With its 10th biannual Business Coaching Conference, TrainerTainment will be at the Max Bowl BEC in Humble, Texas (near Houston) next week from Oct. 23-24. The 2-day training session “focuses on proven techniques that enable participants to grow their business faster, run it more effectively and maximize its potential.” Topics to be covered include: Building a foundation with core values; creating a vision and sharing it with your team; predicting success by developing scorecards; mastering the art of effective meetings; and hiring only the best team members. “Many operators know where they want their business to go but not how…
Author: Matt Harding
Free-roam VR experience provider SPREE Interactive recently installed an attraction at Airtime Trampoline Park in Nuremberg, Germany, which celebrated its grand re-opening on Sept. 20. Their VR Arena is the anchor attraction at that venue’s brand-new VR-dedicated space. It allows up to 20 players at the same time, and Spree boasts the platforms as “the highest throughput location-based VR system on the market.” “We are very happy to provide this brand-new attraction from Spree Interactive to our customers,” noted Anne Busch, marketing lead at Airtime. “We were able to serve over 50 birthday parties in one day, with an average…
In a recent blog post, Betson detailed how and why you should host a Stern Army event. To be brief – pinball is hot! Betson noted that the attendance at pinball events worldwide rose from a mere 12,527 in 2009 to 133,767 in 2018 (that, according to the International Flipper Pinball Assn., which keeps tracks of global attendance at tournaments and other events). Most of the Stern Army gatherings are at arcade bars, but they’ve been held at FECs and other locations as well. “An FEC in Tempe, Ariz., has over 50 players in their Tuesday night leagues and has…
In a test of video game skill, Big Buck Hunter players returned to the HyperX Esports Arena in Las Vegas recently to compete in the 12th Annual Big Buck World Championship tournaments. The main event featured the top 64 hunters in the world (19 of them new to the event). Play Mechanix “upped the ante” on them by debuting all-new paths for its animals, doing away with any advantage players may have gained from memorizing hunting sites. “The World Championship was now a true test of speed and skill,” event organizers said. Andre Rivas and Phil Beaupre both found themselves…
Games from the 1970s, 80s and 90s will soon be making their way to Bartari, a new (old) arcade bar in Scranton, Penn., scheduled to open Oct. 21, according to WBRE. John Heim, a co-owner of the biz, said it’ll have all the classics like Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Galaga, Space Invaders and Asteroids, plus some slightly more modern fare like South Park pinball. Heim is working alongside his father, John Sr., on the endeavor, which includes not only a bar but a restaurant as well. More information is available at www.facebook.com/Bartari570.
The National ATM Council’s Las Vegas trade show and convention began yesterday, Oct. 15, and runs through tomorrow, Oct. 17. Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first ATM deployed in the U.S., the event is racking up record-breaking attendance numbers and our roving reporter Hank Schlesinger is on the ground covering the event for RePlay. Stay tuned for that, and visit www.natmc.org for more information.
The Middletown Sports Complex in the New Jersey city of the same name recently installed an 18-player Helios2 laser tag system from Laser Tag by Zone. The venue offers a diverse array of sports and recreation, allowing kids to learn to skate, play ice hockey and swim. There’s also summer camp events and birthday parties hosted at the facility, which is about five miles from the Jersey Shore. “We had a laser tag attraction at my previous job in Bridgewater,” commented Ali Roussos, owner of the complex. “We wanted a new attraction here and knew that laser tag would be…
Get out your Oculus virtual reality headsets – the Grammy-nominated artist Post Malone will be live from his Runaway Tour at PNC Arena in Raleigh, N.C., at 8 p.m. Eastern time on Oct. 17. Produced by Supersphere, Oculus says it’s a one-time event that only available via Oculus Venues. According to USA Today, Billie Eilish, Tenacious D and The Revivalists are among the musical acts who’ve been featured on the VR platform. More information is available at www.oculus.com.
After six years since the release of Sony’s PlayStation 4, the company confirmed recently its plans to launch the PlayStation 5 next year – in time for the holiday season. In a blog post, according to CNN, Sony said the new console will feature a redesigned controller with “haptic feedback and improved tactile sensations, such as rumbling and shaking, so that users can better feel what’s going on within a game. “With haptics, you truly feel a broader range of feedback, so crashing into a wall in a race car feels much different than making a tackle on the football…
The crowds were swelled with gawkers wandering in from the street, drawn by the raucous eruptions of chants and cheering. They looked on, baffled, as hundreds of fans vacillated from elation to despair while watching what must have been a mystery to anyone not in the know. Ten people dominated a makeshift stage at the Chattanooga Choo-Choo, an event space in Chattanooga, Tenn., their fingers tapping out an erratic yet calculated rhythm on a massive cabinet’s buttons. To the hundreds of fans who’d intentionally traveled to this small town (and the hundreds more watching online), every touch of a button…