This week's Arcade Archives release is... Magical Speed (Allumer, 1994)
Hamster recently acquired the Allumer back-catalogue and so they're going to start rereleasing their arcade output, with Magical Speed being the first. This is an absolutely adorably-presented take on the real-life card game Speed with a unique button layout- four buttons representing each of your cards and two for the cards in the middle of the screen. The actual layout is odd too- as shown by the magazine scan in this tweet by ohfivepro, this was a cocktail cabinet so Player 2's info is flipped at the top of the screen! If you want multiplayer, you might be best grabbing the Switch version for handheld action.
One major caveat is no English ROM exists so the game is presented entirely in Japanese. It is just a card game with minimal text though, and I'm guessing there's the game manual to learn the rules, but just keep it in mind.
This isn't a game for me- I can barely play Blackjack let alone any other card games- but this is something I like about the Arcade Archives rereleases, sometimes you get a game you've never even heard of! Isn't that pretty amazing? The world of arcade games is truly vast and infinite. Plus, the prospect of Allumer rereleases brings us ever closer to a proper home console release of the ultimate fighting game, BLANDIA (warning, this gets loud, but it's worth it).
the Switch version of this release has a neat extra feature that, iirc, is a first for Arcade Archives: touchscreen support! You can directly tap the cards while in handheld mode, which some might find more intuitive than any of the other button-based configs.
maybe i should nab this
