Raw Thrills at 25: The Arcade Games That Defined a Generation

Raw Thrills reached its 25th anniversary on 26 January 2026. Founded in Skokie, Illinois, in 2001 by Eugene Jarvis, Andrew Eloff and Deepak Deo, the company grew from a team of former Midway employees into one of the most established Western arcade developers.

The studio initially expected to work on console games and spent its early years producing relatively obscure casino titles for IGT. Its arcade breakthrough came with a run of light-gun shooters, licensed racers, sports games, virtual-reality attractions and video-redemption machines. The 2006 merger with Play Mechanix, founded by former Midway developer George Petro, expanded Raw Thrills’ development resources and brought the Big Buck Hunter properties into the group.

This retrospective follows the company’s major arcade releases, selected redemption games, cancelled projects and the clues pointing towards its next generation of hardware. It is not a complete catalogue: minor releases, sequels and content updates have been left out where they add little to the broader story.

Arcade games

For Australian operators and collectors, Raw Thrills’ catalogue is a useful snapshot of how modern arcades evolved. Large licensed attractions, linked racing cabinets and redemption hybrids became increasingly important alongside traditional stand-up machines. Our arcade news and features cover more of that changing industry landscape.

Target: Terror (2004)

Raw Thrills’ first major arcade release followed the light-gun formula established by games such as Area 51 and Maximum Force. Its live-action footage and topical military theme helped compensate for relatively modest technology, making it a sound debut and an early sign that Western arcade development had not ended with the closure of Midway and Atari Games’ arcade operations.

The ending suggested a sequel, but the series ultimately received only a Gold update and a Wii port. At its first trade-show appearance, Andrew Eloff demonstrated the game to pinball design legend Steve Kordek.

The Fast and the Furious (2004)

Originally developed as Hot Cars Street Racing, Raw Thrills’ first racer became a Fast & Furious game after its resemblance to the film was noticed internally. The result was a major success and established a long-running relationship with the licence.

Tokyo Drift followed in 2008, SuperCars in 2011 and The Fast & The Furious Arcade in 2022. The earlier versions were offered as conversion kits, while the 2022 release was not. The licence had previously been held by Sega and Namco, but Joe Kaminkow of IGT, formerly associated with Williams and Data East Pinball, helped secure it for Raw Thrills.

Racing cabinets remain a major part of the home and commercial market, although buyers should consider space, servicing and display requirements before choosing a machine. RETROCADE’s racing arcade collection and arcade-machine buying guide provide useful starting points.

Big Buck Hunter Pro (2006, with Play Mechanix)

The Play Mechanix merger gave Raw Thrills access to the hugely successful Big Buck Hunter series. Big Buck Hunter Pro was followed by Big Buck Safari, Open Season, Big Buck World, Big Buck Hunter HD, Big Buck Wild and Big Buck Hunter Reloaded, which continues to receive updates.

The series became a defining digital hunting game and has supported annual World Championships with substantial cash prizes since 2008. Recent social content has focused on the players and the skills required to become a champion.

The Fast and the Furious: Super Bikes (2006)

The motorcycle branch of the licence proved at least as durable as the car games. The successful 2010 sequel dropped the film branding and used licensed motorcycles such as Yamaha instead. A third instalment arrived in 2019, followed by the shorter, redemption-focused Jackpot Racer. The original Super Bikes is also notable as one of Raw Thrills’ final CRT-based releases.

Guitar Hero Arcade (2009, with Activision and Konami)

Raw Thrills’ arcade adaptation of Activision and RedOctane’s guitar series sold 2,000 units in its first 90 days and became a familiar sight in many venues. The game was fully licensed through ASCAP, despite persistent operator concerns, and was developed with Konami’s approval because of the earlier Guitar Freaks concept.

The brief relationship with Konami also led to further collaboration. Today, used cabinets retain unusually strong value and can be difficult to source.

H2Overdrive (2009, with Specular Interactive)

Specular Interactive, founded by Hydro Thunder creator Steve Ranck and former Midway colleagues, produced this futuristic speedboat racer. It was designed as a spiritual successor to Hydro Thunder, after a planned sequel disappeared when Midway closed its arcade division. The game was among Raw Thrills’ early releases distributed in China through UNIS, with Wahlap also involved with some later titles.

Terminator Salvation (2010, with Play Mechanix)

Play Mechanix chief George Petro, designer of Terminator 2: Judgment Day, saw an opportunity to bring the film licence back to coin-op. The original prototype was abandoned during development because it did not look right, and the team rebuilt the game with stronger visual effects, including glowing red eyes in dark scenes.

