This Week in Games

Twisted Winter Wonderland

Ho ho ho! It's Christmas Eve, and before long, a good chunk of you will be savagely tearing through wrapping paper and holding those shiny new games and consoles you've been eager to play all year… after you get done with awkward family interactions. I'm planning on staying put this year, choosing to spend Christmas watching anime, old TV shows, and 20-year-old skits from Late Night with Conan O'Brien with my partner. I don't think Amazon's going to wind up delivering our Christmas gifts in time for the 25th, but that's fine by us.

However, there's one other thing that hasn't been delivered yet: the game I wanted to review for this week's column. Ah, the joys of shipping around the holidays. It's fine, though! There's a good amount of interesting news this week, so I can review it (along with a couple other games) for the New Year's Eve column.

Sadly, 90s arcade nerds and the Pacific Northwest fighting and rhythm-game communities got some bad news this week. It appears that Seattle Gameworks, the 25-year-old restaurant/arcade/gathering spot, is shutting down suddenly this week. This was the first Gameworks to be opened (all the way back in 1997), and has remained a prime gaming gathering spot in Seattle since its establishment. If you've gone to PAX or SakuraCon, you've probably attended a party or meetup at Gameworks, since it's right across the street from the Washington Convention Center. In recent years, it's been a big hub for tournaments and meetups, bringing together folks from across the Pacific Northwest. And by next SakuraCon, it won't be there anymore.

Gameworks has an interesting history, which my Twitter-pal Ted wrote up in a nice little summary – it was an attempt by Sega and Dreamworks to fuse 90s live-entertainment coolness and cutting-edge technology with a traditional arcade, wrapped in an aesthetic that was purely Saturn-era Sega. It didn't quite work out as well as hoped, though. Gameworks (and similar arcade concepts from the era) started to die off in the mid-aughts, and now it looks like the whole chain might be on its way out. It's very sad, because as much as I like Round 1, Gameworks had a special feel to it. Stepping into a Gameworks, especially the Seattle location, felt like going back to a time when arcades were still the most incredible places to play games you couldn't experience anywhere else.

In memory of Gameworks Seattle (and possibly the whole chain), let's watch this extremely late-90s MTV grand opening special featuring a whole mess of celebrities, footage of the unique game/attraction hybrids they once had, and a clip of a young and nigh-unrecognizable Toshihiro Nagoshi talking about Super GT.

THE ASTRO CITY MINI V TURNS THE MINI CONSOLE LANDSCAPE ON ITS SIDE

Sega Toys’ release last year of the Astro City Mini did pretty well! It's a nice, sturdy little unit with a fun presentation and a good game selection. However, it did have some pretty serious issues: a lack of settings for the games, no alternate-territory ROMsets, noticeable input lag when hooked up to an HDTV, and even a couple of serious emulation bugs. After Taito announced its own arcade-compilation mini-cabinet – the Egret II Mini – complete with add-on hardware, expansion support through SD cards, built-in screen rotation, and even some unreleased games packed-in, the Astro City Mini wound up looking pretty mediocre by comparison.

So, after seeing what Taito was cooking, Sega Toys went back to fix up a couple of things with the Astro City Mini. And, on a special broadcast with the famous Mikado arcade, they showcased their new device: The Astro City Mini V.

You'll notice two big things in this trailer: the screen is vertical, and not many of the games showcased are actually Sega titles. In fact, aside from things like Zaxxon, Desert Breaker, and Wrestle War, most of them are third-party licenses… and shooters. And many of them are games that have never had home versions before: Armed Police Batraider, Battle Bakraid, Out Zone, Dogyuun and Tatsujin-Oh/Truxton II. Basically, if you're a fan of the vertical shooting-game output of Toaplan, Raizing, or Psikyo, the Astro City Mini V is going to make you extremely happy.

