DIANA - HITTING THE JACKPOT

Transcripción

1 MIDDLE EAST SPECIAL ISSUE DIANA - HITTING THE JACKPOT ARACHNID hit the jackpot when it launched a new sports game, the Super Shuffle, and has been running overtime and extra shifts on its production line in the US ever since it began to ship the game. Its sole distributor Diana Marketing from Spain sees the Middle East as a natural market for the product. At DEAL this month, Nicholas Buckley from Diana Marketing will bring information and DVD footage to Dubai with the intention of presenting it to a primary market, the family entertainment centres owners who will visit the expo. It is a natural for the Middle East, said Nicholas. Everywhere you go in the region you see air hockey games in the big FEC locations. We see the Super Shuffle as an exciting new concept in skill based sports games but with a much wider potential." Super Shuffle is a reality/virtual sports game based on the traditional shuffle games that used to dominate American bars and arcades years ago, with playfields up to 20ft long. The Arachnid version, however, uses modern technology to bring the game down to 6ft. A player will use a puck and slide it down the track to try and get it to stop between two lines in the target area. The other player will use his puck to achieve the same objective Mohamed El Sawy and Adrian Buckley or better still, knock off his opponent s puck. It is all picked up on a monitor and shown with great accuracy according to the direction and speed of the puck. Points are scored for landing in the target zone and/or for knocking off the opponent s puck. In some locations, tournaments would be very appropriate and leagues something which Arachnid with its long tradition of high quality soft tipped darts games has great expertise. But in the Middle East environment, it is an ideal fun game for all of the family. Mohamed El Sawy, vice president of Engineering Construction Co. of Nasr City, Cairo, Egypt, has confirmed his order for the new Super Shuffle game from Diana Marketing. The deal was concluded at the IMA show in Düsseldorf. Sawy said that the game will go into his Bounce bowling centre in Cairo. We have a sports theme to our coin op at the location snooker, pool, air hockey, darts and now this welcome addition as many bowling centres are opening in shopping malls in Egypt. Nicholas would be delighted to meet with interested companies during his visit. MIDDLE EAST SPECIAL ISSUE APRIL 2010??

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3 Diana Marketing - the time is right Adrian Buckley (right) with son Nicholas. The optimum time for taking a new amusement only device into Germany may be now, says Adrian Buckley. Everyone is always looking for something really different and with Germany now getting towards the end of the process in re equipping its AWP market, operators will seek something to supplement them. The Diana Marketing boss launched a prototype of Arachnid s Knockoff shuffleboard game at the FER show in Madrid in September. Now production line models are just arriving, but the launch was so successful in Spain that order books are already oversubscribed. We have consignments on the water right now, said Buckley, so we hope to be able to deliver from stock very shortly. Arachnid has taken a traditional amusement tabletop sports game and transformed it into something really different and capable of being operated in a small area. The playfield is surmounted by a large monitor. The player uses a real puck to slide down the playfield towards target areas at the end of the runway and his results are replicated on the monitor. Germany is ideal, continued Buckley. The market there loves sports games; it is perhaps one of the few non gambling areas which has expanded in Germany in recent years. The success of electronic darts, pool, air hockey and table soccer in Germany illustrates my point. And players in Germany are often grouped into teams and leagues. The new game lends itself perfectly to that kind of operation. The Barcelona based Diana Marketing is the European distributor for Arachnid and continues to major on the American company s iconic electronic darts games. The arrival of a totally new product for Arachnid has created a real stir at its Spanish agent. Buckley s son, Nicholas, has been to the US factory for an extended familiarisation programme and is now Diana s Mr Shuffle in charge of technical services, and will handle marketing on the new game. Since the prototype launch in Madrid, new games have been loaded into Knockoff Shuffle, including Crazy Shuffle where the puck disappears down any of a series of virtual holes to score a point. The virtual holes move around at random with each round. There is also a tenpin bowling game. Any of the games can be played by one or two players the single version against the machine and top scores are registered in the software. The week s top 10 players in any location are shown on a list that is then uploaded to create a database for a national event. In Düsseldorf, Knockoff Shuffle will be shown on the stand of Bally Wulff Entertainment and on Diana s own booth. At the London European Amusement Expo, the week after IMA, the game will be on the stand of Sound Leisure. At just 6ft long the traditional wooden based shuffleboard games can be 20ft long Knockoff Shuffle offers something really different and Buckley believes firmly that Düsseldorf will provide the ideal launch pad for the new product. The new Knockoff Shuffle game. 32 JANUARY 2010 intergame

4 Divertirse y competir es la fórmula de éxito que DIANA MARKETING lleva por todo el mundo con sus juegos y los nuevos modelos expuestos en la Feria JUEGOS DE CAMPEONATO No hay que ser un campeón para disfrutar plenamente con las Dianas Arachnid o con el increíble modelo Knock Off de lanzamiento de fichas de DIANA MARKETING, pero estos juegos sí pueden crear campeones gracias al espíritu competitivo que define la vocación de esta empresa, con el que constantemente organiza torneos con miles de participantes. Y la calidad de los modelos garantiza que cada jugador pueda desarrollar siempre sus mejores cualidades. En DIANA MARKETING adoramos la competición comenta Adrián Buckley y hace muy poco que hemos vuelto de Japón, de Osaka, de una fase de nuestro Campeonato de Dardos que continuará en Las Vegas, en Chicago y después en Europa, donde en Holanda creo que podremos ver un encuentro de maravilla. Eso supone miles de jugadores y también cientos de nuestras Dianas, que ponemos nuevas para cada ocasión, manejando cifras económicas muy considerables. Pero es que la competición también tiene toda su emoción en lo pequeño y, por ejemplo, acabamos de celebrar un torneo de Knock Off en un bar de Cataluña con 16 jugadores en el que había más de 40 personas como espectadores y ha sido una verdadera gozada. Y es que es verdad que los juegos de DIANA MARKETING son juegos de campeonato a cualquier escala: Knock Off es una pequeña pista sensible de alta tecnología para lanzar discos deslizantes cuya trayectoria queda registrada en la pantalla frontal del modelo que es un completo ordenador que recoge además de la trayectoria y situación de cada lanzamiento, los datos de cada jugador y los cuadrantes completos de la partida. Es un juego deportivo apasionante para probar el pulso y la puntería que DIANA MARKETING ha perfeccionado en su formato y funcionamiento electrónico hasta convertirlo en un elemento ideal para zonas de ocio y establecimientos de hostelería. Y sus posibilidades son ilimitadas al poderse conectar con WIFI para celebrar ligas o torneos en conexión desde cualquier punto. Es una gran oportunidad que se une a las Dianas de la empresa que con modelos como G-2.5 y G-2.5 WM para pared o con peana y con dardos plásticos o de tungsteno, ofrece las mejores oportunidades para el subsector. AZAR-57

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