Bring IAAPA Home What 300 Roadshow Visits Taught Me About Our Industry By Clint Novak, Owner of Planet Novak & The Novak Network In 2019, I was walking around the FEC Reception at IAAPA, doing what I usually do: talking to people. Somewhere in those conversations, I met Kassidy, who was working for Tilt Studio in Texas. We became friends, stayed in touch, and spent plenty of time playing Call of Duty together. At the time, it was simply a new friendship. Neither of us knew that a conversation at an industry reception would eventually lead to working together at…
Author: RePlay Editor
The End of a Rough Year Approaches by Adam Pratt, Arcade Galactic & ArcadeHeroes.com Tis the season of IAAPA, and with that, we come together to celebrate our industry and look forward to a new year. I’m doing my best to feel optimistic, but unfortunately, my Utah mall arcade business is down and not improving. After about four years of year-on-year declines, I’m teetering on the edge of having to close my doors. The reasons why are many. Among them are the lasting effects of inflation from the year we’d all like to forget, 2020, and the return of high…
Digital Distraction By Beth Standlee, CEO, TrainerTainment As the author of People Buy From People, I’m concerned, curious and confounded by the amount of doom scrolling that happens everywhere. My guess is that you, like me, have been out to eat recently and witnessed people NOT talking with one another but instead burying their faces in their phones! I’m just as guilty at times. Who’s going to party when they can get all the attention they need from online “friends”? It’s a problem. This whole subject came up recently as Candi, my CEO, and I were planning our IAAPA booth.…
Bigger Than Ever & Tougher to Navigate IAAPA Expo Added a Third Hall…Build Your Floor Plan Before You Land By Howard McAuliffe, Partner, Pinnacle Entertainment Group In this column a few years back, I told you that planning to walk the entire IAAPA floor was always a good idea. Don’t even try it this year! IAAPA has added the West Building for 2026. The show now runs across the North/South and West buildings, with registration at both ends of the campus, a pedestrian bridge and shuttles running continuously between them (see the graphic). In other words, it’s enormous. Jakob Wahl…
From Flippers to Flying High Two Completely Different Ways to Play in Texas and Arizona by Barry Zelickson One of the things we love most about traveling across America is discovering entertainment destinations that refuse to fit neatly into a box. On this trip, we found two facilities that couldn’t be more different in their personalities yet both deliver the same thing: a reason to get people off the couch and have some fun together. In Austin, Texas, we visited Pinballz Lake Creek, a sprawling 100,000-sq.-ft. entertainment complex that has grown far beyond its pinball roots. In Queen Creek, Arizona, Pecan…
My Eyes Are Always on Operations by Jack Guarnieri, Jersey Jack Pinball & PinballSales.com I was recently at a resort on holiday and, in something that’s not unusual for me, I took notice of the business runs. It’s a natural curiosity of mine, and I would guess most other business owners do likewise, looking and learning from others. On this trip, what I keyed in on was the nonstop work that was going on to maintain the property. With a resort full of guests, the staff was nevertheless painting beach huts, cleaning windows, polishing the brass, buffing floors and air-blowing…
Blue Motion Games Puts Players in the Driver’s Seat John Wick: Continental Pursuit at IAAPA Expo with AVS Companies In less than two years, industry newcomer Blue Motion Games now has three titles in the market and says they’ve “built a reputation for bold, physical, cinematic games that players line up for and operators can count on.” The Montreal-based company will have its latest and most ambitious release yet, John Wick: Continental Pursuit, at the AVS Companies booth (S1209) in Orlando. Blue Motion Games was founded by Salim Sabbagha, its president, and Alexander Mercon, its vice president, whose friendship goes…
10 Years for Valo Motion! Raine Kajastila started his postdoctoral research at Aalto University in Finland in 2013, exploring how games and technology can inspire people to move. A climber for more than 15 years at the time, he said it was easy to pick climbing as his specific area of study. “The first thing I did was build a climbing wall in a garage at the university and start building the software and hardware components around it,” Kajastila explained. “When my 2-year-old kid and a skilled adult climber were equally excited by the prototype, I knew we were onto…
RePlay’s IAAPA Expo 2026 Sneak Peek at New Games & Attractions! This is surely not an all-inclusive list of everything that’ll be new on the trade show floor in Orlando, but it will give you a good idea of what to expect in much of the coin-op and FEC attraction sectors. We asked manufacturers to give us details on all the games and machines making their U.S. debut at IAAPA. There are some in the list that may have been shown before as prototypes or were announced earlier in the year. Also, note that some game and attraction makers like…
Bay Tek’s ICEE License a Fruitful Endeavor Second Game Available Now & Showing at IAAPA! Following the success of ICEE Slush Rush (introduced at IAAPA Expo 2024), Bay Tek Entertainment is bringing another game featuring “America’s original FUN-tastic frozen treat” to this year’s Orlando trade show, ICEE Prize Plunge. More than a traditional crane, ICEE Prize Plunge is a customizable, skill-based attraction that puts players’ abilities to the test as they maneuver the claw to win color-coded redeemable ICEE cups and other prizes. Bay Tek says operators can customize the prize options and signage, awarding, for example, ICEE drinks, attraction…