The LBX Show #66 - Flying Drone Laser Tag, Scene75 & The Light, & More!

Sponsored by Intercard!
Sponsored by Alan-1!

On this week's show we tour the future of location-based entertainment with London-led immersive design, a drone-chasing “laser tag” teaser, and pragmatic wins that help operators drive real revenue. Fresh arcade releases, big-footprint FEC moves, and a simple local SEO plan round out the show.

• Amusement Expo update and LBX Show team on the floor
• Little Lion’s arcade arena model and AI-driven NPCs
• Drone pursuit combat experience blending theater and laser tag
• Why London leads immersive theater and what that means for venues
• Phantom Vanguard gameplay, cabinet design and price context
• Atari Recharged cabinets using Pepper’s Ghost effect
• Pinstripes’ conversion to 810 Billiards and branding lessons
• Sandbox VR expansion and edutainment installs in Asia
• Scene75’s mega-FEC strategy inside a mall footprint
• Cinetainment at The Light with a full attraction mix
• Center Parcs’ evolving competitive socializing hub
• Local SEO tips and tricks
• Website and booking basics that convert traffic

Subscribe and visit LBX Collective for more!

Transcript

Show Roadmap And Guests

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Turning you in now to the LBX Show. With your host, Brandon Wyatt. Brought to you by the LBX Collective, your community to connect, engage, and inspire.

News You Should Know Tease

Amusement Expo Details And Plans

Little Lion’s Immersive Portfolio

AI NPCs And Arcade Arena Vision

Drone-Chasing Laser Tag Reveal

SPEAKER_06 0:22

All right. Well, welcome everybody to the LBX show for March 1st, 2026. I'm your host, Brandon Wiley, and we have a good show lined up for you today. First, we're going to dive into a little bit of a brief news you should know. There's a couple of things to cover, and then we'll roll right into an open and shut with Kevin Williams to review all the opening and closing trends from last week. And then next, Adam Pratt on Arcade Corner is going to share some exciting reveals about two new game releases coming soon. We hopefully will at least be able to see one of them at Amusement Connect. We may or Amusement Connect, Amusement Expo. We uh we might see uh the second one as well. Uh and then we're gonna round up the show with promo pro tips as Chuck Damonti discusses how to optimize your local SEO, which is also the acronym for search engine optimization and uh how to really do that and do that on uh on a on a good budget. So, anyway, uh that is our show for today. Let's start off with some news you should know. All right, well, coming up in just a few weeks, we have the amusement expo international. Uh, this is uh you know where FEC owners and operators, LBE owners and operators, and others who looking for amusement pieces and arcade games and merchandising and competitive socializing stuff and VR and laser tag and everything else. Like you can come to this uh to uh Vegas. This is March 16th to 19th in the convention center. I think the show uh hotel is in a resorts world. And so, yeah, you can come in and go and and you know join myself and Kevin and uh Adam Pratt will be there and you know, a whole host of us will be there uh walking around the show floor. So a lot of the LBX collective cast of characters that you see on this show will be uh walking around the show floor, seeing what is new and uh you know doing some live podcasting and some other good stuff that we're gonna be doing there. So, anyway, that is Amusement Expo that's coming up March 16th and 19th. If you haven't already booked your travel, I would definitely get on it so uh you can get the RuneBlock Hotel. I know they keep extending it. I'm not sure if that's actually passed anymore, but the uh rune blocks are obviously much cheaper than if you're just going and buying and booking directly on your own. All right, so that is Amusement Expo. The next thing I want to talk about is a group called Little Lion Entertainment. Uh so they've released a teaser trailer for a new type of immersive attraction. This thing is pretty, pretty fucking cool, at least based on the teaser trailer we've seen. And I will go ahead and play it here in just a minute. Um, but if you're not familiar with Little Lion Entertainment, they were founded to create basically what they say is like playable theater experiences. It's just a bit of a stretch, but we'll get back to that in a second. That bring people together. The company has built a catalog of some of uh the UK's best loved experiences from their words. Um, so the majority of their locations are all based in the UK. They also have rolled out some of their concepts in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, like UAE basically, do Dubai primarily. Um, and uh they have also uh you know, so some of these include, and I'll show some pictures here, uh chaos carts. So I've talked about chaos carts, I've done battle carts as well in Dubai. And so these are like basically a projection, you're in a giant projection mapped warehouse or room, and then you have these like sort of they're not high-speed carts, they're concession carts, but they're electric. Um, but you're you're driving them around and they projection map stuff on the ground, and it's like basically a Mario Kart. So that you run over stuff and you can shoot stuff, and there's it's it's a really great experience. I have to say, like it was one of my favorite experiences I've done in a long time. And so I really enjoyed Chaos Karts. They also have the Tomb Raider Live experience, uh, and then they also have a Pac-Man live experience. So, what they've really done, they've evolved Pac-Man Live. So, when they first came out with this thing, we talked about it on uh both the LBX show and also Sound Off. And uh the the Pac-Man Live was just like you went in and you wore these vests and things like you see here, and you kind of ran around and like you, you're like basically in this like big projection map live Pac-Man. They've made this into much more of now a theater type experience. They have a host, basically an MC, they do big production, they have stuff on the walls where like these little Pac-Mans are like laughing at you and cheering you on, or whatever when you win. And so it's a definitely a much more theatrical immersive experience than what when they first came out with the concept. Uh, so I think they felt like that was probably missing something. And that was actually one of the things that we said is like, I'm not sure that this experience is really gonna be super interesting. And so I think they're bringing somebody in, like a host, to really hype up energy. I'm sure they've got lots of music, I'm sure the host has some controls. I've not had a chance to play it. They have this uh active in London and uh and also in Manchester. And so, and I think that they're also gonna be rolling out in Dubai. And so a lot of what they've actually done is they've created this thing called an arcade arena. So now you can come in and you can basically activate different games within this arcade arena. So you can choose where you want to play Pac-Man in this arena environment, or you want to do the chaos carts, or the Tomb Raider Live experience, or the Crystal Maze live experiences. And so they're actually have arcade arena venues in Manchester and Dubai, and one in London, and then they're also rolling, they've announced that they're gonna be rolling out the arcade arena across the the whole of the UK. I'm sure we'll eventually see some of this come into the US and and other parts of the world. Um, but basically the arcade arena is like a giant video game box, and uh, you know, they they see that this is a big opportunity to like swap things out. Like some of these locations, some of these experiences, excuse me, like Tomb Raider Live experience, for example, you obviously like you can't just swap out, right? That's that's gotta be you there's not just all projection mapping, as you can see here. There is uh actual physical structures and stuff in place as well. Um, but you know, I think what was really interesting is uh the the the the what especially as we talk about this new attraction that's coming, which we'll we'll talk about here, and I'll show the little trailer here in a minute. Um, the the founder of Little Lion, you know, basically says you know, they're interested in things like AI-driven NPCs. NPCs in the video game world stands for non-player characters and uh and embedding them into the world as well, uh, or opponents that can respond dynamically to you. So it's not just you competing against, but like you're actually competing against things and people in that uh, you know, that are like interacting, not just people, but like actual things and video, and I don't know how to give away too much of a spoiler, but like physical things that can react um you know automatically as well. Um, you know, having show control systems that can have cinematic content or basically just try to drive better immersion. And so uh, you know, I think it's really interesting that so much of this is coming out of London. And Kevin and I have talked about this again on the show before as well, how much immersive experience and especially like theater type storytelling experiences are coming out of London. It really is, uh I think in in my in my view, and also I think the founders of Little Line Entertainment's view, that London is the epicenter of immersive live experiences. I would totally agree with that. I really think it it truly has become that. And so um, you know, I think a lot of it maybe has to do with the roots in theater in London, the tradition of storytelling. And we've seen some of this stuff as well coming out of New York, but not as a New York City, but not as much as we have certainly seen in London. So anyway, without further ado, I want to go ahead and pull up this trailer and uh you know, we'll go ahead and uh you know play it. It's on Instagram, so it's not like you know, we've got that all that that shit on the side. So anyway, it's not the ideal scenario here, but we'll go ahead and get it rolling as soon as I share my screen.

