Guitar Hero Arcade Set to Debut at International Arcade Expo

[Jared Rea]

Guitar Hero Arcade Set to Debut at International Arcade Expo

Konami comes full circle, swallows its pride and joins forces with Activision-Blizzard and Raw Thrills to take the industry's biggest rhythm title to the arcades.

Pop quiz, hot shot. Activision-Blizzard is in control of a one billion dollar empire that you've essentially created. It's pumping out October [http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/53961]. Raw Thrills, the developer behind such critically acclaimed titles as Big Buck Hunter and Big Buck Hunter 2 is set to bring this unstoppable army of rock to your last bastion of relevance within the genre: the arcades.

What do you do, Konami? What do you do? You cash in any way you can.

The oft-rumored Guitar Hero Arcade will be making its Raw Thrills [http://www.bemanistyle.com/index.php/news/rumor-smashed-first-gh-arcade-pic-from-iaapa-setup-1131] of Illinois, best known for the bar-friendly shooter, Big Buck Hunter.

So while the advent of Guitar Hero Arcade is not surprising, the inclusion of Konami as a publishing partner most certainly is. Konami is no stranger to the field, having essentially prototyped the entire genre for the rhythm-gaming developers of today with their brand of Texas developer [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bemani].

Konami's inclusion on this deal is rather simple. The master of patents, Konami owns the rights to some of the more vital pieces of the technology required to make an arcade machine like this work. And since both Konami and Raw Thrills have distrubution agreements with Betson Enterprise [http://www.betson.com/], getting the two developers together to make something of this magnitude possible doesn't seem like much of a stretch.

Guitar Hero Arcade is due for release in 2009.

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[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Wait, they're still making arcade games?

 

[The_root_of_all_evil]

Wait, Street Fighter 4 isn't going into the arcades but Guitar Hero is? Shum mishtake shurely?

 

[dijital101]

Really, I can see this going one of two ways. The first being an absolute waste of money for all parties involved and these machines will be relegated to 7-11s and motel "gamerooms". Or this being a revitalizing breath for the arcade industry. With the big migration towards cooperative/communal gaming, arcades are poised (if attacked correctly) to make a big comeback.

Being just a couple of months shy of 30 I can remember the two big arcade booms. The first being the initial onset (pac-man, donkey kong, etc.) with hundreds of mindless kids tossing quarters into games that really didn't make sense. The second being the influx of fighting games in the early to mid 90's in which arcade owners made money hand-over-fist with kids trying to perfect Kano's finishing move. Achievement points are nothing compared to seeing your name at the top of the scoreboard for a month straight.


Places like Dave and Buster's (for those of you not in the US, Dave and Buster's is pretty much a giant arcade designed for adult's to enjoy. With casual dining and bars inside the gaming area) are already capitalizing on this concept. Games can be linked internationally now so people will dump more money into keeping their name at the top of the high score list.