAPA or Amusement Expo, but they will be at events like Pinball Expo. That is where I had a chance to play their interesting original design Ninja Eclipse when I visited PE last year.

For those who are interested in something else that’s original/not-attached to a license (don’t worry, I’ll get to that in the next bit below), Turner has begun shipping Merlin’s Arcade. This is based on the ancient Arthurian legend that often finds its way into fantasy content, mixed in with the modern idea of an arcade. Per the brief description, this game will let you: “Challenge the Knights of the Round Table, the evil sorceress Morgan Le Fay, and the wizard Merlin in a variety of arcade games in this wild, uproarious adventure!“. I assume “arcade games” means to say some integrated mini-games on the table/game modes. The art style is also much more cartoony & family-friendly, as opposed to gritty & realistic.

There are two versions of this available, Arcade and Legend Edition, with the latter coming with more features and niceties for a higher price. That said, even the LE comes in for less than a Stern Premium or a Jersey Jack Standard, so that has to count for something. Then again, most of the LE’s are probably going into personal collections instead of onto a route, but I still appreciate seeing both an original design and something reasonably priced, when pinball doesn’t tend to earn very well.

Rant: Why Star Wars Right Now?

Ok, now it’s time to ruffle some feathers. I was going to put this into the news story about Stern Pinball’s upcoming Star Wars: The Fall of the Empire; however, I hate to use the announcement space to dunk on a new machine, as that doesn’t feel fair to the developers. There is a still a place for criticism, but there is a time and a place for everything. We do try to keep the news neutral, then perhaps an opinion after that, but for this particular item, it grew into such a rant that it is better suited for elsewhere – such as here.

Read on or skip to the headlines below, whatever your preference.

[Rant mode: ON…]

Ever since the initial tease of Stern’s next Star Wars pinball a couple weeks back I’ve been baffled by this choice for a few reasons. I voiced my doubts in a comment on Stern’s teaser video, but then Stern or YouTube’s commenting system stopped letting me express myself, so here we are instead.

This is the third (fourth if you count the Star Wars Home pin) Star Wars game in only seven years to come from Stern. In that time, Star Wars as a brand has gone through a decline that should be noticeable to most. While I never would have called myself a diehard, I was a SW fan growing up and loved it as much as any other kid I knew. I saw The Phantom Menace at midnight launch with my co-workers; I’ve enjoyed various games (Empire Strikes Back on the Atari 2600, Rogue Squadron, KOTOR & Trilogy Arcade FTW); and have owned several SW arcade machines over the years. I even did a “Star Wars At The Arcade” article back in 2014, where I was certainly more enthusiastic about the brand at the time. Then Disney decided that “making it up as we go along” was a wise strategy for handling a $4 billion purchase.

In the comments of the above teaser video, the pushback I got from a commenter or two was that this choice for a theme will “bring in the kids”. It’s an argument that is used pro/against every pin out there, but it doesn’t really hold water on the pro side of things with Star Wars any longer. That logic probably would have worked just fine 20 years ago, but the best appeal to kids that they could do was already done with The Mandalorian. While I don’t know how that’s done for everyone else, I’ve often seen it perform the worst among my pinball machines, often falling way below The Addams Family.

While it is true that Baby Yoda was the brand’s ‘fidget spinner’ for a few months, what have they done since that has had kids talking about Star Wars? Next to nothing. I have kids and one of them was obsessed with Baby Yoda for a few months, much like everyone else at her school. But she didn’t watch Season 3 of Mandalorian, and she wasn’t interested in anything else with Star Wars (I showed her A New Hope, but she didn’t care to keep watching into ESB). She’d rather watch old reruns of Jessie or Bluey, if she watches TV at all. I’m confident she’s not an outlier. My other two older kids don’t care about SW at all; they spend their time on anime or YouTube videos if they do watch anything.