SPEAKER_03 7:44

I should have had a pre-share. All right. Anyway, it's coming. Here we go.

SPEAKER_04 8:25

Computer.

SPEAKER_02 8:26

Computer.

Why Immersion And Personalization Matter

Sponsor: Intercard Cashless Systems

SPEAKER_06 8:53

All right. So that was if you were just listening, and then you don't even know what you were listening to, that's fine. Uh, but if you were watching it, um, it was uh pretty freaking cool. So it basically they're saying this is like a combination of like laser tag with a live theater, and obviously it was like dramatized, right? Just you know, to make it up, like you're not um you know, you're wearing those vests and stuff, but like you're not like anyway, they're actors, right? So, anyway, the really interesting thing here is that uh they had an actual live drone flying, and you're basically shooting at this drone, and the drone is chasing you around, and uh you're you're you know, it's basically again like laser tag meets I don't even know what, right? Like there's really no comparison here. So very super excited to see this and try it out. I don't know when the next time I'm gonna be in London is. Kevin Williams is there, so he's gonna have to maybe try it out and check it out and see what it's all about when it launches, it's coming soon at the London Arcade Arena, and I'm sure we'll then see it in some of the other locations as well. But I just thought I would bring this up because this is news you should know, in the sense that this is where a lot of new attraction developers are going, right? They're they're really looking at how they can create an immersive environment, bring in storytelling, bring in personalization, bring in gamification to everything that they're doing. And so a lot of the new attractions, I mean, even when we see look at the competitive socializing environment, right? It's it's creating shared experiences, but it's through an augmented path and way. And so, anyway, all that being said, is uh this is something to watch. This particular game is uh and experience is something to watch, but Little Lion Entertainment is onto something. Uh, and and I think we need to be very closely aware of the things that they're working on, as well as then what some of their peers are working on, because this is not your typical laser tag, gel blaster, etc. Right? This is something entirely new using some of the same technology, but now creating an entirely new experience. All right, that is News You Should Know. Coming up after the quick break, we will have Open and Shut with Kevin Williams. Intercard is the only cashless system designed, developed, and manufactured all under one roof. They introduced cashless technology to the amusement industry and have been leading the way for over 30 years. Cashless systems from Intercard increase customer spending, get satisfaction, and boost revenues by up to 30%. Intercard is so proud to be serving the amusement industry. And if you are already part of a global family of customers, they hope you will become one too.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

Hey, big welcome to everyone to this latest open shop. How are we today, Brandon?

SPEAKER_06 11:40

Oh, doing uh doing well, doing well. It's uh beautiful, beautiful, beautiful year. So looking forward to just getting outside and spend some time outside.

