Exa-Arcadia keeps on rollin’ with the new game tests, the latest being a game that has been on the Exa games roster since the end of last year.
NOTE: I have updated the post below with more details on this edition.
That is Battle Princess Madelyn, now with “Super” added to the title. For those unfamiliar with this game, it brought Ghosts ‘N Goblins style gameplay to consoles since 2018, but it’s important to note that this game will play differently from those versions that you may be familiar with. Here’s a trailer (no version is available on YouTube yet, so you’ll have to watch in this tweet below; If you are unable to for some reason, then I imagine you’ll just have to hang tight), then into differences.
「ロケテのお知らせ」#EXA基板
新作続々登場！
硬派なファンタジーアクション
【魔界と闘姫マデリン】ロケテ日時：
13日（金）から7日（木）まで場所：
高田馬場ゲーセン ミカド@babamikado開発：
Monster Bathサウンド担当：
Gryzor87是非ご参加ください！ pic.twitter.com/lRHjtbp1LV
— exA-Arcadia 【公式】 (@exaarcadia) August 5, 2020
With the Ghosts ‘N Goblins influence, that core mechanic remains – side scrolling platformer where you get to throw a bevy of weapons at creepy, undead enemies. From discussion on the tweet above however, the creators (Monster Bath Studios) provided more detail on what makes this version “super”
The game has been reprogrammed. From controls and camera to AI. New level designs and gameplay tuned heavily to suit the arcade environment. Entirely new soundtrack.
UPDATE: I discussed this in a little more detail with Exa-Arcadia who filled me in some of the unknowns that I originally posted below. They stated that “Super Battle Princess Madelyn is basically a brand new game that will only be found in arcades – that is why we are calling it “Super.” There are no text boxes – it’s focused on pure arcade action built from the ground-up for a fresh new experience. That also includes all new enemies, bosses, levels, music and voice overs.”
ORIGINAL: While short and sweet, that says plenty that no matter what you thought about the console version. In watching some gameplay footage of the PC version, I believe that much of this re-balancing will remove the various textboxes that pop-up at the beginning and throughout the game. Even Lightning Knights, the arcadeified version of of Iron Crypticle, pared the story down a bit from the console build, and that already had much less text to read than BPM does. It also likely removes all the hints you see when you first play BPM and gets the player right into the action. I don’t have the game, so I don’t know how extensive this gets, but from what I’ve seen of a few online captures, I imagine that is going to change a bit of the game up.
Overall what I would expect is a streamlined, possibly more difficult version for the Exa side. The new soundtrack has been composed by Gryzor87, who also composed the original score for the console game and some other titles like Malditta Castilla. You can catch some of that from the trailer above.
If this launches before Gimmick, then it would be the first platformer for the Exa, in a genre that has rarely seen action in modern arcades (there are games like Mystery Island or Pink Panther Jewel Heist which would likely apply, but neither of those have the depth that SBPM does). It is unknown exactly when the game will launch, which partially depends on how the test goes, but it seems likely that it will be this year.
What do you think about this from what has been shown?
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