Hello valiant readers, and welcome to another edition of Newsbytes. If you’re new to the site, Newsbytes are posted every Saturday and feature a variety of quick news items from the wonderful world of arcades. Let’s get to it:
Samurai Spirits Confirmed For Japanese Arcade Release
When SNK announced the reboot of their Samurai Shodown/Spirits series last year, they mentioned that it would be coming out on every major gaming platform, as well as in arcades. Details were sparse beyond that, and some confusion came up when a recent trailer made no mention of arcades at all. Fortunately that has been laid to rest this week, as SNK has confirmed that the game will be made available through Taito’s digital distribution network, NESiCAxLIVe 2.
According to Taito’s page with the announcement, the arcade version will allow for cross site play, but it doesn’t mention if there are any other differences. I imagine it will be the same as the console models. While the console versions launch on the 26th of June, the AC version is only saying “Summer” at the moment.
What does that mean for a Western release? Well, Round1USA did test NESiCAxLIVe 2 at a few locations in January, although after the test ended, we’ve not heard anything else about that. It could mean that more development time is needed to get things right for what the market needs here, or it could be that the test was a flop and they didn’t see a reason to move forward. If the network does become available through Round 1, then at least that means that we’ll see the game in arcades for the States, but then that would be an R1USA exclusive – a limited release. We’ll wait…and see.
Oh, and since we’re on the subject of games we probably won’t see here, Sega
