Shikhondo Red Purgatory Now Available For Pre-Order

It’s been a dead week for arcade news, although I am thinking about doing a VLOG about the news that Chuck E. Cheeses is potentially facing bankruptcy. As a quick thought on that, I see some people celebrating it since it’s “just a kiddie arcade,” but the damage of them closing could do to our sector is immense, as they have somewhere around 1,000 locations. That’s digressing from the real point of this post however, to talk about a game that is decidedly not for CEC/kid-tainment locations.

THe Exa-Arcadia platform is already home to a few shoot ’em ups (or if you prefer, STGs…shmups), such as Aka & Blue Type-R, Akyrios EXA and Infinos EXA. Now another title in this genre is going to soon be available for Exa systems as DEERFARM and Exa have begun testing the game at a location in Japan, and they have opened up pre-orders for it.

Since I haven’t really covered this one on the blog before, let’s get you up to speed. The game was released on PC, PS4, Switch and XB1 a few years ago, where it is known as Shikhondo Soul Eater. You play a grim reaper who must destroy the escaped yokai (demons) and collect their souls (the flames that you’ll see in the video below). Characters come from ancient Japanese yokai lore, and it has plenty of bullet hell action that fans of the genre should enjoy. By what I’ve read, the console releases added some extra elements to it that the PC original did not enjoy; It also should be noted that this also has some risque elements to it with partial drawn nudity on some of the boss designs.

As always, the Exa/Arcade version has additional improvements to the mix, although it is not clear exactly what those are. One of them might be this feature that is mentioned on the pre-order page, although since I have not played the originals, I’m not 100% sure on that: “Completely voiced in English and Japanese, characters regularly speak throughout the game and depending upon which characters are used, a different viewpoint to the story is revealed to players.” Another thing that buyers can expect is support for TATE or Yoko/Landscape viewing modes, as well as support for older CRTs; ops also receive artwork such as a large and small poster that they can use to promote the game.

As mentioned with the trailer, here is the Exa version that will be landing on test. Note that any game can receive some changes and be delayed depending on how testing goes:

What do you think about this upcoming release? Would you want a local arcade (that is still open) to grab it?