GSK

Producer Aoki's been a little more pointed on certain streams but the VODs are a pain to locate/search on a whim... here's one printed source, with a fairly neutral "offline tournaments are still the primary format in the west, so they may not be fully accustomed to online tournaments yet" (followed by some bloviating by Tekken producer Harada, who's tagged in on a lot of VFe-related interviews and tends to monopolise the conversations with their own opinions on and/or rationalisations for every issue raised).

I don't know that Aoki (or Harada) are being sincere when they throw out certain comments; I think they're just deflecting because they can't be candid about their netcode and don't want to say anything to draw further attention to that specific problem. That said, I do think Harada's point about western VF players lacking a point of contact or visible support network from Sega is true enough—my impression for years has been that Sega's international branches are willing to entertain external offers to collaborate or cooperate with community initiatives but they don't have the will or the infrastructure to proactively run or promote tournaments for any of their games.

I also know there have been promising developments within the last year or so re: getting genuine insight into western players' habits, requests, etc but there's no knowing what impact they might have until Sega actually decides to announce something...

Nippon Ichi's holding another tournament/exhibition/demo event for Yumeiro Yuram this weekend, which will notably feature a tournament with a few dozen players (several of whom are known puzzle game players) playing for a ¥100k prize. The finals are being commentated by hisyachu, a prominent Puyo player/TO who's also extremely good at Yuram and is the closest thing the game has for a notable advocate, and they'll also be participating in their own exhibition after the finals.

I have no idea if they're going to stream this tournament anywhere, but it's nice that they didn't just throw their hands up after launch... it's also curious that they chose to use an English version of the game title in that trailer, not that I'm inclined to infer anything from that decision.

@sasuraiger left a comment on your post

I don't keep track of what's up with NISA, but I find it so weird that nobody's said anything about an English version of this when they sure seem to put out everything else. But then again, only reason I haven't imported it is I can't presently afford it!

I have no idea what's going on, nor do I pay enough attention to NISA's usual output to know how long they'd typically take to bring anything over, but given how it doesn't seem to have sold very well and how virtually all the commentary about the game has grumbled about the price, I wonder if they might deliberately holding back a global release to coincide with a JP price cut.

I have no idea if they're going to stream this tournament anywhere

I have an answer, and that answer is no

how you know this is a real game: everybody got bodied by a middle-schooler https://twitter.com/nis_prinny/status/1730847901096845327

Nippon Ichi's holding another tournament/exhibition/demo event for Yumeiro Yuram this weekend, which will notably feature a tournament with a few dozen players (several of whom are known puzzle game players) playing for a ¥100k prize. The finals are being commentated by hisyachu, a prominent Puyo player/TO who's also extremely good at Yuram and is the closest thing the game has for a notable advocate, and they'll also be participating in their own exhibition after the finals.

I have no idea if they're going to stream this tournament anywhere, but it's nice that they didn't just throw their hands up after launch... it's also curious that they chose to use an English version of the game title in that trailer, not that I'm inclined to infer anything from that decision.

@sasuraiger left a comment on your post

I don't keep track of what's up with NISA, but I find it so weird that nobody's said anything about an English version of this when they sure seem to put out everything else. But then again, only reason I haven't imported it is I can't presently afford it!

I have no idea what's going on, nor do I pay enough attention to NISA's usual output to know how long they'd typically take to bring anything over, but given how it doesn't seem to have sold very well and how virtually all the commentary about the game has grumbled about the price, I wonder if they might deliberately holding back a global release to coincide with a JP price cut.

I have no idea if they're going to stream this tournament anywhere

I have an answer, and that answer is no

my breakfast shmup Hazelnut Hex is coming to Steam in 10 days!! you can wishlist it now right here!

you can also go buy it on itch or Switch (US - UK) right now if you'd prefer; it'll also be out on the Japanese Switch eShop at the same time as the Steam release.

I was very pleasantly surprised by this game—it was completely off my radar, and my default assumption about western-made STG that just show up out of nowhere (and in particular, games that come off as primarily aesthetic-driven) is that there's not going to be a whole lot to them, but this game's super-solid and I hope it does well enough to justify a more substantial update in the future.

(Heads up on something that's tripped up everyone who's spoken to me about this game: "moderate" = hard mode!)

@lesbianesti left a comment on your post

bought the game based on the recommendation. I must say I'm so glad that I did, amazing game, it's got me back into playing STGs in general. INSTANT pickup especially since it's on sale!

right on!
if anyone's intimidated by the video I posted up-thread, don't be—that was the optional hard difficulty, but the normal difficulty might be more your speed: