Blast ‘Em Up! : Firms Design Futuristic Game for ‘Space Cowboys’ in Japan

Japan might have an edge over the United States in some key technologies, but not when it comes to killer robots.

A Japanese amusement company has turned to two Southern California firms to build the latest in high-tech amusements: a smoke-filled maze in which people armed with laser guns do battle with robots, aliens and other characters that fire back.

With backing from Tokyo investors, designers from Animation International in El Toro and Show Motion Design in Glendale have worked since February constructing the “robotic amusement of the future” in a Santa Ana warehouse.

On Wednesday, a full-scale prototype of “Blastar” was unveiled to its investors and potential customers, including a department store owner who wants to put the attraction on the roof of his chain’s seven-floor building in downtown Tokyo.

The prototype, which resembles a spaceship, is a 15-foot-high chamber made of sheet metal, covered with plastic and filled with smoke, sound effects and sophisticated robotic devices. Developers expect that players, mostly ages 8 to 30, will pay $2.50 to $3 each for 2 1/2 minutes of laser action.

Space Age, Japan, a Tokyo-based firm that produces space exhibitions for Japanese communities, said it has spent more than $300,000 on the prototype, and expects later this summer to begin production of models that will sell for $250,000 each.

Space Age, which paid the Southern California firms to design and build the game, plans to market Blastar in the Far East. Animation International President Bill Griffith said his company expects to sell the game in the U.S.

Space Age President Yoshihiro Yamanashi, who got his first look at the prototype Wednesday, said orders have been placed and deposits paid by several Japanese purchasers. Customers include owners of the Takashimaya department store in Tokyo and an amusement park being developed in Yokohama. He said the games also can be set up in shopping center parking lots.

Yamanashi said he relied on U.S. know-how to build the amusement because “we’ve got great technology in Japan, but not such creativity. You know how to make the most creative fun here.”

Space Age attorney Brian Oxman said Japanese officials have encouraged the company to import products from the United States as a way of reducing the foreign trade deficit.

Although the game will be marketed worldwide, Yamanashi said the product probably will have its greatest success in Japan. One-on-one laser combat amusements are popular among American youths, but Yamanashi said he is convinced that young people in Japan would rather fire at robots than at each other.

The game sounds like a first-of-its-kind development, said Dan Rothmel, a former marketing director of the Magic Mountain amusement park in Valencia who now works for a marketing services firm in Newport Beach.

“From the description, there doesn’t seem to be anything else like it,” Rothmel said. “I think kids here will like it.”

Griffith and Ray Raymond started Animation International only this year, but the two have been partners in various robotic development projects since 1979.

Griffith said the companies expect to sell as many as 500 machines over the next two to three years. But he said success for high-tech amusements is short-lived because young people demand fresh thrills.

“After two or three years, people won’t want to play anymore,” he said. “But we can gut the buildings and turn them into something else.”