But since that’s a little anecdotal, here are more concrete indicators. I’ve said before – as soon as The Last Jedi came along, all of my Star Wars games stopped making money and they never got better. My awesome Star Wars Battle Pod collapsed so hard, it never managed to earn enough each month after TLJ to cover its monthly payments, and I ended up selling it right after Rise of Skywalker debuted. Vendors of new SW books see a similar trend. The barometer has been more apparent through other data points; the uneven merchandise sales (good for OG, but bad for Disney sequels outside of “Baby Yoda”), failed big budget games, the failure of the Galactic Starcruiser hotel, the growing number of announced-then-canceled projects, the ever-dwindling viewership numbers.

That last article I linked there tries to soften the blow in their analysis, but it’s very clear if you pay attention to the hard data that people are not tuning into Star Wars as much as they used to. What just makes things worse is how massively expensive a lot of these shows have been, only to see the viewership evaporate. Maybe I’m missing something, but none of this shows a positive growth trend and a new pinball machine isn’t ever going right that ship, no matter how amazing it is. The Mandalorian pinball wasn’t a bad game design to begin with. Yet it’s rarely ever a top pinball earner, at least for me anyway.

If you look into the Star Wars fan and critic community across its various pockets, you can find no shortage of content that has been lamenting the downfall of the franchise, some of which were very favorable to Disney even after The Last Jedi, but became more and more disillusioned with the brand and them when they didn’t like the direction that things continued to go. The main point is that whole Star Wars brand has unfortunately breached what is dubbed the “trust thermocline”. This is a point when a company, brand, or franchise has damaged the trust of their consumers for so long that said buyers become either indifferent or hostile towards something they had once loved. Instead of being your ambassadors, they become your biggest detractors. The result is a decline in revenue when it should be a profit farm.

You can reverse a trust thermocline, but it generally takes a long time, a lot of money, and completely new management to make it happen. Atari is a perfect example of a company who did this back in 1982, which resulted in the market crash of the entire North American game industry. Only 40 years later are they becoming a brand that people respect again, but even then they still have a ways to go. Which is why I still don’t understand what Stern or Andamiro is doing in making more Star Wars games. My best guess is that they are oblivious to this fact, or they think it’s just a minority of haters. If anyone at Stern was aware of these problems and went ahead anyways, then I hope that Lucasfilm gave them a massive discount on the license this time around. If they weren’t aware, then they need to get a new researcher.

But let’s say that none this was an issue. Why does it seem like the pinball community is totally cool with “flooding the zone” with more Star Wars games? Four games on the same thing in less than ten years?

I’m probably not as critical as I can be on the quality side of things in our industry, being more positive than maybe I should at times, but come on. This makes defending the industry a chore sometimes. Why join Disney in making more of the same old content? Can we not make a design on something else? Since they have a Disney license, why not make this quarter’s game based on TRON: Ares? Especially since John Borg is designing this new SW game, and he did TRON: Legacy, that would’ve made sense.

Sure, the jury is still out on whether Ares will be good or not, but TRON seemingly hasn’t breached the “trust thremocline” and it doesn’t have half of the issues dragging Star Wars down (and besides, TRON arcade games always seem to outperform fan expectations over the film as it is). When pinball fans are asked about what they’d like to see done as a Vault model, TRON: Legacy pops up as a top contender all the time.

Missing that opportunity alone makes this a bizarre and disappointing choice. That’s why I also half-joked that if you had to do a space theme right now, go with a brand that isn’t declining, like Stargate SG-1 or even Babylon 5 (the latter is getting a reboot soon). Pinball has shown over and over again that you can have successful games with older franchises – just as long as it hasn’t crashed and burned like Star Wars.

Perhaps this new Star Wars game will be a smash hit in sales, and bring people in more than the Godzilla pin. If so, I’ll eat a nerfherder. But at this point, I don’t have a bad feeling about making that bet…

Headlines

Note that I recently posted about American Pinball to emphasize that they are not out of business – I ran that statement by AP first to ensure accuracy, and thought it was clear about Cuphead, but since it wasn’t, their 7th game is in the works, it’s just not Cuphead. There’s a mess about this behind-the-scenes, but that’s a whole other matter. I can’t say what it is yet; stay tuned for Pinball Expo 2025 on that one.

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