ICE's exciting new basketball arcade game is now shipping.
Hoop It Up features two different style cabinets. The first is a straight ticket redemption machine, and the second is a unique mixture between a prize and ticket redemption machine, with players being able to win tickets or hit the mega bonus to receive a ball. On both versions, players still have the opportunity to receive tickets if they miss the hoop and/or the bonuses, depending on where the ball lands on the rotating playfield.
Hoop It Up was original first shown four years ago, under the name Wham-O. "This project has been in our development pipeline for five years," said Joe Coppola, ICE president. "We had some early struggles and then we stepped away from it. We've been fully focused the past two years on getting this game mechanically solid, and we completely redid the original software.
"In our initial testing, we found lots of players didn't initially understand the gameplay," he continued. "At that point, we took a step back and made the decision to re-theme the game. The basketball theme very quickly caught on with the players and made it much more intuitive. They walked up and immediately understood the game and were mesmerized with the ball launch and the gameplay of trying to time the launch to get the ball through the moving hoop."
