It seems that this year at Anime Expo I’ll be taking some time off of prancing around in cosplay to sit in a room full of un-bathed, sweaty otaku in the console gaming room at the LA Con Center. I’ll be doing so to get the chance to play a very promising 2-D fighter that’s on its way to being released later in 2008 in arcades and for the PS3.

It all started yesterday, June 23rd, the Anime Expo website had an announcement posted that sparked mine and many others’ interested. BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger, the newest 2-D fighting game from Arc System Works, was announced to be playable at AX08 as part of the North American localization test. As said before, according to the website the test location will be in the console gaming room, which raises the question of if it will be a cabinet or not. Whether we’ll get to play the game in a classic arcade style or not is beside the point right now though. I don’t think anyone looking forward to the game will be complaining either way.

For those unfamiliar with BlazBlue, it’s said to be the spiritual successor to the Guilty Gear franchise, allegedly (I haven’t been able to confirm this 100%) taking place 10 years after the end of the Guilty Gear storyline (Which incidentally has yet to actually end). It features a cast of 10 all new characters, all of which seem slightly stereotypical in some way, not too surprising given that the Guilty Gear designer, Daisuke Ishiwatari isn’t on the project



If you’re interested in hearing about BlazBlue in more detail, check out the official U.S. website: http://blazblue.jp/us/aou.html

So with all that said, I’m banking on the chance to see some fellow D-toid members at the test location so I can avoid the awkward conversations of some group of Death Note fans that happened to think some character in the game was “Kawaii~<3!”. I’d prefer to have an actual conversation about the mechanics of the game with other fighter fans.

Hope to see some of you there.

See the full article at AX’s website: http://www.anime-expo.org/2008/06/23/blazblue-location-test-tour-announced/#more-206