Aruze Develops Linux-Based Arcade Machine System

Thanks to GameSpot for its news that Japanese arcade/pachinko giant Aruze has announced a Linux-based arcade game system for Japanese release this year. Apparently: "Aruze plans to release twenty games for the AP-3 by the end of March 2005, and aims to persuade third party publishers to develop games for the board as well", and furthermore: "The company expects the adoption of Linux to cut development costs for software developers... Aruze also cited the system's high versatility and consistent updates as other factors in its decision." It's also pointed out: "Taito announced in June a similar PC-based arcade board named Type-X. In contrast to Aruze's AP-3, however, Taito's board uses a special edition of Microsoft Windows XP."

Comments

Games for Linux?

[MurkyGoth]

I wonder if they're going to licences the games to run on standard installations? Not free or open source (they've got to make money somehow!) but pre-packaged binaries for the most popular distros. They could also get more revenue by creating 'authentic' arcade gamepads for standard PCs. Imagine being able to (legally) play your favourite arcade games at home!

This is pretty cool

[polyp2000]

Presumably that means we can expect Linux to be garnered with an influx of arcade quality, native games now.

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

Something I can comment on, if only I could remember my pass so I didn't have to AC it.

I work with a lot of SWP type machines (Skill With Prizes aka Quiz machines) and the overwhemly large majority run some form of Windows, either NT, XP or embedded. I can tell you this, Before PC's turned up in arcade machines, they were great fun to work on. Normally they are quite simple electronics for a reason, simple doesn't normally break as often. I'm not even going to start on the amount of BSOD I used to see on a daily basis because my company thought it was a good idea to use Dial-Up to push down updates like videos/new games.
At least one company I know use Linux in their terminals already, some German/Austrian firm who make the MegaTouch series. I remember being very impressed seeing Linux booting for the first time in a Arcade cabinet!

Young man, you know not what you say!

[numbski]

These are the same geniuses that tried to rip off SNK/Playmore by using KOF characters in some casino games.

Wonderful....although the idea of a Linux machine at the arcade is kind of interesting, especially given the fact that a few games have started to utilize net connections to share stats.

It's more than a little tempting to find out the local aracade's IP, nmap it, see if the machine shows up, if sshd is up by default, and uh...oh...Trinity, you around? :)

Re:some other companies use linux also.

[bubbaprog]

That's funny, because I was playing megatouch in a bar about a year ago and the thing kept rebooting. DOS. I kept feeding it quarters just to enjoy seeing autoexec.bat load for nostalgia's sake.

Re:Aruze != Good Games

[JaredOfEuropa]

...more banal mediocre games like Shadow Hearts for the PS2.

Ever been in a Japanese arcade? Shadow Hearts is nice and soothingly normal compared to the games sou see there. Think 'Extreme beach volleyball' for the Xbox, only more bizarre (in case you don'tt know this one: it's beach volleyball, but you first have to convince your opponents in the game to play with you, by bribing them with gifts & flowers in your hair). Head-to-head pancake baking (I kid you not), shooting elves with crossbows... and those are the games where you can at least understand the objective.

ironically

[numbski]

That's precisely what many of us MAMEer's do.

I mean, I have an arcade cab that I've salvaged, and most cab owners will install Windows because, aside from MAME, most of the better emulators run on Windows only.

Nebula and Kawaks are two for starters that drive me nuts. They add some absolutely AWESOME enhancements to CPS2 and Neo Geo titles, such as transparency, and 4-8 player games in Capcom's vs. Series and KOF, over the internet no less!

I'm trying to get some of my favs working in Wine, and I'm getting there...slowly. Now I have to get it to take command line params, and load it up in a front end I'm happy with. Yay....

Anyway, sorry for the dissertation, it's just amusing that what you do every day is what many of us try to do as a hobby at home. And you hate it. :P

Linux Arcade Systems Already Here

[Perl-Pusher]

I was playing guitar in a bar one night and the power died. The bar had about 10 of these arcade games with touch screens that had about 20-25 games each with great graphics. I've watched people dump alot of money into these games all night. When the power came back on I was pleasantly suprised to see everyone of those machines going through an init with a bright green OK after each step. After closer examiniation each system was running RedHat 7.3. I've played these games several times and never realised they were running linux. These games were really quite good.

Tux Racer is in arcades...

[Dr. Blue]

There's an arcade version of Tux Racer -- there's one in our local Chuckie Cheese. Surely they wouldn't commit the sin of putting Tux Racer on a Windows-based arcade platform, would they? Makes me think the claim of these people to be "the first" may not be 100% accurate.

Aruze is evil

[mr_angry]

Aruze nearly killed SNK. They didn't respect the license contracts. Think they also got sued by the Japanese government for tax fraud. I know they got sued by SNK/Playmore.

And some rumors of ties with the Yakuza have been around for a while...

I'm wondering if they'll do things correctly with this Linux project and i can't say i'm too excited by Taito's WinXP platform.