Racketboy

I thought I would pass along some of the new information that has been dug up about Capcom’s new 2D fighter, Sengoku Basara X. Most of this information have come from a couple of my favorite arcade sources, insertcredit and Arcade Renaissance.

The Arcade Hardware

Capcom has had some private showings and play tests in Japan the last few weeks and people have been able to actually play and early version of the game and give their impressions. The arcade machine itself was housed in the new Viewlix Taito cabinets (which uses an HD flat-panel monitor capable of at least 720p resolution and is used by Battle Fantasia and King of Fighters Maximum Impact Regulation A). The decision to stay on this arcade kit has not yet been finalized, however.

The Graphics

I could already tell from the first blurry screenshots in the Famitsu scans I posted that SBX’s graphics weren’t going to live up to my HD expectations. The closest comparison I can make in terms of graphic style so far is Arc System Works’ last 2D project, Hokuto No Ken. I personally would have been much happier if the went the 2.5D route like their beautiful Battle Fantasia (which, as mentioned above, runs on the same arcade hardware).

Characters & Reinforcement System

So far, it looks as if SBX will include 10 playable characters plus what is known as a “Reinforcement System,” which enable you to call a companion for assistance in battle. Your companion can use reinforcements attacks, counter attack and assist attacks. Those of you familiar with the Marvel vs Capcom games will remember a similar gimmick. Time will tell if this addition will be more usefull than in Capcom’s previous efforts. Supposedly SBX will have different button commands for your ally characters in different situations/effects such as aerial attacks and guarding.

The Madman Cafe Forums had a nice post by Maese Spt that touched on this Reinforcement System (which he refers to as the “engen system”). He writes, “The engun system is still a mistery to me. Yukimura and Keiji had indeed two supporting characters (they were not present from the start, it seems you have to fill a gauge or something to make them show up), while Masamune had only Kojuro to lend him a hand. It seems the main usage for the engun is to power up your supers and make some special combos, but probably there will be more than that. Nobody was able to make use of Yukimura’s second engun, tough. Sasuke popped up on the melee every once in a while, but nobody could make Shingen participate, even tough he was present at the background along Sasuke. I think that has to do with the “level” you earn for your engun during the battle: the more level you get, the more (or more powerful) stuff he can do; maybe Shingen is a high level engun and would only show up with really huge gauge levels. Or maybe it’s just he was not yet fully implemented in the beta. Oh, yeah, and Kojuro’s aid seemed quite cheap to perform juggles and the like. I can see people bitching about that when game finally comes out.”

Control Scheme

Japanese Arcade gaming news site Am-Net have posted up several detailed images to show off some of the specifics of the controls and gameplay mechanics. Ryan from Arcade Renaissance writes, “To start with, as you can see above, the game is using a basic 4 button layout that features 3 attack buttons and one reinforcement button. The attacks are Light, Medium, and Strong. These are the buttons across the top row. The bottom row has a single button, the Reinforcement button that is used to start Reinforcement attacks, Assists, and Counter-Assists in the game. From my understanding, in order to use the Reinforcement maneuvers you first press the Reinforcement button to queue your ally and then use one of the other buttons to unleash another attack.”
Since Arc System Works is behind this, it isn’t much of surprise that the game plays a lot like it’s Guilty Gear franchise. Ryan commented that, “Anybody familiar with the Guilty Gear series should be able to pick up the characters relatively easily. The four movesets revealed are practically clones of each other, though more than likely, just like in the Guilty Gear series, the different characters will play wildly differently based on their speed, power, and range.”

Gameplay Videos

If you want to get a quick impression of what Segoku Basara X will be like, just take a look at some of these Youtube videos take from the recent location tests for the game. Thanks again to insertcredit and Arcade Renaissance for digging these up.

• Video 1
• Video 2
• Video 3