Welcome to another mind-blowing edition of Newsbytes, a weekly blog post that curates a bunch of arcade news from around the web for you to chew on over your weekend. This week is admittedly a little light on news, as there still isn’t a whole lot happening in the wonderful world of arcades, but there’s enough to discuss so let’s get to it:
Diving Into The History Of A Legend: The Sega R360
I know that many readers, including AH site writer SaraAB87, are big fans of the Sega R360 that was launched back in 1990. I’ve only come across one once myself, and it was quite a sight to behold, with a side of intimidation. If you have ever wondered how the game came into being, then I highly suggest that you check out this interview with some of the R360 development staff on 4Gamer.net. Penned by a former Sega employee, it is in Japanese so an online translator is imperfect, but you should be able to glean enough from it, including the story of how it was inspired by a device in Perth, Australia to how the first prototype was made from a wooden cable drum, the cabinet molds, testing and so on. It’s a really fascinating piece that also touches on some other “mid-scale attraction concepts” that Sega put together back in the day, so give it a read!
Here is the Sega R360 I came across in Utah over 10 years ago…it needed a bit of work to get up and running, but the guy who had it in his possession knew his stuff.
Pengo! Online & Rolling Gunner Have Been Released In Japan
Speaking of Sega, they have decided to jumpstart their arcade-based digital content distribution network with the release of two new games this week. The first is a
