Welcome to Newsbytes, a regular series of posts here on Arcade Heroes that runs through recent \u201cbytes\u201d of news around the wonderful world of arcade and pinball games. We usually try and launch these on a Saturday, but given the Memorial Day weekend and day that it was in the US, we held it over. This weekend each May is usually a good time for going out and visiting an arcade, and I tend to be busy (but both last year and this one were very underwhelming :\/).<\/p>\n
For anyone interested in the business side of things, I\u2019ve been trying to increase the amount of \u201cfree\u201d marketing that I do, as in creating organic ads that are uploaded to various social media sites. I\u2019ve also been getting on top of my website so that it is more up-to-date and reporting on any changes. It\u2019s still difficult for me to attract people who aren\u2019t already headed to the mall for some other reason though, so I\u2019ve been talking with the mall marketing manager to see if there is anything that they will be doing to bring foot traffic into the mall. It used to be that I could rely on movies to do that for me, but it is increasingly obvious that habits have changed, as even when the box office is bringing people in, we\u2019re seeing fewer of them wander around and spend at other businesses. I am beginning to feel like this is an effect of the FEC in the mall where I\u2019m at, that they are soaking up a lot of the business that I used to see. I never bought the line that mall management claimed, that their presence would improve my business \u2013 and after 4 1\/2 years, that has borne out. The decision before me now is \u2013 keep going, drastically change things, or move out to a different spot. There are risks with each of those.<\/p>\n
On that note, I have done a video discussing business more here<\/a> if it\u2019s something you\u2019d like to hear more about. Also I still need to get round to completing an AAA 2025<\/a> upload too, but until then, here are your Newsbytes (with a big thank you to Ted for his help on this post as well):<\/p>\n To start things off, an event that surprisingly hasn\u2019t been mentioned before on the site is South Korea\u2019s PlayX4<\/a>. There isn\u2019t anything quite like this elsewhere in the world \u2013 it effectively brings Korea\u2019s entire games industry together, and by entire, that very much includes arcades. In that respect it\u2019s like an interesting hybrid of Amusement Expo and a consumer show, like the dearly departed E3.<\/p>\n Anyways, the latest edition of this recently wrapped up, and there was a few arcade things of interest there. The biggest arcade company who usually attends is Uniana<\/a>, a name which some of you may recognize for manufacturing official overseas releases of the Japanese rhythm games, e.g. Konami\u2019s (the upcoming US Maimai DX<\/em> cabinets are also likely from them). They have done a bit of original stuff too but the focus for them here was mostly on Konami\u2019s works<\/a>, including this odd little spot the difference touchscreen game based on the Korean YouTube animation series Panpan-kun. This went on location test in Japan and Korea last year<\/a>, but given the property, it looks like only the latter will be getting it (Konami recently tested a different version of the game in Japan, with the Sazae-san anime cartoon license attached<\/a>).<\/p>\n As well as this stream from their own competitive events they also held at the show<\/a>, the below wider shot shows some of the other Konami games they had, including the new Gitadora Arena Model<\/em> and DanceRush Stardom<\/em> (which is still just about going). But also not from Konami, Sega Amusements and 3MindWave\u2019s Apex Rebels <\/em>can be seen here too. Nice to see that this is also getting some representation out in Asia:<\/p>\n Additionally in attendance at PlayX4 were fellow South Korean arcade factories Komuse<\/a> and Andamiro<\/a>, although the former didn\u2019t seem to have anything new, and the latter was more focused on the new upcoming Steam\u00a0edition of Pump It Up<\/a>, which is sporting a stylish new logo. They did have a few arcade PIU cabinets alongside it at least, plus a collaboration with Bandai Namco Korea on Taiko.<\/a><\/p>\n We were originally going to focus on Godzilla Kaiju Wars for this post, but we need to hold off on that for a little while longer. So aside from a couple of clips of that game below, I\u2019ll also take this opportunity to mention that Top Gun: Maverick<\/em> is slated to start shipping out to the wide industry this next month in June. I don\u2019t know if that means next week, or at what point in the month it will be, but if you placed an order with your distributor for it, I believe you\u2019ll have it in time for the summer.<\/p>\n On Godzilla, we can confirm there will be some<\/em> news on the final update very soon. For a little refresher on it in the meantime though, that update\u2019s final chapters are supposed to be super challenging, to the extent that RT\u2019s QA testers had a tough time completing them. I wonder if they\u2019ve decided to ease up on that or not since we saw the game at Amusement Expo.<\/p>\nPlayX4 In South Korea<\/h3>\n
![\"Uniana](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arcadeheroes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/playx4-uniana.jpg?resize=600%2C450&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Uniana](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/arcadeheroes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/playx4-uniana-2.jpg?resize=600%2C450&ssl=1\")
<\/a><\/p>\nRaw Thrills Updates<\/h3>\n