Flash Beats

Description

A table, about five feet long and about three feet wide, containing five parallel tubes running end to end they are shaped like fluorescent light tubes. Segments of these tubes can light up red or green. Two players can play they take position at either end of the table, and each person has five large buttons in front of him one for the end of each tube.Gameplay consists of a red pulse travelling back and forth along each tube. When its heading towards a player, he can press that tubes button to shoot out a green pulse into that tube from his end of the table, sending the red pulse back towards his opponent. Gameplay starts with only the center tube active, then adds the adjacent pair, then finally the outermost pair, eventually putting both players into a frenzy of trying to bounce red pulses back at their opponent.The real hook to this game is the music. Before the game starts, the players can select a music track from a small red LED bitmap display on the machine. All of the tracks have deep, thumping, rhythmic bass, and the machine has large subwoofers mounted in the base visible through the clear plastic sides of the machine. If a player presses his button to send a red pulse back at his opponent at the same instant that the music has a beat, then he spikes it at high speed, making it harder to avoid.One of these machines is in the DisneyQuest arcade at Downtown Disney in Orlando, Florida. Ive never seen or heard of any other like it, so I assume it may be a prototype. It doesn get played often or well because, without any sort of video display, its not easy for a casual observer to figure out whats going on or how to play. But with the thumping bass and the bright magenta neon, its hard to miss

Flash Beats was produced by Sega in 2000.

Sega released 594 machines in our database under this trade name, starting in 1960. Sega is based in Japan.

Other machines made by Sega during the time period Flash Beats was produced include: Dynamite Deka 2, Daytona USA 2: Power Edition, Crazy Taxi, Brave Firefighters, Airline Pilots, 18 Wheeler: American Pro Trucker, Maimai, Monkey Ball, Confidential Mission, and Magical Truck Adventure