JAEPO Preview Update: School of Ragnarok; Crossbeats REV.; Pokken + More.

The next arcade tradeshow for the Japanese market is only a couple of weeks away but the hype machinery in Japan is in full swing to promote what will be there. Here’s the latest of what I have gathered together for those interested. As usual, the disclaimer here that most likely we won’t see most of this stuff out West but you never know what might happen down the road. Here is a link to the first preview which covers some other titles not mentioned below.

School of Ragnarok (Square Enix) – The teaser site that Square Enix was running to promote a new arcade game has unveiled a 1v1 arena battle title called School of Ragnarok. Japanese media already had found out the name and now we have a teaser video. It shares a connection with SE’s other big title Lord of Vermillion and also has features they are branding “5D”, although no one follows a standard for what that means exactly. Famitsu calls it a “5D online 1v1 tactical action” game.  I wouldn’t call it a fighter exactly since it appears that you have free reign to move around the arena. The controls are also a little odd in the layout as you can see here.

Crossbeats REV. (Capcom) – It seems that everyone is coming up with a new rhythm arcade game now, Capcom is no exception. What is interesting about this one is that they have enlisted the production talent of Naoki Maeda, who is famous for his work with Konami’s many Bemani games including DDR.  Crossbeats REV will start testing in Japan on Friday, the teaser site for the game is found here.

Luigi Mansion Arcade (Capcom) – Along with that Capcom will be holding another location test for Luigi Mansion Arcade starting on Friday. I’m not sure who it is at Capcom that has suddenly woke their arcade division up, which has only been sort of active for the past several years. Perhaps they can resurrect War of the Grail while they are at it 😛

Konami – We don’t hear much about Konami these days since they gave up on trying to do things in the West but they still have been churning out new content in Japan. At JAEPO they plan on showing off a new Guitar Freaks and DrumMania title; they will be bringing a bunch of their Bemani games to the show and they are also testing out a new version of Jubeat; and they will unveil something called Disney Zamzam which they list as a video game. Their JAEPO special site can be found here.

Pokkén Tournament – This will be at JAEPO where I imagine there will be plenty of talk about it to potentially overshadow games like Tekken 7. Star Wars Battle Pod should be there as well but for the curious on PT, here is the current promo website for the game. It isn’t just a Tekken influence that this game will have but a Soulcalibur one as well. I’m still not crazy about the gamepad controller for the game that they showed in the recent stream, perhaps we will find out how final that is during JAEPO.

That’s all I have for now, it is certainly sounding like it is going to be an exciting event with plenty of new games to check out. We will keep an eye on the developments for it so stay tuned!