It would appear i am 0/2 on famous Japanese arcades still having the games i saw them run tournaments for (that i also wanted to play) in their building. Existential damage obtained.
I was genuinely prepared to blow a lot of money at these arcades playing against the scenes i studied and respected from afar, and it seems like they're gone by the time i got over here.
Forcing myself to be a Positive Pete. Kohatsu has Axel City 2. No one here plays it but the training mode is a generous 600 seconds per 100 yen and i'm enjoying it, warts and all.
I also played Dynamite Bomb, pretty sure its made by the same people since it has the same training mode. It manages the impressive feat of both being more free-form in combos, dynamically animated, and yet, worse to look at and control. I think it's a probably the game more people would gravitate to because more people care about the nebulous concept of "combo freedom," but I genuinely think DB needs about twice the amount of key frames it currently has for me to be able to follow it.
I -do- kind of like the "rekka" esque pathing most special moves have into unique enders/extensions, though. Whenever you see "Chase!" on the screen, the player can hit a button +direction (the special move itself determines what the input direction is) to get a canned followup. That part feels good right out of the can.
