exA-Arcadia is at Amusement Expo 2024 in Las Vegas, and the headliner game for their booth is Jitsu Squad Feat. The Samurai Pizza Cats. Read on for the details.
Who Are The Samurai Pizza Cats?
As a short-lived cartoon series, it’s possible that you missed this one – I did, as it aired when I had already moved past cartoons. Airing in Japan first and running for 54 episodes, it was sort of like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles but instead of crime fighting ninja turtles who lived in the sewers, it was samurai trained crime-fighting cats who lived in a pizza parlor. The US version was apparently very different from the Japanese one as [allegedly] the JP scripts were not provided, so the writers came up with their own stories to fit what they had on-screen version.
Now, they are joining the Jitsu Squad.
Jitsu Squad Feat. Samurai Pizza Cats
When the modern beat ’em up Jitsu Squad was first seeking crowdfunding, they had a goal that included an arcade version. This was soon announced as targeting the exA platform. That story is from 2021, so it has taken a while to get to this point; It has been available on consoles & PC since March 2022.
On the arcade version, we’ve seen it a few times at previous tradeshows, including Amusement Expo 2023. After this long road of fine tuning, the game will be available to purchase as a kit for exA boards later this Spring. This iteration starring one of the Samurai Pizza Cats as a playable character was unveiled at the Amusement Expo 2024 show in Las Vegas.
The character has a unique attack set, it not being a copy & paste of an existing character. Unfortunately, the software build at the show did not have them implemented yet, but exA kindly sent me some screenshots to share.
Having owned this game on Nintendo Switch, I can confidently say that this version is unique, and not just because of the Samurai Pizza Cat inclusion. The damage balancing and overall pacing of the game has changed, so that it flows with the needs of an arcade game; The console version has a lot more text you can go through, plus enemies are a bit “spongy” in terms of taking hits before they die. The violence hasn’t been toned down at all however, although operators can turn blood off if they wish.
What are your thoughts on this, are you looking forward to a new beat ’em up experience for arcades?
I think its great,I’ve been waiting for this one so I can utilize my 4 player cabinet with it for my pizza locations.
Even better to have a Samurai Pizza Cat in a pizza parlor 😉