Yesterday, there was a livestream from Game Center Mikado's official Youtube channel showcasing various classic remakes and the City Connection/Zerodiv port of Akai Katana for 8th-gen consoles. There are reasons for mentioning things about the remakes, the Zerodiv port of Akai Katana and a short video from the character from Needy Streamer Overload in a stream from Game Center Mikado's channel of all the gaming channels. What is that short video doing in a channel like that? It could have resided in WSS Playground's official YouTube channel.
The first game they had shown was a remake of Phychic 5, the arcade classic from NMK in 1987. The unique thing about its presentation is that you can switch between Original or Wide aspect ratio and Original or Arranged graphics and sound on the fly. This supersedes R-Type Dimensions when it comes to switching in-between on the fly during the game where you have not one but two options to switch things in-between. The earlier examples I can know of that have extended playfield are Giga Wing Generations on PS2, Mamoru Has Been Cursed on PS3 and Under Defeat HD and HD+. However, only some game modes have the extended playfield while the original game modes retain the original aspect ratio. By having an extended playfield, it's going to affect how you play the game. The shameful thing is that the game never had a home console release until its remake was announced this year. The remake will come out in Spring next year on Switch.
The third game they had shown was a remake of a Disc Station RPG originally from Compile. Many of the Compile IPs are with D4 Enterprise and it was a surprise that some Disc Station RPG was being developed. I don't know for sure if Sega owns the rights to the Puyo Puyo-related Disc Station games or not as those are part of the Puyo Puyo franchise. The RPG game is trying to be Compile's answer to Konami's Suikoden or something and the remake is going to come out on Switch next year.
The last one they showed was a City Connection port of Cave's Akai Katana Shin that will be released on Switch, Playstation 4 and Xbox One. It's a strange move to have an Xbox One release when there's already an Xbox 360 version. The new thing exclusive to those ports so far is the new arrange soundtrack named, Arrange '22, in which the arranged tracks are done by Daisuke Matsumoto of Cave. There's even the CD of said soundtrack that comes with the Limited Edition copy of the game. It's one exlucisve addition the Exa-Arcadia version doesn't have. It's unexpected that my encouragement for 3rd-party game developers about adding something new the Intellivision Amico version doesn't have to the later or previous versions of their game has become true or something due to City Connection's recent idea but that said encouragement was for 3rd-party game developers who happen to make the Amico version of their game, not City Connection. I don't know how Exa-Arcadia team will react to the City Connection's port of Akai Katana Shin due to its own exclusive addition. The City Connection port of Akai Katana Shin will come out in December this year.
So, the lesson or encouragement is that, the game developers can add extra stuffs like new characters/ships/planes/stages and new remade graphics/soundtracks to the previous or later versions of their game, the additions the Intellvision Amico version will not have. Hell, they may as well switch to a different game engine or a new version of the same game engine that the Amico is not able to support or handle it at all, with features added to their game after the game engine/version switch that will put their Amico version to shame. What City Connection did to their upcoming port of Akai Katana Shin is a brave but unexpected move with a brand new arrange soundtrack.
