It was always one or the other: either go the movies or stay home for some game time. The two rarely mixed together, until recently.
The Noovie ARcade Augmented Reality app broke the one-at-the-time routine and delivered full, big-screen AR gaming experience to moviegoers across the nation. And today is time for an update. October 1 brings a new Noovie ARcade experience to cinemas nationwide. It’s Noovie AR Halloween time.
Cinema pre-shows are getting their fair share of spotlight. National CineMedia advertising group, with more than 1, 500 cinemas, gives a great reason for arriving some 20 minutes early for the feature film of choice. The downloadable Noovie ARcade app gets the pre-shows going with AR arcade games for all the room to play. Visitors need only their phones to enjoy this unique offering. The AR gaming theaters include powerhouses like Cinemark, AMC, or Regal Cinemas, as well as more than 50 local cinema groups.
More than 1 million users nationwide have already installed the app and enjoyed the shared AR gaming. The big screen prompts a go signal and then the theater morphs into a communal Augmented Reality game room. Everyone’s in it, always on alert and never knowing what’s coming next from the screen. There is an after party too. More than simply filling the pre-movie time, Noovie AR gametime extends to after the movie has ended.
Speaking of gametime, the standard core of games has just been enriched by a horror offering. Theaters today are featuring the new Noovie Halloween Experience for every PG-13 or R-rated movie on display. If you planned to see, say ‘Venom’ movie in any of the theaters mentioned above, make sure to catch the pre-show. Noovie AR Halloween will stretch to the October 31 and adds to the initial core of games available through Noovie ARcade app. The people’s favorites include:
- Cineinvaders, which puts the whole theater at risk of alien invasion. It is up to the viewers to protect the theater for a movie to start;
- Emoji Escape, a game that has Emoji running wild in the theater lobby until you catch them;
- Kernel Cannon, game that has you launching kernels at popcorn buckets.
This is nothing we haven’t come to expect from National CineMedia. In many ways it is the most wide-encompassing of cinema advertising companies on the continent. Boasting of 20,800 movie screens across the nation, it is always on the lookout for new ways to engage audiences. And it better be, since the number of viewers under its domain stretches to whooping 750 million a year. Noovie ARcade app seems to give that little something to keep those millions entertained.
Ever since National CineMedia decided to treat their viewers with some communal AR gaming, pre-shows haven’t quite been the same. As National CineMedia and Noovie showed us, it doesn’t have to be either/or. We can enjoy our movies and still find space for some AR side gaming. Adding the Noovie AR Halloween game to the existing offer looks to edge the seats of moviegoers a little more.
