This year’s IAAPA Expo had plenty of new equipment for operators to see and test, and one that had many abuzz was Andamiro’s SpongeBob Soccer Stars game. The piece utilizes the same lever-driven launcher that was used in their Baseball Pro series, but adds the twist of soccer to the traditional “pitch-and-bat” concept.
Similar games have been around since the 1950s, but Andamiro had success with
Baseball Pro and believes adding in the world’s most popular sport and a massive license like SpongeBob will only help with sales.
“As we proved with Baseball Pro, players love to be in control of the action,” Andamiro’s President of Sales Drew Maniscalco said. “With Baseball Pro, it’s the bat. In our soccer application, it’s SpongeBob kicking the ball. As a factory, we look for games that players will want to play over and over again.”
Players get to take control of SpongeBob as a striker on the soccer pitch, and aim to score on Squidward, another classic character from the children’s TV show. The objective is to score as many goals in the allotted time, if the player gets 15 into the net, they win big! The machine is Andamiro’s third title featuring SpongeBob, a franchise that has made $12 billion in merchandising revenue and is on the Nickelodeon network, which reaches nearly 94 million TVs across the U.S.
