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Welcome to Newsbytes, the series of posts at AH curates stories from across worlds of arcade and pinball. As previously mentioned, late February offered quite the major news blitz, and that still hasn\u2019t been letting up as we approach a few major events. Here are a number of smaller pieces that have built up around them (StarHorse Party, AEI 2025, Sega rhythm game updates and more). Let\u2019s dive in:<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s start off with something unusual with StarHorse Party<\/em>. If you\u2019ve been around on the arcade scene since the early 2000s you will likely remember Derby Owners Club<\/em><\/a>, Sega\u2019s pivotal card-based horse raising and racing simulator. Despite appearing in both the East and West, it marked a split between our tastes \u2013 where Japan could support a game like it and other subsequent titles using cards on a wider scale, Western operators were less keen on the attendant upkeep in maintaining its large cabinets, in spite of it being a success at Dave & Busters locations and Sega issuing a smaller, aptly-titled \u2018Horseshoe\u2019 setup<\/a> (plus from personal experience, when I was selling games back around 2011~2016 I received inquiries about it from customers in North America with surprising frequency \u2013 a couple of times a quarter at least).<\/p>\n Over time Derby Owners<\/em> fell away out East too, partly due to the fact it was superseded by a similar Sega series, StarHorse<\/em>, which kept the horse racing in sprawling multi-seat enclosures but with betting instead of raising. That series has endured over there, getting evermore complex and even using luxurious recliner seats in more recent iterations.<\/a> However\u2026 with this new, smaller spinoff StarHorse Party<\/em><\/a> that has been recently announced, Sega look set to return to the simplified nature of those downsized Derby Owners Club cabinets for the West, which have gone nearly extinct now. As one can tell from the slightly cutesy graphics and logo in this trailer, that includes appealing more to younger players and families.<\/p>\n \n