Pinstripes To 810 Entertainment Shift

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Yes, I was just outside a minute ago. Beautiful spring day here in London. And when it is beautiful, it is beautiful. Even to two photos. Oh but let's jump in. We've got a crowded one again. All right, let's do it. Uh you know the rules. If I zip past one, uh then uh please uh use the pause button. And there's some comments in some of these I'm gonna zip past that you may want to uh read up on. Anyway, uh what I called changing lanes. Uh, but this was uh previously a Pinstripes location that only lasted uh uh a matter of months uh under the confusion and chaos that Pinstripes has been going through and then has now reappeared as an 1810. And this is a recurring. We will be going into more detail uh about this in sound off, but we want to touch upon this as it is an important open and sharp.

SPEAKER_06 12:46

Yeah, and I can't remember. You know, we talked about this when 810 Entertainment announced that they were going to be coming into some of the pinstripes locations. Did they do an official deal with pinstripes, or was this just like taking advantage of the real estate and they're the first ones, the first movers coming in to take it take the space over?

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Best way to put it, the first movers that jumped in and uh grabbed the sweet meats uh from uh from the carcass before they uh decided which ones were worth having and which ones weren't having. Um, I'm just surprised how quickly they managed to turn this one around. And the interesting thing from uh point of view of observation, this venue has opened with uh uh versus inside that uh augmented reality uh experience. So again, diversification of the entertainment experience.

SPEAKER_06 13:35

Yeah. Well, I will say, you know, look, the pinstripes facilities and venues were always very well appointed, very nice. Um they were just you know overbuilt, obviously. We've talked about that ad nauseum for their food and beverage, but if they look like they have taken some of their FB space and turned it into the verse immersive based on these pictures. So uh, you know, they've uh certainly reallocated some of the dining area and made it into attraction usage.

Retro Arcade Branding Pitfalls

SPEAKER_00 14:00

We can we can touch upon uh management of entertainment experience later on. Yeah, jumping on, and we have uh a multitude, uh a backlog, shall we say, of uh the retro arcades. So the Dame On Retro Arcade brand um has thrown their hat into the markets with a phenomenally original name, uh, and they've uh opened up their New York facility, and they've uh opened up their uh well I I would argue that they're that what they're actually doing is creating a drop-in retail, uh drop-in retail unit hospitality component with uh an amusement uh kind of backlog. And the Calvington facility kind of is the lower end of the themeality where I would say the New York facility is the high end. But hey, another entrance, a little bit of arcade machines and a little bit of retro console.

Sandbox VR Expansion And Reckoning

SPEAKER_06 15:05

So I will I'm gonna share my screen here just briefly because I have a major issue um with this with their branding. So I mean, putting aside their name, Game On Retro Arcade. Here is uh they have multiple, um hopefully I'm yeah, they have multiple logos. So the first one is here's Game on Retro Arcade, you know, best parties on Long Island. It's actually not a bad little pop-up flyer on their website, but first of all, it's one pop-up. Now I've got a second pop-up before I've even reached their website, and it's another different logo, Game on Retro Arcade. And then I clear this pop-up, and now you have their main logo here, totally different logo than their uh than the other two logos that I just saw. And at least in the photo of their main entrance that you put on that you uh had up there just a moment ago, it was also a different logo than the other three. So the uh they have now four different brands that they're trying to put out there. And look, I understand it's a retro arcade, it's probably some level of just hey, we had a bunch of machines, we like arcades, let's set one of these things up. Uh, they've got a bunch of like really kind of like basic, probably they have microwave setup. You can get this stuff and like make your own little snacks and stuff in their F and B. But I just really by the way, here's another uh version of the logo. So now that's five different game on uh logo versions. So they really need to figure out who they are, how they're branding themselves. And uh this should just be a generally a uh word of caution to anybody who's starting something like this. Uh, you know, need to make sure you're really paying attention to your brand.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

Especially if you're opening two facilities. I get the feeling from the light dive that I did into researching this new chain that they originally were in the retail video game uh sector. So that explains the game on video games brands, and then they've now pivoted into uh running entertainment facilities with the retro consoles, with the snacks, something that is interesting that you know you don't have to have full F and B uh to still be able to uh uh keep increase the dwell time of your uh patrons. Sandbox, we talked about it last open and shut. Uh we're now currently up to 77 facilities. This is their latest German facility. Um 30 sorry, uh 3,000 square feet, which is very small retail unit. I would uh you know, I would say it's one of their smallest. I think there's only two arenas in this particular facility, but it is part of that ongoing franchisee uh market uh uh domination that we'd see.

SPEAKER_06 17:50

Yeah, uh you know, I think there'll be a reckoning at some point here with these guys opening up in all of these spaces.

Edutainment VR In Japan And China

SPEAKER_00 17:56

I was just talking to uh a respected uh individual in the um, shall we say the VR and AR sector about this, and you know, they were asking you that question about when is the reckoning. Uh it can go either way depending on uh their plans for their financial floats. And then we see the pivot from the VR industry. So where I would be normally talking about VR arcade after VR arcade opening, so we say two years ago or three years ago, we're now talking about the immersive uh adventure being opened, that is the shared reality, multiple users uh walking through a VR space. We'll we'll touch upon this a little bit more later on, but here we go, Tokyo, and that's important. We've seen a lot of interest still in VR within the Japanese market, all stripes of VR, and so we have uh uh the Artmaster, which I would be calling an edutainment kind of experience, immerse yourself in the you know classic paintings and understand their creations. Then we have in China um one which is a pure edutainment where you can get to walk around the creation and establishment of the terracotta army next door to the museum. So from a museum edutainment point of view, this is the ability to have a monetized attraction on top of your museum component.

