Konami Speed Into 3D Arcade Racing With Road Fighters

Konami are hedging their bets on stereoscopic 3D as the “next big thing” to design their upcoming arcade games around.

Earlier this year, the company revealed a re-tooled 3D version of team-shooter, Metal Gear Online, titled Metal Gear Arcade, complete with 3D glasses that also doubled as a controller for the ingame camera.

The game allowed you to look around by turning your head, essentially removing the need for a function usually assigned to the right analogue stick on a standard gamepad.

Today, Konami announced Road Fighters, which is a 3D arcade racing game, but can also be played without the stereoscopic effect for those that prefer it. The game lets you swap between regular and stereoscopic 3D any time you like with a button to toggle the function on and off. There arcade cabinet even includes a second 3D lens for spectators to look through, should they wish to watch the game in 3D.

Road Fighters includes an online multiplayer mode that lets you compete with players from other arcades and also features a “Road Fighter Challenge” mode where you can earn parts to tune your car.

Road Fighters is compatible with Konami’s “Paseli” — it stands for “Pay Smart, Enjoy Life” — payment service, whereby you create a Paseli account and buy credits for it, kind of like a credit card system or PayPal for arcade services. It also enables arcade operators to price their service more flexibly and, say, charge you by the hour, rather than for every game. To this end, Road Fighters will include special features that only Paseli users can access.

Note that this game is different from Road Fighter (without the “s”), an arcade game operated by Konami in 1984. It led to a series of sequels across the PlayStation and arcades in later years, but Road Fighters appears to be unrelated.

As of now, these lower-resolution screens are the only ones available to us: