Sega unveils Initial D Arcade Stage 6 AA, Shining Force Cross update, other games for JAMMA

With the 48th JAMMA Expo nearly upon us, that means that companies are beginning to reveal the game they will be bringing along to the show and today, Sega took the veil off of what they have been working on. The  newest title to grace their line-up will be a new addition to the Initial D series, Initial D Arcade Stage 6 AA.  Players in Tokyo will get a chance to try the game out before JAMMA however, as it will hit the location test circuit next Tuesday at the Club Sega Akihabara. The RINGEDGE powered game (no, not the mythical Sega game console made up by people who can’t read properly) will offer new cars, characters and courses as expected but it also add Tag Battles for 2 v 2 play and it will use online play, which makes it the third racing game we’ve seen this year take the online route.

But if you’re tired of racers, Sega has other titles in the works as well. One of the few arcade RPGs on the market, although it’s been limited to Japan as far as I know, Shining Force Cross

Not a direct screenshot but awesome nevertheless

is getting another update with Shining Force: Cross Road. They’ve added support for up to six players now, a new Elf species, new monsters, items, weapons and skills to make the game more complete and enjoyable. The new update will be released in “Winter 2010” and continues to use the RINGEDGE platform (this was the first title to use the arcade hardware). I’ll just take this opportunity to once again to express my desire about wanting an arcade RPG that’s not localized to Japan. It’s been over 10 years since Gauntlet Dark Legacy was released and since then there has been little else in the genre outside of Japan. There was Oriental Legend 2 but that also has no English translation and was in Chinese (excellent brawler/RPG though). We’ll keep holding out the hope here, someone has to be ballsy enough to give a try once again.

Sega also has a new version of their music title Project DIVA Arcade, the details of which are outlined in detail on this page. The update begins rolling out next week.

We’ve discussed Sega’s other titles they are bringing to the show on the site before: WCCF 2009-2010, Samurai Wars, Border Break 2.0, VF5 Final Showdown,  Heat Up Hockey, Let’s Go Golf(formerly Go Go golf),  the animated Transformer games for kids and even the new Let’s Go Kids Elephant game. If you’re wondering why GRID isn’t on the roster, the same thing happened with Sega Rally 3 since the game was developed outside of Japan.

JAMMA begins on the second week of September, we’ll be keeping our eyes open for any other JAMMA related news in the meantime.

Visit the Sega JAMMA website

Source:AM-Net

Sega reveals Shining Force Cross with lots of slashing and bashing goodness

I don’t know what it is lately but there really hasn’t been a lot of arcade news going on. Of course I haven’t had a lot of time lately to sit down and scour the internet for new stuff but still, it just seems like things are really slow right now. But it is not completely dead as far as news goes as we see with this latest game revelation from Sega Japan. I admit that I do not know a ton about this game series other than that one of the titles was the favorite game of my friend for his Sega Genesis, which was Shining Force II.  And as far as I know, this series has never been in arcades as it was typically a turn-based RPG but now it is coming to arcades at least in Japan and so far, it looks really cool.

One thing I notice about the game from the video is that it’s certainly not a turn-based RPG. To me, it looks like Gauntlet Legends with a JRPG/anime twist to it and I’m certainly not complaining about that. When Gauntlet Legends came out it was my favorite game for a quite a while as it wasn’t just Gauntlet, it was also a cool RPG and you just never really saw that often in arcades. You still never see it in arcades, and personally I’m dying for anything that’s a bit different than what we normally see. So count me excited about the annoucement of Shining Force Cross for arcades, it goes on test in Japan in two weeks. Now we have no idea if Sega would be bold enough to release this in other markets such as Europe or the US but I am really hopefull that they do. If the game didn’t exactly work for those markets as it is, fine tune (or Gauntlet-Legends-ify it more) it so that it could come to other markets I say. What do you think, would you enjoy playing this, at least from the looks of the debut trailer?

[Shining Force Cross Website] [Discuss on the Forums]