SPEAKER_06 19:25

The only thing I'll say here before saving off everything for uh sound off is uh I do appreciate that these are 30-minute experiences. And uh, think that is a much more reasonable amount of time for a VR experience. I think when you start to keep the headset strapped on for 45 minutes to an hour, you know, this is one of my issues with the old version of the verse immersive uh augmented reality headsets. They were heavy, they're somewhat painful to wear over a longer period of time, and a lot of their experiences were in that 45 to 60 minute range, depending on how fast you moved through them. And so um, you know, they have reduced their experience length as well, some of their experiences, and they have also obviously begun working uh with the the new Ray-Ban heads, uh uh Ray Bans. And so um, or I think they might, yeah, I think they're the Ray Bans without the snaps, but they're they're certainly not using their old headset anymore.

Gamified Pool And AR Darts In London

AR Karting Showroom In Spain

SPEAKER_00 20:18

From a business point of view, running a VR immersive attraction with 45 people going through at a time, uh, with them paying uh for a 30 to 40 minute experience, the mathematics works out as a believable uh business model, and you don't have to be so dependent on repeat visitation or content changing drastically every couple of months. That said, um I wonder how long is comfortable to wander around the terracotta army uh uh with a headset on. Is it a 30-minute experience because they want a 30-minute experience, or is it more a 15-minute experience with uh padding? These are the issues. If the experience is compelling, then it is it doesn't matter what the technology uh is, other than it's comfortable and it generates revenue. Zipping through, and we will be touching on our uh Gander friends uh in sound off. Moving through, and we jump straight into pool house. Not a million miles away from where I'm sitting, they have thrown their doors open to their soft opening. Uh, these are the guys behind the Put Track concept. They have come up with a gamified augmented reality pool table concept, which has been put into a facility. We've been talking a lot about the build up to this, and now the doors have been thrown open. And uh this is just taking place just about as I'm going to be doing some traveling. So I haven't had the chance to stick my head in, but uh be assured that when I'm back. Uh, after a little bit of a siesta, uh, I will uh get my head in there and give a report. There's two facilities, funny enough, in London that uh have just started their soft opening facility that we need to talk about.

SPEAKER_06 22:13

Yeah. Well, we've we've touched on this in uh in the past. I am skeptical about its long-term viability. I think it will definitely see lots of usage up front as you know, gamified pool uh sounds interesting, but a an entire facility built just around pool, I think, um, will be uh will be a struggle.

Scene75 Expansion And Mall Strategy

SPEAKER_00 22:33

And the that's uh that um rendering image keeps on changing from every time we talk about this. It has gone from a fully darkened environment with uh high uh high contrast projection systems to now much more of a uh retro um bar 20s speak easy approach. It will be interesting to see uh how they approach uh the gamification, let alone the hospitality element. We have a showroom opening up now, so more of a tester facility rather than uh a full-fledged uh location-based entertainment facility. Uh Cartex have been developing their augmented and virtual reality karting system, pedal powered rather than electric or fuel, uh fuel-based. It is uh your chance to try the multiple VR game experiences that they have using this cart technology. Their first one opened up in Barcelona. This is now their second showroom in Madrid, not a million miles away from uh my family, and so I'm going to be uh visiting their facility soon uh to pedal my bum off.

SPEAKER_06 23:51

All right. Well, looking forward to discussing this more and sound off.

SPEAKER_00 23:55

Yeah, we'll catch us some video uh both inside the head and outside when we do that. One of the largest FECs in the USA. Not many places can claim that. Um, but you know, our friends at Scene 75 Entertainment claim that uh their Ohio, uh Columbus Ohio facility is that, you know, it is 220,000 square. And we will be talking a little bit more on this because there are some other large FEC developments that we need to touch on, and we kind of have wrapped them up in a bow for the discussion in sound off. But I just feel that it is an important consideration that we are in a point in the industry where you can now start dropping into second-tier um localities this size of entertainment facility and the feel that it's going to be a successful business model.

UK Cinertainment Levels Up

SPEAKER_06 24:55

Yeah, this is uh interesting because they were they they they were open originally in this location already, right? So like this is one of their first three locations. They've expanded to five. Um they were in Cincinnati, Columbus, and uh I can't remember exactly the third one um right offhand. But uh this was uh so I think maybe what has happened is they've you know they expanded, they rebranded, and then reopened. I think it may have been why we're seeing this uh as you know, you know, celebrating this as another as a new opening. Obviously, they have their new logo as well now, which is uh you know, touting their 75 ways to play, so uh, which is uh you know different than what they had had uh previously. Um probably since they were acquired by Five Star Attractions um, you know, about a two years back. This has uh you know been a work in progress.

SPEAKER_00 25:46

Two years, two, three years? Yeah, yeah, sorry, uh brain fate, senior moment. Uh, I thought it was longer than that, but anyway, it might have been either way, very close uh to uh following the acquisition. And one of the things about the uh acquisition is deep pockets uh from uh the word on the street is the um the retail mall that's not retail, the shopping mall that they're in, uh has lost a couple of major stores. One of those stores was very close to uh their facility, so all they've done is they've broken up uh broken into upstairs to expand uh the space considerably and so create uh the largest. I I I I'm going to be interesting to see what the reaction is to this. If you've already had an entertainment facility in a uh in a locality and you're going to relaunch it as a much bigger uh offering, you know, how do you get the message out to your local audience? It's going to be important.

SPEAKER_06 26:44

I will just come back. I did look it up. It is May 17th, 2023. So just about three years ago, a little less than three years ago, they were acquired by Five Star.

Center Parcs Entertainment Hive

SPEAKER_00 26:52

My brain's not totally adult then. That's good. Moving on, and the light is a cinema chain that's uh in the UK that has gone for a very um sinatment kind of model. Not all of their venues have entertainment, but the ones that do uh usually have a level of amusement. They have very comfortable seatings. They also include the the food and drink service capabilities in some of their sites. Uh the one that is opening up in uh, well, being redeveloped. Again, uh, we need to be uh clear on this. The Huddersfield uh facility had uh some light amusement, but they've expanded their space and they parachuted in a Star Quest Laser Tag uh attraction. This is a very American approach to Cinertainment. You know, you if you'd said to me what is uh the light going to drop into their expansion, I would have said competitive socializing, I would have said karaoke escape room, something like that. For them to drop in laser tag kind of shows that they, you know, they've done some research into their market, their target market, and they feel that this will fit well. Um, I'm not sure how much of a pacifier to the uh audience. Do you go watch a film and then go and do some laser tag, or is it more clearly you're going to book to go into laser tag um separately?

SPEAKER_06 28:16

Yeah, I mean this is uh they actually have a large number of attractions. So they say there's 15 activities, and I'm looking through they have mini golf, they have high roped climbing walls, axe throwing, supercharged shuffle board, right? Supercharged shuffle, uh, other interactive darts, street curling, karaoke, bat fast batting cages. I mean, so they really are a full-blown, uh, I would say the full blown FEC, I would almost say a full-blown FEC with cinema, right? So, like I would yeah, it is cinema, it is centertainment for sure. Um, but you know, this is not like your fat cats, for example, that has synertainment with some bowling, some amusement, and either mini golf or laser tag, or it's just a few activities. This is a full blended mix.

SPEAKER_00 28:57

I would call this an Evo.

SPEAKER_06 29:00

Yeah, that's probably better. Yep.

Netflix VR Closure At Area15

SPEAKER_00 29:02

This uh appeared on my radar purely because of the laser tag. We knew that it already had uh a reasonable entertainment offering and that they were expanding. You're quite right to point out the addition of the mini golf, along with all of the other components, does take it to a new level. And uh talking about uh the addition to an existing facility of entertainment, uh, and our friends at Center Park, we've talked about them before, uh, both their European operation and their UK operation, which are separate uh but uh shared brands, as it were. Uh, their their new addition, what what they call their uh entertainment hive, uh has gone through a little bit of a uh I from their first opening of this concept to now the second uh of this uh uh which is mini golf, um, shuffleboard, um uh they also have some amusement systems dotted around. They have AR darts, so what I would call a hospitality, a competitive socializing component being added. What it's doing is you have the captive audience of the people that are attending the uh tourist uh resort park. Um uh and while they're there in the evening, you've now got an entertainment component to increase the dwell time and stop them jumping in their cars and going to the local restaurants and pubs in the area. That that's how I'm envisaging their approach with what they've done. I still don't think, even at the second facility, that we have a clear picture of what it wants to be. Does it want to be full uh competitive socializing uh and uh easy on the arcades? Does it want to be full arcades catering for the children and still offer something for the parents? This is uh we're still in that early stage of finding their feet, and they have about uh five facilities in the UK and Ireland that uh they can continue this experimentation with.

Sponsor: Allen One Games

SPEAKER_06 31:09

Yeah, I mean, I I'm I'm there with you in the the confusion the confusion. It isn't quite sure what to do or what to be, but at the same time, maybe they're taking advantage of the fact that uh they don't need to be as defined given the fact that they're tied to a resort.

Arcade Corner With Adam Pratt

Phantom Vanguard Launch And Hardware

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Uh captive audience, so you know they can take their time to do this. This is their second facility now. Uh, and they have picked well the platforms that they've put into the facilities. There's a lot of thought going into this. I would say there's more thoughts on the installation side rather than on the themality and game experience side. But again, uh wait and see. I think we'll we'll see the full picture on the third site opening. And uh only one shut, which is a good thing, I suppose. Uh, and this is really an update. Uh, I was slapped around the head by uh someone talking, getting ready for our trip to Vegas, talking about stuff, and someone pointed out and said, Why haven't you said anything about the Netflix operation that closed in uh Vegas? And I sort of scratched my head for a couple of seconds until I realized, oh, you mean the Army of the Dead experience. Well, again, we'll go into a little bit of the history of what led Netflix to put their virtual reality experience in Area 15 in Las Vegas. But anyway, surprise, surprise, no fanfare for this, but the facility has closed and been shuttered. Uh, and it was shuttered just before the building work started on the Felix and Paul VR experience. So it kind of, you know, you kind of get the feeling. I also get the feeling that this may have also been shuttered just around the time that uh Netflix House opened, so there was no kind of confusion between the VR entertainment that they were going to be offering at Netflix House and the tired experience that was still operational at uh Area 50.

