JAEPO 2016 #1: The Japanese Arcade Market Struts Their Stuff

That time of year has arrived where Japanese arcade game makers gather together at the JAEPO event (JAEPO 2016 to be precise) to show off to their market and the world what it is they are working on. Unfortunately we are not at the show with an AH correspondent so here is a compilation of news that has been gathered from various reports on the web. Part 2 can now be found here.

JAEPO 2016 PART 1

Attack On Titan Team Battle (Capcom/Tecmo Koei) – One of the big games to be presented at the show was the new Attack On Titan. Following a similar idea to Square Enix’s Gunslinger Stratos, this game uses two controllers per player, almost like light-guns but not quite. One of the sticks uses an analog stick so that the game plays similar to the Attack On Titan console game (out for PS4, PS3 and Vita), as you navigate around cities finding Titans to kill. An online mode will be available as well although by the name it should be linkable locally. More details at Game Watch.

AM-Net

Via Game Watch

The game has really drawn in the crowds…

Mario Party Fushigi Challenge World – This game made an appearance as expected. I still don’t see this coming out West.

AM-Net

Namco Booth – You know for a company that was allegedly shutting down their arcade operations, they have quite a booth setup to promote their upcoming arcade games.

AM-Net

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Otoiroha and Nostalgia (Konami) – Konami still has plenty to offer the rhythm game scene in Japan and given the competition between Round1USA and Dave & busters to import their games for testing, there is a chance we could see these games in a limited manner over in the US. The first appears to be their answer to Sega’s Chunithm that they are calling Otoiroha, with a distinctive white cabinet and what appears to be sensors on the sides. The second is called Nostalgia which appears to involve playing piano music, including the presence of a two-row keyboard as the controller (pics via AM-Net):

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Another tweet mentioned that this game has a line out feature for recording.

AM-Net

Bemanistyle have more coverage of the two here and here.

Magician’s Dead (ByKing) – The developers of Gunslinger Stratos are launching their own game (I.e. developing and publishing it) revealed as Magician’s Dead. Not much out there on this one yet but it is known that it uses a device like the Kinect sensor for contactless control. From an attendee there, who also put up this pic of the poster, they indicate you use your hand as the joystick to move the character on the screen; but another source seems to lean towards the users hands being used to cast spells. Either way, it uses gesture controls as you control a witch or wizard but in a more modern setting 😉

Sangokushi Taisen (Sega) – The original title in this series launched in 2005 where it was a war strategy game involving the placement of cards onto a sensor field and you’d move the cards around to move the units in the game. It was essentially a predecessor to Augmented Reality. It was actually tested out in Chicago once but the software was in Japanese and for a game that complex and different, it wasn’t too surprising that it failed (video from that location test below). A new entry in the series has been announced and the main innovation for this one is that the game will “print double sided cards”. You can visit the teaser site for the new version here.

Kancolle Arcade (Sega) – Unveiled last year, this odd title that combines anime girls with battle armor from naval vessels is finally close to a release. So World Of Warships meets Arcana Hearts? The first image here shows the game cabinet as unveiled last year; the second photo shows a newly published screenshot and the 3rd is the booth at JAEPO 2016 where it appears to not have changed on a hardware level.

AM-Net

Speaking of Sega, a new version of their strategy game Wonderland Wars was also drawing attention:

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Love Live After School Activity (Square Enix) – This is a new anime pop idol music game that has support up to four cabinets, NESiCA online connectivity and a character creation kiosk.

That’s all for the moment but there is more to come! What do you think of the showings there so far?