EVO Japan 2024 Day 3: Wrapping Up The Show

We’re going into the home stretch with EVO Japan 2024 now on its final couple of dates, with most of the announcements and tournaments done by now and just a few more things to cover. Though our posts for day one and two have emphasized exA-Arcadia, who undoubtedly dominated in terms of relevant new reveals (and have one last piece to speak of here), there have been other arcade-related happenings going on at the show over the course of the past few days. No matter how fighting games have been slightly more reduced at certain locations there of late, they will always be heritage…

Now the end of the event unfortunately hasn’t gone without issues. Twitch controversially banned several EVO channels from their platform, and exA themselves had to cancel their own final stream due to a poor connection from the venue. But they have made sure to communicate that one last important bit from it on their socials – so if you missed this and all the other arcade things from EVO Japan 2024, here’s a guide:

Tekken 8 Arcade Edition (Sort Of…)

The biggest name to attend the show and make any arcade-related reveal besides exA was Bandai Namco. On a small part of their otherwise consumer-focused booth, they exhibited something else that surprised a few in attendance – Tekken 8 arcade cabinets! For the game that broke with convention from the series by launching only at home, this may seem unexpected yet welcome. But there is a catch here that not everyone picked up on: this is not a proper arcade edition… kind of. Though using Grigio cabinets (which run Tekken 7 Fated Retribution Round 2 and recent iterations of Gundam Extreme Versus in arcades), these are configured to play only the pre-existing PC version of the game available on Steam:

So, one can’t really expect a wider release to the arcade industry for this like older entries in the series. And in any case that did already break down with Tekken 7 (USA only receiving it in tests or at select chains like Round1, and Europe missing out on the arcade versions entirely). Having said all that, these cabinets can also soon be found on trial at an actual Namco arcade in Sugamo – where they will notably not be on a credit play basis, instead requiring players to pay upfront per hour, with rates starting at 1,200 yen. If this is successful, it’s likely there will be some more installations of the same sort at BNA’s own facilities throughout Japan (where they have space, anyway). Hard to say for elsewhere though…

It is additionally worth noting that this is not completely unprecedented either. You may recall us reporting on Bandai Namco testing out cabinets running the Steam version of Tekken 7 in a similar fashion last year, both on location and at Amusement Expo in Japan that November. From this, it seemed pretty logical that they would do the same for 8 once it released. Though it may be a slight shame to see the series essentially forego arcades now, previous recent Tekken arcade editions have been absurdly expensive for increasingly little return to operators, and like most today, the games have ran on PC hardware in arcades for a long time anyway – so that has obviously changed things from Bamco’s perspective.

And for the winner of the official Tekken 8 tournament, it was a player by the name of Chikurin.

Street Fighter 6

As it does have a proper arcade version via Taito (released across Japan and Stateside too via Round1US late last year), Street Fighter 6 Type Arcade was available to play at the show in their venerable Viewlix cabinets. In terms of new announcements on the game’s own front across most platforms, Akuma was exclusively revealed by Capcom for the game in this trailer. Though that new version should release soon, there’s no current word on when it will come to the Type Arcade edition yet (it did only just receive the update to add Ed, as mentioned in the last Newsbytes).

People who played the above cabs there could also get their own special NESICA IC card for the game on a first come first serve basis. Elsewhere at EVO, SF6 naturally had its own tournament on the home versions, where MenaRD took home the champion title for the second time.

The Fallen Angels Revenge

For that last exA announcement (or exAnnouncement, heh), one of the titles that has been listed on the roster since the very earliest days of their website is a game called Daraku Tenshi/The Fallen Angels. A mostly finished version was produced in small quantities by Psikyo (I’m told that less than 100 boards exist, and even then what is there has unfinished characters), but it otherwise is perhaps one of the more obscure fighting games out there. That is going to change though, as exA took the game on and is finally finishing it up with The Fallen Angels Revenge.

Many have asked when this is coming, since it’s been listed for such a long time, and the answer I’ve always got is that the development process is going much slower than normal due to each character needing a huge number of frames – around or over 900 each. Redrawing all of the sprites for HD and completing those unfinished for modern platforms has been a time consuming process, on top of the other things that the exA AM teams have been up to. But it sounds like progress has still been advancing on it, and we might expect the game sooner than later now…

Arcade Game Side-Events

Away from new announcements, the main tournaments at EVO Japan 2024 are naturally for current fighting games on PCs and consoles (or at least ports of arcade fighters). Still, that doesn’t stop a colorful variety of side-events from happening every year. These are generally held on consoles and PCs too, but you do usually get a few interesting examples of outliers on old games and different genres. For example, this unofficial Taiko No Tatsujin championship, which from location test reporter Game Room Ariesu we know was actually held on a real arcade cabinet:

The side-event with the biggest buzz around it this year, however, has of course been the one held on cult Neo Geo puzzle game Money Puzzle Exchanger. Out of nowhere, a young schoolgirl (whose parents own the Shooting Star game center in Ichihara, Tokyo Bay) swept the tournament, and came out on top of numerous veterans! The apparent shock of this has even led to English outlets like UK newspaper The Guardian to report on it. It shouldn’t really be surprising that young people love retro games now, but to do this well against old players is sure something.

Lastly, for an example of still staging a side tournament against all of the odds stacked against them, fans of Sega’s Fighting Vipers held their championship… on the home port featured in Yakuza series spin-off Judgement, in the absence of a standalone version for newer consoles. 

That seems to be all for now out of EVO this year – but if we find anything more, we’ll be sure to update this post. Now that the show is over and done with, what event or announcement out of EVO Japan 2024 has taken your interest? Which of exA-Arcadia’s many new games would you like to see at an arcade?