Global VR...anybody tried one?

[ark_ader]

Didn't Global VR have a store in Las Vegas (on Las Vegas Blvd) which had fighting games you can play as a team, a bit like Counter Strike or MechWarrior?

[davidrfoley]

No, that was a different company.

[Level42]

So far I've seen two Ultracades. First one was at Scheveningen in an arcade. Most of the games on it I did not recognize. Bomb Jack was the only one that I could call a classic. It did not have any of the big Atari/Williams names, let alone any of the LD games. I didn't play it and as far as I know it's been removed when I visited that arcade last time I was there.

The second Ultracade I saw was at the Hotel I stayed in a village near Eurodisney, France. The thing wasn't even plugged in, so I asked the manager. Played Bubble Bobble a lot (which I hadn't seen on the first Ultracade) and some of the other games. But also this one did not have any of the big Atari/Williams names on it. I remember being annoyed by the things happening when the games were over, I couldn't register my initials or something like that (returned to the menu).

Both Ultracades were kits installed in Naomi or similar cabs.

Last sunday I saw and played a Global VR machine for the first time.My friend Luc bought one for his play-area in his supermarket (always on free-play). It's next to two re-union machines (SI/Qix and PM/Galaga).

Besides that I liked the cabinet (it looked to be built very well) the menu's looked to be more animated than the Ultracade, but that could very well be my memory playing up. I was impressed with the front-end, playing sounds of the games, big game characters popping up etc.
This one did have a lot of the classics. All the big Atari names seemed to be there and Williams. I didn't look at the whole selection though. I played for a while with Robotron which worked like it should with 2 joysticks. I also fired up Asteroids for the sake of it, but we all know it just doesn't work on a raster screen. It's a shame that some of the improvements to "emulate" a vector screen that other emulators have were not incorporated.

Overall this machine is a decent thing when you want to have a cab that offers a lot of the classics and the whole thing is legal too, which is a nice feeling if you run it in a public place like a supermarket (even if it's on free-play).

I don't know anything else about these cabinets. The game sets were as I described, both Ultracades lacked the _really_ big name games. Maybe there was some subset sold here in Europe ?

[davidrfoley]

The Global VR machine is an UltraCade.  All Global VR did was put their name on the machine.  They did not make any changes to the system, interface, or attract modes.  They did not add any games, in fact, they removed over half the library.

UltraCade was always sold in both dedicated and universal kit form.  Over half the units sold were sold as kits.  The machines that you saw sound like very old systems.  UltraCade was an evolution.  We started the project in 1996.  It took us many years to license the library, and every year we added more and more titles.  We always offered upgrades to operators so that they could have the latest interface and games on the machines.  Not all operators kept their machines upgraded, so you will find older versions of the machines out there with fewer games.

There was also a feature on the system that allowed operators to define how many games would be displayed at any one time, and then swap games from the installed library in and out of the menu.  This could be based on popularity or random settings.  Some operators liked this feature as they felt having over 100 games to select from was too much for players.