ARCADE WATCH
Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene
This is quite the volte face from Minority Media, the Montreal developer behind 2012 PSN game Papo & Yo. After discovering that puzzle adventure games about alcoholic parents are only ever going to be a niche proposition, the studio turned its attention to virtual reality. Its first release, Time Machine VR, was one of the very few early Rift games to clear $1 million in revenue. Its follow-up, The Other Room, tanked. Rather than follow that graph to its logical conclusion, the studio is pivoting again, this time to the arcade.
Chaos Jump itself isn’t too exciting: it’s a fourplayer action game in which you fight robots across 18 levels which are randomly generated each time. But Chaos Jump is notable for how it is played: on a bespoke, 12-square-foot arena that, unlike most VR attractions, is designed to be set up and used by customers, with no need for trained arcade staff. Vive Pro headsets dangle invitingly from overhead wires; games are kicked off through a central touchscreen interface. Leaderboard support drives competition between co-op partners, though versus modes are available. Perhaps the smartest inclusion is the pair of outwardfacing, high-definition screens that show bystanders what’s going on in the game, a key factor in the success of so many arcade games that VR attractions overlook. As the name implies, Minority Media knows it’s operating in another niche, but this might be its biggest hit yet.