diana - hitting the jackpot

P39ME04-ME diana:P39ME04-ME diana 24/03/2010 16:45 Page 2
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
Mohamed El Sawy and Adrian Buckley
to dominate American bars and arcades years
­ or better still, ‘knock off’ his opponent’s puck. It is all
ago, with playfields up to 20ft long. The Arachnid
picked up on a monitor and shown with great
version, however, uses modern technology to bring
accuracy according to the direction and speed of the
the game down to 6ft. A player will use a puck and
puck.
slide it down the track to try and get it to stop
Points are scored for landing in the target zone
between two lines in the target area. The other
and/or for knocking off the opponent’s puck.
player will use his puck to achieve the same objective
In some locations, tournaments
would be very appropriate and
leagues – something which
Arachnid with its long tradition of
high­quality soft­tipped 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 coin­op 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.
www.intergameonline.com MIDDLE EAST SPECIAL ISSUE APRIL 2010
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Diana Marketing the time is right
Adrian Buckley (right) with son Nicholas.
T
he 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 re­equipping 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 non­gambling 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 Barcelona­based 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
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JANUARY 2010 iNTERGAME www.intergameonline.com
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 wooden­based
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.
_DIANA:Maquetación 1
1/3/10
16:47
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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
E
n 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
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.
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 juga-
dor 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