Taito just announced the contents of Arcade Memories vol.2, the second 10-game SD card expansion for their mini arcade cabinet plug-and-play, the Egret II Mini. ICYMI, this was Taito's foray into the "mini" market, released early last year, and they tried to pitch it as a more higher-end, core-oriented product than competing systems via a focus on design features like the rotatable screen, abundance of peripherals, SD slot for firmware/content updates, etc—I don't think that market was especially satisfied with it, nor were the more casual fans happy to pay what Taito was charging for it, but it found just enough support for them to put out these game packs (in Japan; the intl distributor tapped out early), and I see a decent amount of excitement around this one.
Here's the trailer; read more for the infodump:
Arcade Memories vol.2 will be released on December 21 for ¥8778; it'll come with an original 32P strategy guide, 10 mini how-to-play arcade cards, a Taito 70th sticker sheet and these 10 games:
- Return of the Invaders
- Wyvern F-0
- Wardner no Mori (aka Wardner/Pyros; developed by Toaplan)
- Operation Wolf
- Tokushu Butai U.A.G. (aka Thundercade; developed by Seta)
- Chuka Taisen (aka Cloud Master; developed by Hot-B)
- Night Striker
- Crime City
- Yuuyu no Quiz Go!Go!
- Kyukyoku Tiger II (aka Twin Cobra II; developed by Takumi)
You're looking at a mix of Taito and not-Taito games, many of which were heavily requested and just as heavily presumed off-limits due to licensing expenses or confusion around the rights holders (Kyukyoku Tiger II is not owned by the custodians of Toaplan's catalogue despite being a sequel to a Toaplan game, for example). Of particular note are Night Striker and Operation Wolf, two popular games that are relatively infrequently reissued due to their use of an analogue joystick—their solution was to make the Egret II Mini compatible with the recent USB-compatible reissue of Denpa's Cyber Stick, a peripheral originally produced for the Sharp X68000 that was recently revived in tandem with Sega's Mega Drive Mini 2. (I presume they're somehow playable without the Cyber Stick, but they haven't been clear on how that'll work.)
In addition to the standalone expansion card, they're also releasing packs that include either the main Egret II Mini unit (¥19,778) or the USB Cyber Stick (¥28, 578), as well as some other little exclusive goods based on Taito image characters of decade past; that main-unit bundle costs around what the standalone unit cost at launch not too long ago, so by Taito's usual price-gouging standards, it ain't too bad.
Taito has multiple store listings for all this junk on their website; the first expansion pack wasn't released internationally, so you'll probably have to import any or all of this junk, should you want it.
They also shared the contents of a new firmware update, which will be downloadable from their site from August 25, 10:00 Japan time; I wasn't gonna bother typing 'em all out but fuck, who else would do it?
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Kyukyoku Tiger: corrected the Stage 2/8 boss' shot behaviour
-
Kage no Densetsu/The NewZealand Story/Tatsujin: corrected the initial behaviour of the autofire macro
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Pirate Pete/Elevator Action/Ray Force/Puzzle Bobble 2X: corrected typos in menu description
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Kyukyoku Tiger/Tatsujin: corrected rights notation
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top-level menu: corrected the order of titles shown when listed chronologically
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Arkanoid: altered Stage 1's brick layout (for context, this reissue made changes to any stage with straight horizontal lines of coloured bricks as they might invite legal action from Atari, owners of Breakout, and the changes they made to stage 1 made it quite difficult, so they just removed a ton more bricks)
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added the ability to immediately switch to demo mode by hitting the C button on the top menu
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added the ability to adjust system volume by using C+left/right on the pause menu
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compatibility with USB Cyber Stick
Lastly, they shared the results of their most recent user survey, just to demonstrate that they're picking games in accordance with players' requests—the left side is the survey they did in the leadup to the first expansion pack, and the right side, which I've listed out below, is the newly-shared results (games selected for Arcade Memories vol.2 in bold):
TOP-5 SHOOTING GAMES
- RayForce
- Akkanvader
- Night Striker
- Wyvern F-0
- G-Darius
TOP-5 ACTION GAMES
- Jigoku Meguri (Bonze Adventure)
- Dino Rex
- Psychic Force
- Wardner no Mori (Wardner/Pyros)
- Time Gal
TOP-5 PUZZLE & QUIZ GAMES
- Yuuyu no Quiz de Go!Go!
- Kirameki Star Road Intro Club
- Puzznic
- Moriguchi Hiroko no Quiz de Hyuuhyuu!
- Quiz H.Q.
TOP-5 DELUXE CABINET GAMES
- Night Striker
- Chase H.Q.
- Galactic Storm
- Midnight Landing
- Operation Wolf
...so yeah, not too bad, I suppose. The system has both technical and peripheral limits that will continue to keep a lot of the more-requested games away, and I wonder just how much longer people will even be interested in shelling out for this thing.
(I mostly bring up this poll as an excuse to point out that Cleopatra Fortune was, by a significant margin, the single most-requested game for the first expansion, all because Patrako fiend @personasama rallied people to vote)