The gun design was tested aggressively, even being thrown from buildings, and the same shell was later used for Aliens Armageddon. Three cabinet versions appeared, with the Deluxe model the most common. Its approximately 40-minute play experience used gun straps, a clip-strike reload action and Raw Thrills’ first Super Deluxe cabinet. That large-screen design later influenced the fictional Hero’s Duty cabinet in Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph.

Dirty Drivin’ (2011, with Specular Interactive)

This vehicular-combat racer drew on Offroad Thunder while adding weapons, attitude and a more characterful presentation. Its original skull-head crank used real slot-machine hardware, but location testing and operator feedback led to a Hall Effect control mounted on the panel. The result still delivered convincing racing, explosions, graphics and sound.

Winter X Games SnoCross (2012)

The snowmobile racer brought Raw Thrills into winter sports and acted as a spiritual follow-up to Midway’s Arctic Thunder. It also drew ideas from Super Bikes 2. Raw later returned to the X Games licence with X Games Snowboarder in 2018.

Batman (2013, with Specular Interactive)

Specular’s third and final widely released Raw Thrills project was a combat-focused driving game rather than a conventional track racer. It outsold Dirty Drivin’ and remains sought after by operators and collectors. The game was developed as “Batmobile”, included detailed environments and even small Star Trek references.

Specular later produced the rare Project Hades for Simuline’s 4D Valkyrie platform and worked on the unreleased jet-ski game Splash! with Injoy Motion. The studio was sold to Take-Two in late 2016.

Aliens: Armageddon (2014, with Play Mechanix)

Following Terminator Salvation and Play Mechanix’s earlier Aliens: Extermination, this light-gun shooter delivered some of the strongest arcade visuals of its era. It was directed by Will Carlin and later appeared in rebranded Alien Covenant cabinets at many Dave & Buster’s venues, without new film-related game content.

Alternative cabinet versions used smaller fixed guns instead of the large wired controllers. Unlike Terminator Salvation, there was no Super Deluxe model.

Super Alpine Racer (2014, with Bandai Namco)

Raw Thrills’ relationship with Bandai Namco began with European distribution work in the 2000s. This revival of Namco’s 1994 skiing game used foot-based motion controls and a vertical display. Beyond this title, Galaga Assault and Pac-Man Chomp Mania, Bandai Namco generally remained a distributor of Raw Thrills products in Europe and occasionally Japan.

Jurassic Park Arcade (2015)

Building on earlier environmental shooters such as Let’s Go Jungle and Transformers: Human Alliance, Raw Thrills’ fourth arcade interpretation of Jurassic Park became one of the decade’s biggest location games. The engine came from Play Mechanix, while Raw Thrills handled its first fully self-made shooter since Target: Terror.

The game surpassed 10,000 units in sales and remains in production, with many venues continuing to install it. It ranked second in one 2025 player survey and was the highest-rated Deluxe video game in the February 2026 RePlay survey; seven of the other ten Deluxe entries were also Raw Thrills titles.

Development cost approximately US$4 million and nearly bankrupted the company. Eugene Jarvis later described it as a major success that had reached its twelfth year of production. Cabinet versions included the common non-motion model, a rare Deluxe edition with the Thrill-D air-ride base, smaller motion units for Chuck E. Cheese and a Japanese conversion of Bandai Namco’s underperforming AKB48 shooter cabinets. ICE also offered a short-lived home version during the early COVID period.

MotoGP (2015, with Play Mechanix)

This was Raw Thrills’ first motorcycle racer outside the Super Bikes family and its first MotoGP project with Play Mechanix. Licensed bikes, riders and circuits did not match the market performance of Super Bikes 2, although the game found stronger support in Europe. A VR version followed in 2023.

Cruis’n Blast (2016)

Developed by Raw Thrills with Nintendo’s full licensing support, Cruis’n Blast became the company’s most successful racing release. It began life as Cruis’n Adventure, then Cruis’n Redline, and briefly carried the simpler name Cruis’n. Early versions included a card system for unlocking content.

The game has shown exceptional longevity. A 2020 update changed some vehicles, and machines shipped since then included the revised content. A Nintendo Switch version was later released and subsequently removed from online storefronts.

World’s Largest Pac-Man (2016, with Bandai Namco)

This venue centrepiece used enormous LED displays to present two-player Pac-Man and Galaga. Raw Thrills and Bandai Namco later applied the large-screen concept to Space Invaders and Bust-A-Move Frenzy.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2017)

Raw Thrills moved beyond its usual racers and shooters with a beat-’em-up based on Nickelodeon’s 2012–2017 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series. Producer Matt Cianchetti played almost every relevant beat-’em-up he could find while refining the combat. It did not revive the genre across arcades, but became a cult favourite and later appeared on home systems and PC as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade: Wrath of the Mutants.