SPEAKER_06 33:03

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 33:07

Anyway, please, if you want to beat me up over stuff that I've missed, LinkedIn is there for that at the moment, or uh come over to our Facebook Friends of the Stinger Report uh discussion forum there. It's getting pretty heated at the moment over a particular topic that we're going to touch upon in uh sound off. And we have uh virtual arenas out, we have entertainment social arenas out, we have um Stinger Reports out. We're relatively up to date. I'm gonna have to spend some time to catch up before the confusion of uh AEI and any other questions. There is the email.

SPEAKER_06 33:48

Perfect. All right, Kevin. Well, we'll see you on next week's open and chat. Have a good one. Whether it's perfectly foreign training to active efforts on this plan, having official light on things collections, or defending cities from the test and missile command reach artists. Allen 1 has something to every venue in arcade floor that is delightful gifts. Each game is also an accessory. Visit AllenDaps1.com to learn more. That's AlanTox1.com. All right, well, that was a great open and shut with Kevin Williams. And coming up next, we've got Adam Pratt with Arcade Corner. Rolling right now.

Engine Talk And Market Fit

Shipping Delays And AEI Rumors

Atari Recharged With Pepper’s Ghost

Sponsor: Radius Local Marketing

Promo Pro Tips: Local SEO Basics

Map Pack Math And What To Do

Reviews, Citations, And Website Fit

SPEAKER_05 34:48

Hey everybody, it's Adam with Arcade Heroes for the Arcade Corner. It's been kind of a slow month for arcade news. I mean, there's been some stuff, obviously. The uh Pokemon Pinball announcement would have been the biggest out of all those things. Um, but it hasn't been completely just Pokemon or just Pinball out there. As you can see on the screen here, there's one other game that's actually launched. Uh, been asking a lot of different manufacturers. It's uh like, hey, is this shipping? Is this shipping? Is this shipping yet? And uh just hadn't heard anything. But uh yeah, Phantom Vanguard, a modern combat game by Game Loft, is now available in North America through LAI Games. The IP is owned by a company called Game Loft, and they had done several of these back in the day where it's essentially uh their take on Call of Duty, but it never reached anywhere near the um the brand recognition uh globally that uh Call of Duty ever has. But I kind of imagine that if you were to have Call of Duty ever appear in arcades, that it would be a light gun game of some kind. And so yeah, this uh but uh at this point it wouldn't copy what uh uh Phantom Vanguard has done here. But in case you haven't seen this, then uh we have uh so IGS, uh they're based out of Taiwan, and they did the actual software development of it. Wallop handled the hardware development, but of course Game Loft is doing the um the uh licensing. But this is the official trailer for the game. Just the only problem with that uh CG render there is you don't get the big black bar in the middle that uh the actual one has. But that's uh I mean the the guns on this one are the most innovative feature. Maybe I'll turn this down just a little bit just in case I'm not coming through all the way. But I do not recall ever seeing an arcade game where it has a combination of the mounted gun and the tethered kind of free gun where you can point it wherever you want. So, as you see here, at certain sequences within each level, you just throw it in there and then get to shoot at stuff, but it'll turn it into a heavier weapon like an artillery cannon or heavy machine gun or something like that. So another thing that's uh slightly unusual about this game compared to most other arcade game, uh light gun games out there is that you're shooting people as opposed to robots, aliens, zombies, ghosts. Uh since that has filled up, I'd say, 99% of games in the past 10 years. The only game I could think of, uh maybe I'm just not thinking it through fully, but the only one that I can think of that has having you shooting bad guys like that has been um Time Crisis 5, which came out in uh 2015 and that's prevalent for a couple of years there. But uh here's the game as seen at the LAI Games booth back at IAPA Expo 2025. And so that's where I got a chance to play through it. I didn't get a chance to play through the entire game. Unfortunately, I just didn't have the time. Maybe at Amusement Expo is where I'll get that chance. But uh, yeah, as you can see there, unfortunately, just uh I mean I don't mind have them putting the two screens together like that. It at some point you forget about the little black bar uh in the center there. I mean, it would be nice if there was a way to get uh such a um screen that was like a one by one aspect ratio. Or really this one, I don't know what you would call it if it's a five by four or a four by three exactly when it's set up this way, but it's two 65-inch 4K screens that are vertically mounted like that. So uh graphically it's uh very nice looking game because it's designed in Unreal Engine 5. Now, of course, I guess that might uh be one of those things where some people are like every Unreal Engine 5 game looks the same. But uh lot of that comes down to artists these days. I mean, there's not these massive differences in graphics anymore, like there used to be between uh different game engines, different graphics cards, and all that. I mean, yes, there are some differences. I'm not saying that there aren't any. I'm just saying that uh back in the day, if you grew up in the 90s, it was very distinctive uh when uh not just game consoles but PCs as well, what sort of differences you might have. And uh and it was that way for a little while too into the 2000s, but in recent times, there's just uh it's really dependent on the artist and how much money they decide to throw into