Injustice: Gods Among Us Coming To Arcades Via Raw Thrills arcadehero

We’ve lamented every once in a while about the state of arcade fighting games in the US. When a new fighter comes along in the arcade market, they almost always stick to the Japanese region, with the occasional Western arcade importing something for their patrons to enjoy. It is rare that the game does anything special enough to stand apart from the guaranteed console build, which in many instances means that the games don’t earn very well when they are not exclusive anymore. As such, US arcade makers just haven’t held much interest for keeping the genre going lately, despite the popularity of fighters remaining high.

We recently received a very interesting tip from a reader who stumbled across a location test for a new fighting game. It immediately stood out for being a an arcade version of the popular console fighter, Injustice: Gods Among Us. That game was created by NetherRealm Studios and Warner Bros. That game probably doesn’t need much of an introduction; suffice it to say, it pits famous DC comic book characters against each other in grand battles.

Having confirmed this location test with Raw Thrills, we have the first details on this up-and-coming game to share with you today. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong but I believe that this is the first American-centric fighting release (meaning the developer & publisher is based out of the US instead of Japan or China or South Korea) we will have seen since Midway released Mortal Kombat 4 in 1997.

Injustice: Gods Among Arcade – The Hardware

NOTE: Any time we find an arcade game on test, it is very possible that major changes will happen to the game between what we see then and the final release. Nothing is set in stone until units start rolling off the production line and onto shipping trucks. As such, details below are subject to change.

First, let’s take a look at the cabinet. This uses a 55″ HD display, no joystick controls (only buttons) and unexpectedly, the return of the card data system we first saw tested with Cruis’n Blast when that was seen on test in the Chicago area last year. This includes a card dispenser on the front of the machine and two card readers on the control panel. Only the Raw Thrills and DC logos are seen here.

@arcadeheroes Found a new @rawthrills game that appears to be in testing. It hinges on the NFC card feature that was on Cruisin originally pic.twitter.com/wrh91QTov2 — Jordan (@jbean353535) July 5, 2017

Before we get to the card system, let’s talk the controls. As mentioned, there is no joystick control here for you to move your character around. That is handled by the game. As such, how this will play is going to feel different from your typical fighting game. Available options from the buttons are: Quick Attack; Block; Strong Attack and Special Attack. From this test version, Jordan mentioned that “It played like MvC” (Marvel Vs. Capcom); matches seemed to last about 2-3 minutes (whoever defeats the 3 opponents first wins) and the game camera seemed to favor the left player.

By the sounds of it, this is an arcade port of the mobile version which you can download for free; that version mentions cards and the like. As it is, this arcade version not being made for hardcore fighting fans as much as DC comic character fans and collectors.

Now to the card system. While Raw Thrills removed the system from what would become Cruis’n Blast, they have kept the idea on the backburner for something like this. The machine uses a card dispenser and has two card scanners that read a barcode at the top. Users can scan up to three cards per match (as you get a team of three heroes) and there are a total of 49 cards to collect. If you just want to get the card, there is a Buy Card Only button on the control panel. Jordan mentioned that the price was the same for buying a card or playing the game – an option that is probably up to the site operator. Given that card collecting is all the rage these days (you have the DC Superheroes pusher by Bandai Namco, the Star Trek pusher by Dave & Busters, the Wizard of Oz pusher by Elaut, etc), I suppose it was just a matter of time before the idea made its way over to the video world.

One of the cards. Jordan got one of the “You have failed this city!” variety 😛 :

With many game card stores out there these days, I imagine that they will stand to benefit from these releases although I’m not aware of any efforts by distributors to target those kinds of businesses.

One top of this, my source at Raw Thrills who confirmed this did state that the game has been performing incredibly well on this test, stating: “Last week it DOUBLED Jurassic Park Environmental on location”. While they didn’t specify how much that was on both games, Jurassic Park is still earning very well out there so whatever this is posting has to be pretty good.

That’s all of the information we have for now. What do you think about this latest Raw Thrills development?

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