Established in 1992, Andamiro is a company that continuously re-invests in the development of new products and has become one of the top leaders in the field of game development. President of the company James Ko and executive vice president for sales and marketing Satinder Bhutani took time out of their busy ATEI schedule to talk products, exhibitions and plans for 2007 with Helen Fletcher...

If you visited the first floor of the ATEI show at Earls Court this year, you will have noticed that even on the first morning of the first day, interest was building around the Andamiro stand. One game creating a considerable amount of interest from visitors was the company’s dance floor game Pump It Up and one would be hard pushed to think of a time when there wasn’t someone having a go and working up a sweat in the process.

“The game is a brilliant way for kids to stay active and healthy, especially considering the issue of child obesity in the US and the UK,” said Bhutani. “Players burn calories without even realising and the game now comes with 43 new songs, making the total number of songs available 150.

Calorie counter

The kind of song the player chooses to dance to obviously has an effect on the total amount of calories burnt, but the machine tells you this at the end of the game in the form of a ‘calories lost graph.’ Players can also compare their calorie consumption with the fitness chart, which also measures oxygen intake per minute.

Pump It Up uses Andamiro’s latest NX software and also comes with new and improved play modes for more fun, including World Tour Station, where the player has to conquer the missions of the world’s cities, and the Special Zone, where a medley of songs can be played as well as various missions undertaken.

“It looks like it could be a difficult game to keep up with, but there are modes to suit all levels of dancer, including the easy and fun modes, as well as a training station for beginners,” said Ko. “Each lesson has three songs and as players’ skill improves they can increase the level they dance to. Players of different skill levels can also play together using different modes.”

Pump It Up

The main focus for the company this coming year has to be the annual World Pump It Up Festival, an international three-night event that will be held in Korea in November.

“The first WPF was held in 2005 with a total of 11 nations participating, including the US, Mexico and Brazil,” Bhutani told InterGame. “The competition proved really popular and these numbers grew to a total of 19 nations the following year, including the UK, Indonesia and Spain.”

Nations compete in club competitions at national festivals, with the top Pump It Up players from each nation going on to compete for top prizes of US$50,000 in each of three divisions – male speed, female speed and freestyle - at the grand final. One male, one female and one team qualify to compete in the final from each participating nation.
In addition players are able to enjoy a variety of experiences during the three nights and four days.

Another product on the Andamiro stand that did particularly well at ATEI was Winner’s Wheel, launched at the AMOA show in the US last year. It is a single-player, quick-coin ticket redemption machine, where the aim of the game is to drop coins through ramps into the ‘Win’ slot, where a ball is then activated and falls onto the revolving playfield with holes of different ticket values. Bhutani said: “It has proved to be the number one piece in all locations it has been placed and we have had phenomenal support from the US distributors as well as in Italy and Spain.”

With distributors worldwide, Andamiro’s other aim for 2007 is to ‘continue producing quality products that are reasonably priced.’
“We have a few redemption machines in the pipeline and have ambitious plans to release three products before the forthcoming AMOA show in September that meet the requirements of every area of the industry,” said Bhutani.

“Customer choice comes first for us and it is this commitment and the fact we develop and manufacture ideas in Korea, so we can keep the costs down, that results in the varied, high quality games we produce,” added Ko.