Triotech Sees Success With Coin-Op VR
Company Says New Machine May Outdo Typhoon
Get ready and grab your umbrellas … there’s a storm coming. After making its debut at IAAPA Expo 2019 in Orlando, Triotech’s new interactive coin-op virtual reality game Storm is ready to make landfall.
“This has been our most successful launch to date,” said Ernest Yale, founder and CEO of Triotech. He said the new machine got more than 200 purchase commitments in just a month and a half, and is in full production now.
From “morning to midnight,” Triotech is working on fulfilling orders. While there are machines on location testing, production units will begin to ship in mid-March – just after this month’s Amusement Expo (stop by Booth #113 to try out Storm).
Ernest Yale
The machine is both a thrill ride and 2-player competition to see who can score the most points. Players use their hands to catch powerups, and motion simulators track and show their movement inside the headset, allowed by Triotech’s Maestro hand gesture technology. The player with the highest score wins – it’s that simple.
The interactivity of Storm is what makes it unique, Yale said, detailing the gameplay. Inside virtual reality, players select their ride and collect orange power balls with their left hand, green with their right hand, working the whole time to avoid black balls, which give them negative points. Onlookers can also see what’s going on in the game on an attached screen overhead.
All the while, players can see their friend “dressed” and moving as the in-game characters and passersby become engaged by watching the pair of players synchronized in their movements to catch the powerups – looking almost like a choreographed dance.
Triotech showed one title at IAAPA, but it will have three with the first shipped units. The first one is a roller coaster, the second a “dynamic, underwater ride,” and the third hasn’t been entirely decided on as of press time, but operators have been requesting a haunted ride, so Yale said a Halloween-themed title is likely.
“We have a very close relationship with our operators so we’re getting their feedback to see what they want,” he said, adding, “You’ll have three very distinct rides.” In typical Triotech fashion, the machine will be continually updated for years to come. Yale said the underwater-themed ride should be available by the end of March and most units will ship with it already installed. The third game is expected by the fall.
Their first coin-op game since last year’s 10th anniversary edition of Typhoon, the Storm is expected to be a “huge success” for the company.
“It’s very easy to understand and the response has been incredible,” Yale noted, adding that the coin-op VR concept has an appeal to operators because of its relatively small footprint and quick throughput.
Plus, the competition aspect puts replayability numbers through the roof, he said. “Usually you play with a family member or friend, and people get frustrated when they lose – they don’t like to lose. They say, ‘Let’s do it again.’” Players can battle it out with the difficulty level set to easy, medium or hard.
It’s about twice the price of their popular Typhoon, which now has 15 titles and has sold more than 4,000 units, but Storm definitely appears to be another force to be reckoned with and a potential arcade staple for the foreseeable future.
“It’s a centerpiece,” Yale said. “It’s a bit bigger than Typhoon, but it’s not that big compared to a 4-player VR platform.”
Learn more about the game at www.trio-tech.com/products/storm.
