Arc System Works made their debut at Brasil Game Show 2024 with style, as they opened the first day with a presentation about their surprise port of Guilty Gear Strive to the Switch, as well as sharing some details from other upcoming releases. Their booth might have been small in comparison to the rest, but the content was definitely there.
I started out my visit playing Guilty Gear Strive on Switch, and to be honest, I was quite impressed. Sure, playing the game on a giant HD screen helps accentuate the limitations that this version had to take when it comes to visuals, but considering that most folks will play this on the portable screen, it’ll look just fine. Performance-wise, I did not notice any drops in frame rate and the controls were spot on compared to my time playing the game on PlayStation 4.
Now, I’ll admit I had no expectations for HunterxHunter NenxImpact whatsoever. It’s an anime fighting game and those are rarely any fun to me, but truth be told, this one proved me wrong, with strong, fast, and extremely approachable gameplay. It’s a 3v3 fighter that features a handful of characters from the manga and show, with many more locked away in the demo. Gon, the protagonist, proved to be quite capable, and overall this one felt similarly to a King of Fighters title!
Moving on to Double Dragon Revive, I came in with a similar mindset as I did with HunterxHunter, even more so considering that it did not look good during the presentation the day before my visit to the booth. It seemed stiff and awkward to play, and the presentation was meh at best. To my surprise, the base gameplay is more than okay and features a bunch of button strings, much in the vein of actual fighting games, behind Billy and Jimmy’s attacks.
Movement in three dimensions, though, remained kind of weird and I can’t say that I liked it very much, but I’ll give the developers credit for trying something new, hopefully it’s an aspect of the game that will be further worked on as it’s closer to release next year. Speaking of that, funnily enough, the actual programmers were in attendance at the show directly from Japan, and took notes from attendees as some of them ran into bugs and other issues with the demo, something that I had never seen happening in any event I’ve ever been to.
Revive is as its name implies, a reimagining of the original Double Dragon game, wherein the boys try to rescue Marian from the hands of Machine Gun Willy. Curiously enough, the main baddie was one of Arc’s big reveals at BGS, as he featured prominently during the trailer video shown. How he’ll figure in the story, it’s still up in the air, but safe to say, he has a machine gun and is a gruff bastard, so I can venture a guess and say that you’re gonna have to dodge plenty of bullets coming your way when fighting him.
All things considered, BGS 2024 was a bang up first go for Arc System Works! For the time that I was at their booth, I was thoroughly impressed with their demos and am looking forward to playing more of them as they get closer to their release windows. Keep an eye out for more of our coverage soon, mmkay?
Eduardo is a jack-of-all-trades and master-of-none when it comes to videogames and someone who likes talking about them a whole lot. You can find him on Twitter and Bluesky.
