Silent Hill Arcade, Tekken 6, and a lot of wacky games.

Unlike in the good ol’ US of A, Japanese arcades are still thriving. And every year they have an expo to show off all the new arcade games and arcade technology called the AOU expo. Not unlike the console space, the theme (well, what seemed to be the theme anyway) this year was “touching is good.” Yes, that’s right, our pal the DS has influenced even the arcade industry.

Most of the touch screen games were quiz games, but there were games like Konami’s Otomedius, a Parodius/Gradius fusion starring half naked girls who always seem to be blushing (more impressions here), and a rogue-like dungeon crawler by the name of Eternal Knights that also made use of the touch screen. As for games with more traditional inputs, Sega had the mysterious gun fighting game 2 Spicy and the much anticipated and super goofy Die Hard Arcade EX available to play (more on that here), in addition to a hose of Japan-centric games and, of course, Virtua Fighter 5.

Bandai Namco showed the first video of Tekken 6 (you can watch it here), which honestly didn’t look too hot, and also had playable versions of Mario Kart Arcade GP 2, Wangan Midnight 3, and an 8-player network shooting game called New Space Order.

Cave, makers of shooter classics such as DoDon Pachi Dai-Oujou and Mushi Hime-sama, showed off their new gigantic-breasts-and-food shooter Muchi Muchi Pork! (you can read our full impressions here), while Guilty Gear makers Arc System Works unveiled their new 2.5D fighter called Battle Fantasia. Taito showed off Chase HQ2, sequel to the cult hit from 1988, while Square Enix had an unplayable version of Dragon Quest: Monster Battle Road on display. And for those who love their Bemani music games, Konami also had new versions of Guitar Freaks and Drum Mania (V4, which carried the subtitle “Rock x Rock,” with the awesome tag line “Are you ready for the double rock?”), Beatmania IIDX14 Gold, Pop ‘n’ Music 15 Adventure, and DDR SuperNova (along with an ad for the upcoming DDR SuperNova 2) . They also showed off Silent Hill: The Arcade, a light gun shooter based in the Silent Hill universe (you can read more about that here).

While the chances of seeing most of these games in your local arcade are slim to none, it’s still good to know this stuff is still being made. And with any luck, maybe we’ll start seeing some of these games showing up on home systems in the not-too-distant future.
Source: gametab.com