While it’s been a while since we’ve talked about tradeshows on the blog here, it’s been a little longer since we’ve discussed a certain company by the name of Wahlap. Based out of China, they made waves several years ago at IAAPA when they showed up with the Ridge Racer-like game Storm Racer, and we’ve seen them on and off since. For a few years in recent memory, their booths at IAAPA or Amusement Expo were fairly low key, but they generally haven’t shied away from going all-out on their booths for their domestic events. Such is the case for the 2021 Asia Amusements & Attractions Expo which just started Monday morning in Guangzhou, China.
As a note, I am not there in attendance, but and finding out about this vicariously from someone who works at Wahlap thanks to some postings that they have done on LinkedIn.
Asphalt 9 Legends Arcade
The first major game announcement from the company is an arcade rendition of Asphalt 9 Legends, an arcade-style racer developed by Gameloft for mobile platforms, as well as the Switch and PC. The software of this edition has been designed by IGS, with Wahlap handling manufacturing/marketing/distribution. Since Wahlap has sold content to the States, it should be possible to grab one of these if you are interested, although I do not know if Wahlap still has a warehouse in California at this point (they said that they did back at IAAPA 2019 when they were looking to sell Speed Driver 5 here, but that certainly could have closed with the pandemic).
Apart from offering far more realistic controls than an iPad can do, this one comes with a 43″ screen (I asked about 4k, waiting on a response), air blowers, a powerful sound system and a motion platform. It also appears to possibly support online play, but that’s another question up-in-the-air that I’m hoping to find out before too long:
Jet Blaster
The last time we had heard anything from Wahlap was last summer, when they were showing off this new jetski racing game. That disappeared after it was clear that things weren’t going to be going back to normal any time soon, but the company held onto it and now it seems that it’ll get it’s chance. I’m not sure why the monitor portion of this one is so bulky though…almost like it was housing an old CRT:
Crazy Rafting
You might recall that last year when UNIS held their Virtual Showcase event, they unveiled a new rafting arcade game called Rowing Champs. That one hasn’t been released yet and it looks like Wahlap is looking to jump in first with Crazy Rafting. Both games will probably remind you of Namco’s Rapid River, which is where they are obviously pulling inspiration from. The controller certainly looks the same as RR here, but apart from these pics, I don’t have any additional information on this one for the moment.
Skip Time
I want to say that I’ve heard of this one before, but if I did, it was in a very different cabinet. This running sports game takes a page from the likes of Mario & Sonic Olympics and adds a bit more LED flash to the running pad, although I would guess that the game itself isn’t too far off from a Flash game in quality:
Shooting game
Since I don’t know Chinese I have no idea what this one is called, but the screen looks a little like LAI’s Toy Frenzy. Instead of mounted guns you have free guns though, but we would need to see it in motion to know more.
Pokémon Ga-Ole
The Chinese version of this Pokémon card vending game was there, which has been out in Japan for a few years. It always helps to have a giant Pikachu around to help promote it:
Please check back later today for updates – it’s almost 1am my time and I work all day tomorrow so I really need to get some sleep, but I will update this post with more info accordingly.
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