The Walking Dead (2017, with Play Mechanix)

This on-rails zombie shooter used a mini crossbow-style controller instead of a conventional mounted gun. Its lever reload was unusual for the genre, and the game performed strongly on location, remaining in production until relatively recently. It is also available as an additional mode on some Big Buck cabinets.

Injustice Arcade (2017, with NetherRealm Studios and WB Games)

Raw Thrills’ first major trading-card arcade game adapted Injustice: Gods Among Us. The card collection element received more emphasis than the fighting mechanics, yet the machine became a strong performer at many venues. Three major updates expanded its original 200-card roster, with Series 4 arriving in 2022. Dave & Buster’s was an important supporter of the Western trading-card arcade format.

Halo: Fireteam Raven (2018, with Play Mechanix and 343 Industries)

Announced unexpectedly through the Inside Xbox webshow, this Halo on-rails shooter launched with a four-player Super Deluxe theatre cabinet reminiscent of Galaxian 3. Supply-chain problems during COVID led to the larger model being replaced by a standard two-player environmental cabinet. Four-player and two-player Assault versions with tethered guns also appeared.

Marvel: Contest of Champions (2019 at Dave & Buster’s; 2024 elsewhere, with Kabam)

This trading-card battler introduced more gameplay than Injustice while remaining less complex than a conventional fighting game. It was exclusive to Dave & Buster’s in the United States for five years before reaching other arcades in 2024. Updates added cards and content, including Series 3, and the game also received a Chinese release.

Nitro Trucks (2020, with Play Mechanix)

Released during the worst period of the COVID disruption, this unlicensed off-road truck racer used muddy closed circuits and no weapons. It was Play Mechanix’s second racer after MotoGP, but its timing limited exposure and production has ended.

King Kong of Skull Island VR (2021)

Raw Thrills’ first VR attraction adapted the formula of Virtual Rabbids to King Kong, adding motion-controlled interaction. A more advanced sequel arrived in 2023, alongside the dinosaur-themed T-Rex Safari. The latter appears to have been less common as interest in VR cooled.

Minecraft Dungeons Arcade (2021, with Play Mechanix and Mojang)

This arcade adaptation turned Mojang’s action RPG into a cooperative hack-and-slash experience with collectible cards. Dave & Buster’s rapidly installed it across its US venues before wider distribution followed. Series 5 later added a Legendary Chicken Jockey card connected with the 2025 film.

Fast & Furious Arcade (2022)

The latest major Fast & Furious racer helped popularise stacked dual-screen Deluxe cabinets. Sega had explored a similar arrangement for an unreleased House of the Dead 5 in the early 2010s, but Raw Thrills brought the format to market. A standard cabinet used smaller screens and omitted the motion base. Four linked Deluxe units create one of the most imposing modern arcade displays.

NBA Superstars (2024, with Play Mechanix)

Seven years after TMNT, Raw Thrills returned to basketball. Its performance developed gradually, but the game ranked first among standard video games in the February 2026 RePlay Player’s Choice survey despite appearing in only 20% of surveyed locations. Updates remain planned, and a Chinese Wahlap version added card vending.

Godzilla Kaiju Wars VR (2024; non-VR Deluxe version 2025)

Combining Raw Thrills’ experience with shooters and VR, Godzilla Kaiju Wars VR delivers relentless kaiju and robot combat. The 2025 non-VR Deluxe model doubled the game length and spread the action across two screens, making it a practical alternative for venues that do not want VR. Cabinets began shipping in December.

Top Gun: Maverick (2025, with Play Mechanix)

Raw Thrills finally entered the air-combat category with this licensed dogfighting game. Early versions were closer to the free-roaming structure of Blazing Angels Arcade, but test players became lost in the skies. The design was reshaped into a more focused linear experience, and the designer of the earlier game’s cabinet also worked on this machine.

Stranger Things Arcade (2026)

This ball-toss attraction gives Raw Thrills another departure from its established racing and shooting catalogue. It began as a timed Dave & Buster’s exclusive, with that period expected to end within weeks of the anniversary coverage so other venues could offer the licensed machine.

Redemption and videmption

Ticket redemption has outperformed conventional video games in many arcades for years, so Raw Thrills has developed a substantial videmption catalogue. Most of these machines include an amusement-only setting for score-based play without tickets.

