ARCADE WATCH
Keeping an eye on the coin-op gaming scene
Game
Chef It Up
Manufacturer
MonkeySplash Studios
Now this is what we want from the world of arcade games: something that doesn’t look like anything we’ve ever seen before. OK, so the premise recalls any amount of food-prep games of recent times, but Chef It Up’s cabinet is unique, its four sides each featuring a screen and a set of controls that is unique to a specific kitchen station. The player corralling ingredients, for example, has buttons and a joystick, while others have trackballs, and the person assigned to cooking uses the kind of twistable knobs you’d expect to use for controlling a real hob. This is the first coin-op from the Sydney-based MonkeySplash and it’s in limited test at the moment, where hopefully it’ll succeed, paving the way for more innovations from the company in the future.