that. Uh but you can find memes out there that show uh compare a game from 2013 to a game just released now, and sometimes there's very little difference that is noticeable. Now, of course, you do need to see them in motion and whatnot, but uh yeah, we we don't see the big jumps like we used to, but still, this one is a nice looker. Um, I like how they handle the movement there as well because it's occasionally going the camera backs out from the player, and you get to see the soldier that they are, just like right there, and it keeps everything moving dynamically and realistic. And so I could see this doing pretty well in venues out there. I do not know what the uh price one on this one is. Of course, it will vary from distributor to distributor just a little bit, uh, but I'm not sure if this is closer to 10,000 or if it's closer to 20,000 on the price. Given that it's uh through wallop, uh might be closer to the 10,000 range. Uh maybe it's right there in the middle. I'm just thinking that because recently wallop did Storm Racer 2, and the price on that one, uh, I mean, at IAPA, somebody quoted me is below 10,000, which really shocked me. But after uh all the expenses of getting it here, tariffs and et cetera, even with tariff uh changes recently, uh, it still ended up being a little bit above 10,000, depending on who you go through. But uh yeah, that's unfortunately all we really have for news this week, because again, just things have been extremely slow. Uh, I know Sega's supposed to have games coming soon. I'm still waiting for some confirmation on that. Uh, they just posted a video about Apex Rebels, the standard version, which was at IAPA. And uh they have the Daytona Championship USA Motion Edition, they have the Putt at Party, but uh again, I just haven't been able to confirm yet when those are actually shipping out because it sounds like there have been some delays due to the sea freight, um, a little bit of slowdown with boats and such. Um, but I think that uh covers everything that we got going on for now. Uh, let me know what you think about that. I guess we will have some news on Alan One stuff here, and really we should start getting a lot more news about a lot of other games that are coming out here uh since now we're into March finally. Uh it's you know we have Amusement Expo here in just a couple of weeks. And uh I do know already of some significant announcements that are going to be made at the show, but from smaller companies. I don't know yet if uh like Raw Thrills or Sega or Band Dynamico have any major announcements coming or not. It's possible on Roth Rills as I was told about something just hinted at really. They didn't tell me exactly what it was, but uh Rothhrills, I know they're working on something new. Uh I mean they're always working on something new, but this sounded like a significant major milestone release. And uh sometimes, at least in the past, Rothhrills has used Amusement Expo to be that launch pad uh for such a game. Um we have a major Hollywood IP coming as a gun game through another developer, but won't say who or what it is yet. I know what it is. Um, but there it sounds like they're gonna wait until it's pretty much Amusement Expo time to reveal that. And uh then I already mentioned Alan One a little bit. Uh so they have uh quite a lineup. They've been talking about it a little bit out there. Um, let's take a look at the uh preview they just gave. And so what you see on the screen here is an early prototype build of uh YARS Revenge Recharged, or it might just be YARS Recharged. I'm not uh I need to double check on that as to what the exact naming of it is. But uh what Al One is doing is something unique that uh has been done before, but it's not been done in modern times. It's never been done as far as I'm aware with uh LCD monitors. And uh the last time anything like this was attempted in the arcades was 1985. And uh so, like here's the side of the cabinet. You can see that it uses a similar form factor, but it's slightly deeper than what they call their Pro or Pro Plus models. Like you can actually see a Pro, or actually, I guess that's a Pro Plus asteroids there on the right hand side. This is was taken at their factory in uh Twilight, Utah. And uh, but again, this uh what you see here, maybe that's a little hard to tell just because it looks more like plastic bags, but uh two LCD monitors, and so one's laying down flat, the other one is serving as a background image. And so this is using what's called the Pepper's Ghost effect. And uh it was used before, like if you've ever seen an original Space Invaders or Atari's Asteroids Deluxe or a few other games, then yeah, this is that's it's that sort of holographic effect. Now, where this is different is that it's instead of just using a mirror and uh the monitor laying down like it did in Space Invaders and Asteroids Deluxe, it has that additional second monitor in the back to create a background sort of parallax effect, maybe sort of a 3D-ish effect. Unfortunately, it wasn't ready to go quite yet to see how it will look. But uh for those curious, uh Taito did something like this with CRT monitors back in 1985 with Wyburn F0, uh, where it did overlay the two like that, one with the background, one is a reflected image, and uh creates kind of a 3D effect without glasses. And so this will be done with YARS recharged, with breakout recharged and caverns of Mars recharged, each of which is going to be showing up at Amusement Expo next month. And so um hopefully soon we will see uh more information about these, about or at least see them in action and such. And of course, they'll be playable at Amusement Expo. And so something to look forward to, especially if you're into retro games or just seeing some uh twists on old tech popping up. That's it for this arcade corner. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_04 47:51

If you run a location-based entertainment brand and want to attract more visitors, check out Radius. They use real-time location data and customized marketing strategies to help brands like yours stand out. Radius can boost your foot traffic and build a loyal customer base. Plus, they're offering a complimentary local market analysis to show you exactly how they can help you grow. Curious? Visit radius.co and ask about your free market analysis. That's R-A-Y-D-I-U S.co.

SPEAKER_06 48:23

All right. Well, I'm a big fan of what Alan One has going on, and not just because they are a sponsor. Uh in fact, I in fact, I think they came because I was already a big fan and they they wanted to end up sponsoring LBS Collect as a result of that. So I'm not saying that as uh anything else. I'm just really big fan of what they're doing with the recharged stuff with Atari. And so anyway, I'm excited to see the the new stuff that they have coming out in uh just a few weeks in Amusement Expo. So uh anyway, that being said, we've got uh Chuck DeMonte with promo pro tips coming up right now.

Wrap And Sound Off Tease

SPEAKER_04 48:58

Hello and welcome to Promo Pro Tips with Chuck DeMonte. That is me. And today I want to talk about something that is really, really overlooked and and rarely done, in my opinion. And and we speak to a lot of you know location-based entertainment brands, FECs, arcades, trampolines, you you name it, right? Uh, not only our clients, their prospective clients. And we're constantly looking at their search engine optimization and where they rank. And few and far between are people ranking highly enough for keywords that they should be ranking for. Very, very, very uh infrequent that they are. And so the the the good and the bad thing. SEO is a difficult thing, it's something you need to know how to do, right? So you probably have to hire a professional, right? Um, that's potentially the bad thing. The good thing is it's local SEO, right? It's not like you are an e-commerce brand that's fighting for a national keyword, like you want to rank for socks, right? It's like, yeah, good luck with that. That's hard. Uh when you're looking locally, right? You know, when you want to rank for arcade, you want to rank for trampoline, whatever the keyword may be, it's really not as hard. You could really do some SEO 101 basics. Uh, and so hopefully you're able to sort of find a professional who could do this at a lower cost because it's a little bit easier to rank uh higher, right? So let me give you a couple examples uh and a couple stats that I want to give out to you as to why you should rank um high. Okay. And so actually, before I do that, let me let me hopefully I can share the screen here. And what I want to do is uh give me a second here. So share, share screen. So here's an example here. You're seeing I put best air arcade near me, right? Now you got a sponsor result initially, okay, and you see an AI overview thing, which is not always you know that common. A lot of times what you're gonna see is what you call here the map pack, and you see Sky Zone is also sponsored here, right? But you see the Mat pack here. Okay. Now a lot of searches happens here, and this is super important this area. Again, they prioritize this more and more where this map pack here would basically be right on top, even before the sponsor results. Okay, so this is search engine optimization. These people are ranked ranking higher for this search result, right? Activate games, round one, game on retro arcade, okay? They're ranking higher, right? Super important, okay. Um let me stop the share there. So why is that important? Let me give you some stats. Okay. So as of right now, one in five local searches, not only does it does that regular Google search, it already starts directly in the maps app. Okay, so 28%. Okay. Super, super, super important. All right. Google Maps is universal for local discovery. So 86 to 88% of consumers use Google Maps to find local businesses. Okay. Huge, right? So map pack versus organic click behavior, right? When someone searches on Google, not maps, versus searching directly on maps. So you see how I was showing you when they search in Google, they still prioritize that map pack. 44% of the clicks go to that local map pack. So those first three results. 29% go to those search results underneath that map pack, and 21% go to ads. So 44% of the clicks from those searches, like that arcade near me that I did, would have gone in that map pack. Okay. Now here's where it gets really interesting, even more interesting, I should say. Individual map pack click distribution. If you are the number one result in that map pack I was showing you, you get 17% of the clicks. Okay. If you're number two, you get 12%, and number three drops down to all the way to 3%, right? So basically number four isn't even getting any clicks, right? So again, this is why it's more and more and more and more important, right? To make sure you're ranking, especially in your Google business profile. So how could you accomplish this? Okay, a few different ways to accomplish this. One, like I said, trying to professional, right? It's it isn't a skill set that you need to know how to do it, right? And it is a skill set that a lot of people think you do it once or you do on-site SEO. On-site SEO is different from you know other real traditional SEO that you have to get backlinks and stuff like that. So, you know, at our at Radius, we don't even really do backlinks much, right? Because uh we do more citations and getting your directories and making sure you're listed properly, which helps you in those listings, okay? So there are certain things that are weighted and and how Google weights the ranking of your Google business profile. So, first and foremost, if you can hire a uh professional, okay? If not, you want to research it, learn how to do it in your own. But I'm telling you the value is there, right? If you want, if you really want to start getting more clicks for for really relevant things, kids' birthday party near me, things to do near me, whatever, right? If you have Lin's Teamment Center, you know, all think of all the keywords somebody was searching for looking you up. So a couple things that are weighted. When are your reviews good, right? Not only reviews good, are you applying to reviews? Okay. Are you posting on your Google Business profile? Is your directory and links and website and phone number all that correct, right? So a lot of those things, then getting backlinks to your Google business profile, right? And there's other things that I'll be honest, think that I don't even necessarily know how it's done, right? Uh, but my team does it really well. And again, I see these results where we're living in 30 days, go from not ranking on that mat pack to ranking on that mat pack, right? So again, it's super important. I would highly suggest you look into SEO, okay, because you want to be in that mat pack. You want to also be one of the results under that mat pack, right? Um, it's super important. I'm telling you, it will increase the the visits to your website, right? It will increase the increase for calls for birthdays, for bookings, for all that other stuff. Now, the the the sort of other piece to this, which shouldn't be overlooked, is if you're gonna be sending them to certain places, right? And you're gonna be spending money to be on a higher search result, make sure again, like the Google Business Profile has good reviews, make sure it's it's it's formatted correctly, the websites, all the information is correct, but also make sure the website, your website looks good and is up to date. Okay, that is the front door of your home, right? That is the front door of your home, okay? Super important. You are uh showing, you know, put putting your best foot forward when people land on the front door. So I would highly suggest looking into SEO. I guarantee it'll help you. Okay. Uh if you have any questions, you can always feel free to reach out to me.

SPEAKER_06 55:03

All right. Well, thank you, Chuck, for that information. And uh, you know what? We got sound off number 112 with Kevin Williams coming up on Tuesday, March 3rd, just a few days from now. And uh man, 112. All right, that always blows my mind every time I say that. But uh anyway, that is a wrap for this week's LBX show. This is Brandon Wiley signing off. Stay tuned and keep kicking ass.