This week is starting strong with the arcade news, and we’ve got quite the interesting product to start off with, something unexpected from Taito.
Taito has been full of surprises over the past month, beginning with their first appearance at the IAAPA trade show event. The Taito staff mentioned that they were working on new products that could better work out in the West, and this has a strong possibility of being the first of those intended games.

Space Invaders Pinball Jam takes advantage of Taito’s strongest IP and combines it with a game style that has never done terribly well in Japan(pinball). By the pictures, it is not full-size pinball – the ball itself appears to be light-brown or orange, and the playfield isn’t terribly complex. All of the playfield language is in English, and it is being tested out at a location with some Western games like Jurassic Park, all of which seems to indicate a game eventually intended for overseas audiences.

Head-to-head style play is unusual, but not unheard of. The most famous example would be Joust. Judging this playfield solely by the static pictures, it appears quite barren – there are no stand-up targets that I can identify.
Update: Some hours after posting this, I found more pics, info and a video from someone who show the game sort-of in action. This is NOT active gameplay, but the attract mode that takes place while waiting to be played. Here is that, then some more pertinent information:

タイトーステーション溝の口店でロケテスト中の『スペースインベーダー・ピンボールジャム』のデモです。放置しているとボールがでてきて、ゲームの雰囲気がなんとなくわかります。 pic.twitter.com/b1C2oHve9H
— アリエス@2日目東2ホール-T05a (@ariesukobeya) December 24, 2018

UPDATE (cont.): The gameplay is separated into three rounds, and there is no single player mode currently present. Here is a rough translation Google provided on how it works:

“Like the pinball rules, the rule will hit the ball so that the ball will not fall to you. If

http://arcadeheroes.com