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BlazBlue now available for arcades in the US

Shaggy 4

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While a certain company may feel that arcades are dead and so there is no use selling their fighter arcade title in the US, a different company known as Aksys has eschewed the logic of the aformentioned ‘certain company’ and released their fighter for arcades today known as BlazBlue. In case you are not familiar with it, BlazBlue is a high-definition 2.5D fighting game based upon the Guilty Gear series that had previously been available in Japan. AkSys has a website for the game available now and it should be shipping out to arcades who ordered it already.  I imagine that the price is the same as it was we first found out about it a few months ago (kit: $3500, full machine could vary between $5k-$7k depending on the model).

I think that it’s great to see another gauntlet thrown down for fighters in the US.  If Dark Presence can make it out before the end of the year, then that will mean that 3 fighting games (clarification: in an official manner) will have been made available to arcades this year alone – I wouldn’t be surprised to see more next year if the trend continues.

BTW- If you’re an operator interested in BlazBlue, I do not believe that they are going through distributors to sell the game but are doing it direct. I’m not sure how that will affect their sales overall but it will explain why you won’t see this game showing up on many distributor websites.

[Official BlazBlue Website] [Discuss on the Forum]

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4 comments
scott

Dark Presence is either a joke or a hoax.

Arcades still thrive on new fighting games imported from japan this year and next. There are a lot more than just “3” fighting games this year.

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Shaggy

Made available in official terms, not imports. That’s important as it shows a change of attitude towards fighters in the US.

I’ve seen more of Dark Presence in action then they have let me show to the public, I’ll err on the side of it being real.

Reply
scott

Its irrelevant. Why does it even matter if the games is officially published “in the US” anyway? Gray market imports are as similarly priced at their overseas counterparts, most offer an dual language option even BlazBlue! so whats the big problem?

An arcade does not survive simply from buying games from domestic publishers. Thats not smart business sense and ignores the audience of people going to arcades in the first place.

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As for Dark Presence,
I’m still sticking with joke or hoax. Definitely vaporware. Reading the official website, and reading its “features” tells me that these people have not played fighting games, and don’t know the market (story line? image flipping?). Shaggy, you’re a KOF player, so YOU SHOULD KNOW. Don’t expect any fighting game (with an decent chance) to come out without long beta testing or a location test, otherwise the fighting game community will shit all over its game engine.

Tying this all back into the officialness of fighting games, an arcade manager is not going to limit himself to domestic games only, “oh hmm, which do i choose Blazblue or Dark Presense….” And even so, does Dark Presence hold a candle to Blazblue?

For the sake of arguement, if DP comes out, and a small percentage of arcades buy this “game” and finds out its a piece of shit, wouldn’t that hurt US arcades more?

Reply
Shaggy

I’m not trying to downplay the import market – I imported Oriental Legend 2, I’m just trying to make a point that the ‘official’ recognition and sale of fighters in the US to arcades is something to think about since the companies that make and sell arcades here have considered fighters to be completely dead and not worth their time. Now that I think about it, Sega did make Virtua Fighter 5 available here in earlier this year, they just haven’t made a big deal about it for some reason (perhaps that the console version has been out for a while too). My point is about mentality in the US with distriubtors, developers and some arcades. Unfortunately not all arcades are into importing stuff and if it’s made available here then it sends a positive message to all of them that maybe they could think about fighters again. At least more positive than Capcom saying that “what they are doing is technically illegal and we could prosecute them if we wanted to”.

I’m giving Dark Presence the benefit of the doubt as if it’s completely legit then it deserves a chance to at least be seen, even if it appears goofy. Time will tell, at least they’ve shown it in a cabinet, I am waiting to see what their next move is, which is taking a little too long.

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