Arcana Heart 2 headed to the US... via arcades?

cj iwakura

Looks like Andamiro's moving out of the dance game market and into fighting games.

http://arcadeheroes.com/2008/09/12/seen-at-andamiros-booth-arcana-heart-2-amoa-2008/

This came as a surprise - I was wandering around the show near the GlobalVR booth and between two Pump It Up games I see two Japanese candy cabs housing a fighter in them. I get closer to check it out and it’s Arcana Heart 2! I really didn’t expect to see this in the States in arcade form, but I’m guessing that the effect of SFIV is making some developers think twice about fighters.

The basic gist of the game is about girls fighting each other - with magic and sometimes swords. It’s hard to pass that up! While I didn’t consider myself good at the game, I think I did OK beating out two opponents and getting a several levels into the game before being defeated. The game has two modes - arcade and story. The story mode has a bit of text to go but at least it’s optional.

Graphically it looks very good between the high-res 2D animation (I’m not sure if it was HD resolution or not but it looked like it) and the special effects that the game throws about. The control scheme takes a little getting used to - I’m not used to fighters with five buttons schemes. Fortunately the marquee also serves as the manual so you can figure out what it is that you are doing.

Andamiro is going to bring AH2 to the States in kit form and at a “very low price”. I don’t have a date yet on this but I will be checking with my distributor on that as I assume that it is going to be very soon as the game is complete. For more check out the video below and witness my failed attempt to try and play the game with one hand. I guess it wasn’t too bad considering that it was the first time I played that game and the first time I tried to play a fighter like that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFTza5E2oHI

I wasn't a huge fan of the first one, but I'll give the second a shot if I see it, especially if AM are using those cabinets.

Rigor Mortis

I liked Arcana Heart a lot although I was quickly distracted from it by P3FES and never really found the time to go back. What I need, see, is more 2D fighting game fan friends.

My only question is.... there's seriously still arcades, as in plural, left in the states? Only place I've seen an arcade in ten years up here in Canadaland is in Pacific Mall in Scarborough, which basically exists so that Hong Kong immigrants can have a taste of home. The games are all foreign language versions even. Hell, they might already have Arcana Heart 2 there, they had NeoGeo Battle Colisseum way before it's localization was planned.

Drem

Yeah, I was pretty surprised when I saw this. Both because it was Arcana Heart 2, and also because it's Andamiro. Timing seems somewhat bad, though, since a new version of Arcana Heart 2 (titled Sugoi! [Amazing!] Arcana Heart 2) was revealed recently (I guess they didn't want to feel left out after Virtua Fighter 5R and Tekken 6: Blood Rebellion?). They mentioned that it's going to be a a very low-priced machine though, so it's possible more places might consider picking it up.

Those machines seem set to a hilariously low difficulty; for obvious reasons though.


Still, I'd much rather prefer a console release, preferably on the PS3 so I could import it. Reason being:

Rigor Mortis wrote: »

My only question is.... there's seriously still arcades, as in plural, left in the states?

There are a few ones that really do get the newest games and import the latest games from Japan. I hear about arcades in California a lot, and then there's the that Chinatown Fair one in New York that is really well known. But overall, arcades have really died down. I don't really know of any real arcades in my area, and I think that's how it goes for most places now days.



Hey! Are there cool arcades around Norfolk, VA?