The AOU was held in Tokyo this week-end. AOU stands for All “Nippon Amusement Machine Operator’s Union” and we were kindly invited by Taito to test their latest arcade game, “Hopping Road”… They had a huge booth with a lot of cool other stuff that we’ll cover later, but I completely fell for Hopping Road, a game completely out of the ordinary where you use a pogo stick to play.

What’s this all about? Imagine an average race where you have to collect diamonds and your character’s a cute little animal that uses a pogo stick to race. While it would have been easy for Taito to use a simple jump button to help your character to jump around, they made things WAY more fun by giving you to a pogo stick… Not only do you collect as many diamonds as possible, to finish first you ALSO have to jump the most… You can finish first, but if you collect less diamonds than your competitors your overall score may be less.

The game can be played alone or with up to 4 players. You’d better be in shape and not fluffy like me, after several runs I was out of breath. This game is simple, but I had a LOT of FUN!

A bit of background, this game was developed in collaboration with Taito and Wiz, the overall concept behind it was to create something fun to use at any age (easy to understand)… Development time took 10 months from the initial idea to the product we have now.

It’s in Japan now, but the good news is Taito and Wiz wants to export this system all over the world.

Big thumbs-up to Taito on this one, and enjoy our video below!