This is not a drill - I found a Konami Punk Shot cabinet in the wild today. I haven't been this excited since I finally encountered a U.S. Konami Martial Champions cabinet.
Now, you may have noticed the bezel on this cabinet is unfortunately from The Main Event by Konami (which is a decent work of U.S. Konami cabinet art) and I can't see the sides to make note of what glorious side art this cab features. It is firmly sandwiched in between two great cabinets - SEGA's Virtua Tennis and Nintendo's Mario Bros.
However, we do have a marquee and control panel art for this one. The marquee is honestly pretty tame compared to amazing Konami offerings such as Martial Champions, Operation S.P.Y. or Dark Adventure, but that control panel is deliciously '90s ... well, since this was 1990, maybe this game was a little more of the 1980s bleeding over into the new decade.
^ Old cola stains included for maximum '90s authenticity ^
Punk Shot is essentially Konami's take on Arch Rivals, featuring a 2-on-2 basketball game in which there is no choice of teams - the four players are the same each time and there is no attribute differences between them. To the company's credit, this released roughly a year after Crime Fighters, so Konami definitely had that goofy street vibe down.
The kicker for this game, though, is on top of trying to outscore your opponent, your credit is based on an energy meter. And, because Konami, of course this energy meter decays over time.
You can score a bucket to add a small notch to your energy, so it becomes a game of scoring as fast as you possibly can. However, I've seen causal play videos that required the use of around 10 credits just to finish one basketball game. Even in its prime, NBA Jam provided a fully-featured basketball game at 8 credits (50 cents X 4 basketball game quarters, and if your team won a four-player game, the first quarter of your next game was free).
Punk Shot doesn't even have a three-point line, but it does offer a couple of different street courts complete with their own sets of hazards. Getting to arcades a little late in the game, I grew up around games such as Konami's Run 'N' Gun and NBA Jam, so I never much saw the appeal in spending coins on Punk Shot when I finally learned about it a handful of years ago. But, I do admit it has a special vibe to it, and it's so goofy, it could be worth a shot in multiplayer for a game or two.
With this encounter checked off, though, I need to figure out how many more Konami U.S. arcade marquees I have yet to see with my own eyes. To this point, though, Martial Champion remains the champion in this regard.
^ Actual screenshot of characters fighting in Martial Champion ^
