Into the Void A Review of Ghostbusters: Dimension by Bob Cooney Virtual Reality is finally catching up with our dreams and expectations. There’s been amazing hype surrounding new VR products like Oculus Rift, Playstation VR, HTC Vive and other consumer gaming products. If you are a passionate gamer and have a few grand to drop, you can pick up a high-end gaming computer, a head-mounted display (HMD) and a room-scale tracking system and give it a go. The problem is you’ll still be tethered to your computer, and limited to slight movements in a small 8 x 8 foot space.…
Author: RePlay Editor
To download the PDF of this special feature on Stanton Automatics, click here. “A Pretty Good Life” 40 Years With Larry Hilimire at the Helm of Stanton Automatics In the early 1950s, a vending operator in the Finger Lakes region of Western New York State named Dick Hilimire was busy building two things at once: one was the Ace Automatics route he and his brother Lloyd ran out of Geneva, N.Y., while the other was his own family. And just like Ace Automatics was heavy on vending, Dick’s family was heavy on son –– five of them –– all of…
2016 in Review A Look Back at a Good Year in the Life of This Mall Arcade Operator by Adam Pratt, Game Grid Arcade & ArcadeHeroes.com Just like that, 2016 has come and gone. In some ways (namely, politics), it seems like it would never end while in others, I wonder where the time went. From a business perspective, it does seem as though our year “starts” with IAAPA as we get to see what new ideas will be integrated into the “arcade culture” to draw customers both old and new. From IAAPA 2015, we saw more video arcade games…
November Goals A Time of Planning and Reflection By Beth Standlee, CEO, TrainerTainment Happy Holidays. I hope your next few weeks are filled personally with family and your business is filled with fun. This is a high season for indoor locations that will hold many group events; birthdays are on the rise and will flourish through the New Year. When it comes to group and party sales, this can be that “selling season” where we get a little lazy. That may sound contradictory to “bring on the business,” but here’s what I mean. When the business is naturally high, the…
Okay, This Is About Me… But, If You Love Pinball (and Pat Lawlor Games), You’ll Want to Read It! by Jack Guarnieri, Jersey Jack Pinball & PinballSales.com I hate to write about myself, but I want to tell you about bringing an industry icon back to the world of pinball. As a street operator for many years, I ran my fair share of pinball machines. Doing so, I quickly learned which games made more money, sometimes just by virtue of the designer behind the game. One of these amazing pinball creators is Pat Lawlor. He brought us Banzai Run, Earthshaker,…
The Evolving Industry Becoming “Mainstream” and the Benefits of the Redemption Store By George McAuliffe, Chief FEC Strategist, Redemption Plus W. Deming was a great management thinker of the 20th century. When his ideas for changing the U.S. auto industry manufacturing practices were rejected, he went to Japan. The result was unprecedented growth in the Japanese auto industry (and steep decline in the U.S. causing us to play catch up). Perhaps Deming’s most famous quote is “It is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.” The FEC world has enjoyed its own changes over the years. Starting with the…
From Arcade to App to Arcade Again Adrenaline Capitalizes on the Increasingly Lucrative Mobile Game Market The world of video games has seen its fair share of evolution, transforming from the massive hardware required for tiny, memory-cheap games of the ‘70s and ‘80s to today’s smart phones that run exponentially more complex games. That transformation hasn’t kept the basics of good gameplay from permeating throughout formats large and small, however, and a company like Adrenaline Amusements knows that well. The Canadian game manufacturer is well known for its early adoption of the idea that app-based games with millions of downloads…
Maximizing Facility Revenue – Part Five Offering Food Means You Don’t Leave Money on the Table! by Frank Seninsky, President/CEO Amusement Entertainment Management (AEM) & Alpha-Omega Amusements & Sales [Editor’s note: For a first-time read or a refresher, Part One can be found in the February 2016 issue, Part Two in March, Part Three in June, and Part Four in July. All are available online at the RePlay website: www.replaymag.com/current_issue/frank.html.] If I’m working with someone who currently doesn’t offer food in their facility or outsources their food, I try to start off rather slowly on the financial reasons why food…
Working Hard Fair Play Pledge and Other News Emerge from Successful Annual Meeting Q: How was the Annual Meeting and Gala? It looked like a pretty newsy affair! A: The meeting went very well and you’re right, there was a good bit of news coming out of it. First, I’m happy to announce we have two new members on our board of directors. We welcomed Alpha-Omega Sales’ Joe Camarota and Benchmark’s Al Kress. We also have Coast to Coast Entertainment’s Jim Chapman as a first alternate and Jonathan Durst of Pyramid Technologies as second alternate. One of the things we’re…
Editorial If Shakespeare was a game operator, he’d probably say our lead editorials usually cover one of seven basic plots, two of which are: “join an association” and “go to the convention.” I’m going to talk about both. Firstly, we all know that business owner associations are a bit like labor unions, only for the bosses. We also know that their main reason for existence is to protect members against nasty stuff like harmful legislation and/or to fix a problem after it lands on their heads. AMOA, as many know, was founded back in 1949 to keep the federal Copyright…