Personally, I'm quite glad to see Sega Toys take feedback into account. But I'm a little sad that the combined forces of Sega and Mikado couldn't convince Cave or Seibu Kaihatsu to contribute a couple of games – Dodonpachi and Raiden Fighters would have made this an insta-buy. The lack of Battle Garegga is also puzzling: much as I'm not a fan of it, it's quite beloved among fans of Raizing's output, so its omission is quite glaring. I'm not sure if this is something I'll purchase sight-unseen like the original Astro City Mini or the Egret II Mini – I'll likely wait until I hear some reviews from folks first. But I'm definitely glad it exists!

DISNEY TWISTED WONDERLAND PREPARES TO TAKE NORTH AMERICAN GAMERS TO SCHOOL

The big news in the mobile-gaming world and otome-gaming world this week is that the Aniplex-backed Disney Twisted Wonderland is getting an official English version debuting next year in the US and Canada. While the recently-announced anime adaptation of Twisted Wonderland was confirmed to be showing on Disney+, the English release of the game itself was still in question… until now.

So what is this game, exactly? To sum it up very simply: you, the main character, find yourself spirited away to a mysterious school filled with hot dudes. And all of those hot dudes belong to dormitories themed after various Disney villains: Octavinelle's residents are themed around The Little Mermaid's Ursula, Scarabia students take style cues from Jafar and Aladdin, Diasomnia gets inspiration from Maleficent and Sleeping Beauty, and so on. Also, all of the main dudes are designed by Yana Toboso, who is well known for her work on Black Butler. Yeah, it's not hard to see why Twisted Wonderland has been talked about in the otome-gaming community for a while.

It's also an interesting step for Disney, who has tended to avoid “anime” associations in the West for a while. While we all know how much Japan loves Disney stuff, the Mouse House has generally tried to keep Japanese-made Disney media from looking too “foreign,” as well as ensuring it's broadly appealing to a wide demographic. Yes, there is Kingdom Hearts, but the Disney character designs in that don't stray at all from what American audiences are used to. Twisted Wonderland, with its blatantly manga-styled attractive male character designs and prominent Japanese voiceover, is not hiding its origins (or target audience) at all for its Western release, and I'm happy to see it.

I'm sure Twisted Wonderland will do quite well upon release, as the combination of Disney plus anime hotties pretty much guarantees success. I just hope the fandom won't become the den of toxicity that so many other otome mobile-game fandoms have. One can only read so many rambling Twitter threads about how Savanaclaw dorm is problematic and if you stan them you are irredeemable, y'know?

FIGHTING GAME NEWS ROUNDUP: M-M-M-MAXIMA

The second King of Fighters XV and first DNF Duel betas happened last weekend, and while KoF went a lot more smoothly this time around, DNF Duel had quite a few hiccups. For a good while on day one, it was nearly impossible to get into a game on DNF Duel. This was quickly remedied, but the beta itself was messy in a lot of other ways, with no training mode or any way to get a feel for playing characters outside of online matches. That still didn't stop lab-monsters from finding extremely broken things, though:

DNF Duel has been slated for a Summer 2022 release, and going from the beta, it still feels like there's a lot that needs to be done yet – but at this point, there's still plenty of time to fix things. Will another, better beta happen before launch? Yeah, I'd wager that's likely.

Anyhow, how about this week's crop of character announcements? Melty Blood Type Lumina has its first DLC character addition, but if you're one of those folks waiting and hoping for an announcement of an official English Tsukihime translation, you might want to be careful, because they happen to be a big ol’ spoiler for the events of the visual novel. I'll just link the video here to keep you safe.

But hey, you know what I can link? This week's King of Fighters XV character announcement, showing off our big ol’ buddy Maxima. He joins Whip and K’ to form… Team K’!

We've only got a couple of character reveals left now. Will these be new faces, or old favorites? Will Kim Kaphwan take his first-ever break from the main KoF roster? We'll know for sure in a few weeks!

Well, I think that's everything I wanted to discuss this week. Yes, I know, there's news about Klonoa trademarks filed by Bandai-Namco in various territories, but I want to wait until something more substantial materializes before really diving into that. I hope you all have a safe and happy holiday weekend filled with joy and games. See you again next week for the final column of 2021!