With a second UK venue now open and with more planned this year, here’s the story so far…
One item increasingly up for debate in recent months has been the proliferation and practicality of the virtual reality (VR) arcade. There’s plenty of things happening in the industry and lots of experiences being made, as any regular reader of our feature series The Virtual Arena will be well aware. There are VR arcades and ‘Digital Out-of-Home Entertainment’ (DOE) venues appearing with great frequency all over the world. Some are singular warehouse-style experiences as personified by company’s such as The VOID, whom VRFocus reported on just yesterday in regard to the expansion of their own number of locations as it seeks to bring Star Wars: Secrets Of The Empire to a wider audience.
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One of the earliest spaces to gain a degree of buzz in and outside of the immersive technology industry was VR ZONE and the Project i Can initiative, an event space with a number of VR attractions in double figures for people to enjoy. The arcade, housed in Shinjuku, Japan quickly became a must visit destination for any VR fan heading over to the country. As you’d be able to take on experiences based on pop culture anime properties such as Dragon Ball via Dragon Ball VR: Master the Kamehameha, Neon Genesis Evangelion via Evangelion VR: The Soul Seat and Gundam Wing via Gundam VR: Daiba Assault. It is also at VR ZONE Shinjuku that people can try out Mario Kart Arcade GP VR title, BANDAI NAMCO’s adaption of the iconic kart racer for the HTC Vive. (The developer having been responsible for other arcade adaptions of Nintendo’s title down the years.)
Still, heading all the way over to Japan to experience any of these is a pretty expensive venture, as appealing as bopping your mate on the head with a green shell in VR is. Thankfully at the end of last year BANDAI NAMCO began the process of expansion and bringing “mini spin-offs” of the venue to other cities around the world, the first being at the Hollywood Bowl in the O2 Arena, London. The launch of which was covered on the aforementioned The Virtual Arena series.
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Source: VR FOCUS