ARCADE WATCH
Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene
Sega is still a force to be reckoned with on the Japanese arcade scene, where Virtua Fighter 5 swallows yen by the handful, but the publisher is still pushing the kinds of games able to make money elsewhere. Hence
Transformers Human Alliance, the most notable Sega cabinet to make the journey west recently.
Human Alliance is a fixed gun game set across five levels where you’ll fight alongside Autobots against the Decepticons. It is, in other words, exactly the game you’d expect, running on Sega’s Ringedge 2 PC-in-a-box and developed by the same Chinese studio behind 2012 racing game
KO Drive. Its gimmicks are Alliance Fire, where two players targeting the same spot will automatically call in fire support from the Autobots, and a series of gun-controlled QTE sequences.
The standard Human Alliance cabinet packs a 42-inch screen in a standup form factor, but if you’re lucky you’ll find the massive 55-inch sit-down ‘cinema’ version. It’s the first of Sega’s 2014 arcade games to come west and its absolute simplicity will ensure it a wide audience. It’s a classic Sega shooter, and in a world where the company’s better known for Total
War than for Virtua Cop, it’s an exciting arrival in any arcade.