• Deal or No Deal (2007, with ICE and Play Mechanix) – A hugely successful game-show adaptation that helped define Western videmption.
• Wheel of Fortune (2010, with Konami and Play Mechanix) – A game-show follow-up that arrived after Guitar Hero Arcade.
• Frogger (2010, with ICE) – A licensed revival of Konami’s traffic-dodging classic.
• Doodle Jump Arcade (2012, with ICE and Lima Sky) – A mobile-to-arcade platformer from the early 2010s app-game wave.
• Monopoly (2013, with ICE) and Barrel of Monkeys (2013, with Play Mechanix) – Redemption adaptations of familiar party and board games.
• Pac-Man Chomp Mania (2013, with Bandai Namco) – Originally titled Pac-Man Ticket Mania.
• Galaga Assault (2016, with Bandai Namco) – A simple shooting redemption game that can also run without tickets.
• Space Invaders Frenzy (2017, with Taito) – A large mounted-gun game with a micro-LED screen; it led to the related Bust-A-Move Frenzy.
• Choppy Wood (2017) – A lumberjacking game released only for Chuck E. Cheese locations despite trade-show appearances.
• Slither.io (2019) – An arcade conversion of the browser and mobile hit.
• Nerf Arcade (2019) – A major videmption success using smaller screens and skill-based shooting.
• Centipede Chaos (2019, with ICE and Play Mechanix) – A ticket game using an analogue joystick rather than a trackball, with an amusement mode.
• Monopoly Roll-N-Go (2020, with ICE) – A successful wheel-style attraction built around spinning a giant die.
• Ship Wreck (2023, with ICE and Play Mechanix) – A pirate-themed ball-toss game where target patterns award tickets.
• Angry Birds Boom! (2024, with Play Mechanix) – A skill-shooting hybrid that followed earlier Angry Birds Arcade work.
• The Wizard of Oz (2025) – A video roller with card vending and a glowing orb.
• Jackpot Racer (2025) – A two-screen, one-minute adaptation of the successful Super Bikes formula.

Cancelled and unreleased projects

Raw Thrills has also tested numerous concepts that never reached full production. Some appeared only at a trade show or location test; others disappeared without an official release.

• American Idol (2008, with Konami) – A microphone-controlled karaoke and recording game shown once at a US trade show.
• Dance Central 3 (2016, with Harmonix) – An official arcade attempt that did not progress, despite unofficial Chinese versions of the series.
• Splash! (2017, with Injoy Motion and Specular Interactive) – An unreleased jet-ski racer seen on test in the UK and at EAG Expo.
• Nex Machina Arcade (2017, with Housemarque) – A planned twin-stick arcade conversion inspired by Robotron and Smash TV, reportedly unsuccessful in testing.
• Mario Party Challenge World (2018, with Capcom and Nintendo) – A projection-mapped Western ticket game based on a Japanese medal-game concept. Legal restrictions affecting medal-style mechanics contributed to its cancellation, although a few prototype cabinets survived.
• World’s Largest Frogger (2019, with Konami) – A large-screen version that appeared on test twice.
• Tetris Dimensions (2019, with ICE and Play Mechanix) – A projection-based videmption experiment that failed to achieve the required numbers after testing.
• Star Trek Battleground (2019) – An unreleased projection-mapped videmption title.
• Star Trek Section 31 (2020, with Xion Games) – A cancelled on-rails shooter likely affected by COVID-era conditions; concept footage and artwork were produced.
• Asteroids (2022, with ICE and Play Mechanix) – A planned four-player videmption revival of the Atari classic that never reached release.
• Tecmo Bowl (2022, with Koei Tecmo) – A teased football game featuring Tim Kitzrow voice work that ultimately did not reach the goal line.

What could come next?

Hints from IAAPA in late 2025 pointed to a major new Play Mechanix project, a standard cabinet version of an existing title and another content update. The new game is expected to use Raw Thrills’ latest in-house graphics engine, with a substantial visual step beyond earlier releases.

Dual-screen and possibly triple-screen cabinets are likely to remain part of the company’s strategy because the format has performed well despite its cost. The success of Godzilla Kaiju Wars may also encourage more non-VR alternatives, while the broader VR market makes a large run of fully immersive releases less certain. A return to augmented or mixed reality would be intriguing after the unresolved Mario Party Challenge World and Star Trek Battleground experiments.

Raw Thrills’ 25-year history shows a consistent willingness to combine recognisable licences with physical controls, spectacle and straightforward location-friendly play. Whether you prefer a racing simulator, a light-gun shooter, a beat-’em-up or a compact home cabinet, the company’s influence is difficult to miss. For owners planning installation or maintenance, explore RETROCADE’s arcade machines, arcade parts and arcade repair services.