IAAPA Expo 2019 opens today, and with that, so do the floodgates for arcade news. For our first unveil is something teased by Raw Thrills a short time ago – their latest racing title: Nitro Trucks.
Jumping back in time for a moment, to 2011, many will recall the last time that we saw an off-road racing arcade game in Dirty Drivin’ That was developed by Specular Interactive for Raw Thrills, something that we covered extensively back-in-the-day. In 2015, Play Mechanix (a semi-independent division of Raw Thrills) created their first racing title in MotoGP, and now they’re taking a crack at it again with Nitro Trucks. Take note however – this is NOT Dirty Drivin’ 2. It plays more like a demolition derby racer but on a closed circuit course. I’ll get into that more down below.
First off, I found out about the title from a trademark filing (thanks Jdevy for pointing that out), but wasn’t sure if it was cover for something else, as non-licensed titles from Play Mechanix or Raw Thrills are somewhat rare – they have Target Terror, Big Buck Hunter, H2Overdrive, Dirty Drivin’ and Super Bikes 2 & 3. Everything else in their extensive roster uses a license. I don’t mind seeing something that doesn’t – while I understand the value that a license can bring to a game, on the same note it’s satisfying to watch developers be completely creative in coming up with something new from scratch. This isn’t the first offroad vehicle game to grace arcades of course, but such titles haven’t been super common either.
The Cabinet
Let’s start with the first element that people will see of the game when found at an arcade, the cabinet. Nitro Trucks uses a design variation of Cruis’n Blast, with a partial enclosure feel to the game with

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