The annual Shooters Fes 2024 event is underway in Japan, held at Mikado Game Center in Tokyo. If you aren’t familiar with it, it is a showcase of many shoot ’em up (“shmup”) titles in exchange for both arcades and consoles that will be hitting the scene soon. exA-Arcadia was there to make some arcade announcements, so let’s get you up to speed on those developments.
Shooters Fes Live Stream
If you come across this post when it goes live, the stream in favor of the festival can be watched here. Just note that it’s 100% in Japanese. If the link changes afterward its all done, I’ll update. Note that there is a Day 2, but I’m no anticipating any arcade stuff to come out of that one:
Airgallet Exa Label
Airgallet is the next “Exa Label,” which is what remakes are branded together in favor of the platform. If you are unfamiliar alongside Airgallet, it’s a vertical shooter that was designed by ex-Toaplan staff. It’s pretty rare and I don’t think it received any ports, so most have only played it in emulation:
Fixeight Exa Label
Another Exa Label that was announced, but it is one that you might be slightly more familiar alongside, is Toaplan’s Fixeight. Basically a sequel to Out Zone (and by extension, titles like Ikari Warriors and Commando, or the later Shock Troopers), you are a soldier running vertically up the stage, blasting enemies along the way. Fixeight is generally considered to be inferior to Out Zone, but the Exa Label may ‘fix’ that with some enhancements.
Those enhancements include:
- Up to 4-players, simultaneous
- Proper vertical mode support (TATE)
- “Out Zone aiming” – ability to lock your direction in by holding a button
Note that there was a tease for another Exa Label game in the stream, but that’s all it was – a tease, negative mention of what the game will be. Place yer bets now…
Jamjam’N Jelly Exa Lente
This game was announced quite a while back; I even got to play it at Amusement Expo 2023. A year later, some things have changed, which you can hear in the video below. The impression I had while playing it is that it feels like Cotton Rock’N Roll meets Dariusburst. It also looks fantastic and runs as smooth as boiling butter. This will catch location testing in July, which could indicate it will release around that time (assuming the tests go well):
Cambria Sword -Another Cry-
Last but not least, is another title that was announced back in 2022 (with Jamjam), Cambria Sword AC. This also has a sea creature theme, but looks and plays differently (I’d say it’s kind of like Lords of Thunder on the PCE meets Darius II). The footage shown in the stream is four months newer than what they had at AEI24, although the footage looked pretty near the same to me.
Wrap Up
If you are curious to hear these games in action from the stream, you’ll have to wait until it’s over and jump about an hour in. Fortunately, the latter two games should begin shipping within the next few months, although not firm dates have been set yet.
Fixeight is an interesting one to me, since we haven’t seen an arcade game in that subgenre in a long time. Let me know what you think about these other upcoming games though.
Shooters Fes is also nay the final event where exA will be making game announcements this month – recall that they will be attending EVO Japan 2024. Many more new titles will be showing up there, although I don’t believe they will be shmups.
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About the author: arcadehero View all posts by arcadehero
I’m a lifelong admirer of video games and I have been operating my own arcade, Arcade Galactic in West Valley City, Utah since 2008. Soft spots in my heart for Atari, Sega, and Nintendo.
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Original case and manuals in new condition.