Umihara Kawase Fresh! is coming to Arcade

[sol-alpha]

Link: https://twitter.com/st_saizensen/status/1224287148276244481?s=19

Umihara Kawase Fresh! is coming to Arcade.

There will be a playable demo at JAEPO 2020 on February 7-8.

[Whendaleksattack]

Huh, that's something that I personally never expected, and even slightly confused on how it'll work in the arcades (again, I've yet to play Fresh). I'll keep an eye on it if I can later on, looks like it might be something interesting.

[Alc]

Is this part of an arcade digital distribution platform or something? I'm struggling to imagine how an obscure, poorly-received single-player platform game could make any inroads as an arcade cab. Japan's arcade scene is a world to itself, though, I suppose.

[Whendaleksattack]

Don't know if it's a digital distribution thingy or something, as my knowledge on arcade machines (especially Japanese ones) isn't the greatest. Studio Saizensen's latest stream shows off a couple of photos of the JAEPO demo, here's a screenshot that got me curious though:



Yeah, I don't think Fresh really needs 8 buttons to function. They probably just used the button layout as a placeholder for the actual button layout though, so I might be wrong. Just thought I'd bring this up.

Again, still relatively confused as to why Fresh is coming to the arcades virtually unchanged, instead of either BazooKa or even Blade Strangers (which I could be wrong on the latter as they did mention "Stranger Blades" on the stream, so I cant confirm though as I sadly don't know Japanese), which is a decent missed opportunity imo. That might change in the future still, so I'll have to see.

[Princess Rescuer]

I don't know if putting this in an arcade is a good idea. I would have put any other game (even Bazooka) in the arcade.

[KawaseFan]

Yeah, it seems a bit bizarre to me that they'd release an arcade version of Fresh.  I actually think something like the original Umihara Kawase or Shun wouldn't be bad in an arcade setting, and you could even have time attack rankings built in.

Hopefully it works out well, though; I'll have to keep an eye out for any impressions, since I'm pretty sure I won't be importing this one...

[Alc]

Hmm, I'm pretty sure that Blade Strangers got an arcade release, there's a few mentions of it online at least, though as that image indicates (with all those unnecessary buttons for Fresh!) the barrier to an arcade release has never been thinner, and almost homebrew-style cabinets can be seen around, in Japan in particular. Lots of arcade games are literally just a PC with some rudimentary anti-piracy mechanism. Though as TeknoParrot is proving, that doesn't mean it's impossible to play those games at home...

[Drifter]

Location test information: https://www.4gamer.net/games/524/G052475/20200820127/

Footage of arcade version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShmWwaoTAlg&feature=youtu.be&t=312

Nothing appears to be different from home release (it's just time attack on all stages) except with the addition of a classic Kawase character that can double jump, move faster and use lure faster. Based on the really cool Google translate, sounds like to be an easy mode addition based off the name of the character "super seaside" although again, it's Google translate so who knows. Cotton is there, Curly doesn't appear to be.