This was the first significant update to the game ever since its debut on the Xbox 360. Other than rebalancing the characters so it's equivalent to its latest arcade counterpart, there were a few other tweaks made as well. The explosions the Rounders make when they lose look more complete, and the transition animation back to the versus screen also uses that circle cut-in effect to bring you back to the character select screen. Because of the game rebalancing, the Score Attack rankings were reset.

November 21, 2006

All of the A Cartridge costumes that were exclusive to Senko no Ronde SP are now available for download. However, they're not for free as they were sold on the Xbox Live Marketplace at the cost of 100 Microsoft Points each. G.Rev also released a new B Cartridge costume set for each character that is exclusive to the Xbox 360. These costumes are based off of the events that occurred in the drama CD that came with the limited edition of the Xbox 360 port.

What's probably going to confuse a lot of people is when they see Karel's B Cartridge costume. His character select illustration has been replaced by Luchino, and his Final B.O.S.S. cut-in illustration has him in a rabbit costume. There is a rational explanation for this: in one of the drama CD tracks, Karel is trying to secretly watch over Luchino at the Senko Academy by constantly disguising himself with one of the existing staff members over there. In the last scene, he attempts to disguise himself as a rabbit, since Luchino at the time was out on the campus observing Ernula playing with her rabbit dolls. Unfortunately, even Ernula sees right through it.

Currently, these extra costumes are only available on Japan's Xbox Live Marketplace.

Video of B4 costume cut-ins

May 10, 2007

In preparation for the impending Western release of this game, G.Rev decided to update it once again. This patch mainly addresses the network side of everything, as they've strengthened the network code so it doesn't feel TOO bad when you're playing against other people overseas; it's more like a .4 second delay now instead of a full second for the game to respond to your inputs, and matches with closer opponents feels pretty close to offline play.

However, the change you'll probably see is the first three seconds after the character select screen appears as your opponent's character selection portrait will turn into static with only the name SECRET right below it and their Rounder wireframe will disappear, and when they finalize their choice, their selected character won't say anything.

Another major change is there's a random character generator you can select instead of which character you want to use. An amusing thing to do during this point is to select random and then cancel your choice, which will then prompt the Xbox to tell you that the game's disc is scratched and check for physical damage as it kicks you out of the game and sends you back to the dashboard.

When you create a non-ranked player match, you can determine how each player will select their character. You can have it set up like it is in ranked matches, let each player see what their opponent's going to pick like it always was before this update, or have it always set to random.

Each gamertag also has a national flag right beside their name which can be reconfigured to whatever one you want in the options menu.

Other changes they've made to the game is that there's now a little text guide that tells you on the character select screen that pressing start will ask you if you want to go back to the main menu, while pressing X will pause the countdown timer so you can configure your controller setup, and once again, the game was rebalanced (and once again, they fail to mention what exactly was changed), meaning that the Score Attack rankings were reset. The online match rankings accidentally disappeared along with this, so G.Rev posted an apology about that and said that everyone's data for this should be back up by around May 18th.

The patch also allowed players to hear the new songs exclusive to the Xbox 360 port by first holding the Left Bumper and then either pressing A or Y when selecting the stage. However, most of the new songs only go through one loop, so you'll be hearing the same three beats over and over again if the match last longer than three minutes.

Although my gamertag's regional settings were set to the United States, I found something rather peculiar about my achievements for Senko no Ronde: they were also written in English. All signs though for the remainder of 2006 said that nobody's picked up the rights to publish this game outside of Japan. Then rumors started flying around that Ubisoft picked up them up sometime in February of the following year. It finally became official in the middle of April, with a slated US release date near the end of May with little to no advertising whatsoever.

The original name was supposed to be Battle Storm: Senko no Ronde, but it was changed to the title that we know of today at the very last minute. The reason why Ubisoft decided to place an English phrase before the actual name of the game is so people don't have a headache trying to figure out how to pronounce the game's title, as some might incorrectly pronounce it as "Ron-DAY" while others will find several creative ways to mispronounce it or even try to avoid saying the name altogether. Heck, even the Game Trailers review simply calls the game WarTech.

On the same day the game was to be officially released in Europe, G.Rev released another patch. It addresses some online issues people were having with the Western release of the game. The patch also included minor game balances, and this time around, they finally decided to announce patches in Blizzard Entertainment's style, where they say what the patch will update the game's version to (version 2.01) as well as what exactly was changed in terms of game balancing, where in this case, Changpo's Final B.O.S.S. Y-Axis movement is reduced (the game screen is wider than higher, so this makes sense), and Sakurako's Main Weapon damage was changed.

No good place

Those little things are Last Arbiters, the machine that Mika's Rounder attaches to when he enters B.O.S.S. mode, and considering that you "download" these during the transformation means that they just don't hang around outside of the hotzone where they can get shot down by nearby enemy support. Another reason why the art was negatively received was because it's also missing that sci-fi space opera mystique the official artwork had since the picture and the new logo itself convey the emphasis of COLD HEARTED MACHINES.

As expected from a US port, there's several seconds wasted booting up this game because we not only have to go through G.Rev's logo and acknowledge the technology used to compress the music, there's also Ubisoft's logo and the warning that ESRB's rating might change during online play we have to endure. Ubisoft's US port of the game is practically identical to its Asian counterparts; even save data from different regions will work with this version. The only differences between this as the Asian versions are that it's region-free, the title's new logo appears in the bottom-right corner of the screen when the game switches to the CPU battle demonstration if you decide not to go to the main menu right away, and there's an option to switch the subtitles (as well as every single menu text) between English and Japanese.

"Defensive Style"

Negative impressions are to be expected for any game, but when all of the big sites bring down what should have been an obvious title worthy of praise, there must be an equal force to counteract the bad karma generated from it. Since only a few gaming sites truly appreciate what a marvel Senko no Ronde is and what these big publications claim to be a big detriment to its appeal are completely unjustified, it's time to prove them wrong.

Argument 1 - "It should've been an Xbox Live Arcade Game (XBLA) given the amount of content in here."

"But what about Udon remaking Puzzle Fighter and Street Fighter in HD and being distributed online?" they'd ask. To which I'd reply with, "And how old are these games? How many different home versions exist? I actually have a few copies of these games myself, and I would be pretty upset if I had to pay full price again just to play a remake of it."

"But what about Lumines?" these critics might cry out again. Although Lumines was never an arcade game to begin with, the game has existed on the PSP before this. While we're at it, G.Rev would've had to pull off a stunt like Lumines did by releasing a barebones version of it online and then asking for microtransactions in order to get all of the content for the "full" game, as the XBLA game size limit was 50MB at the time G.Rev was working on porting their game over to the Xbox 360.

Given the backlash from the idea Lumines tried on XBLA, it's like the reviewers themselves are the ones accelerating the demise of the arcade scene over in the Western parts of the world.

Argument 2- "They should have put in all of the extra costumes on the disc to begin with instead of making us pay a total of 1600 Microsoft Points for them, which was what happened in Japan."

Well, that's a pretty good...wait, those critics never mentioned this.

Argument 2, Revised- "The game is repetitive."

Argument 3 - "Do not get this game because it costs sixty dollars and for the previous reasons mentioned earlier."

The game has every right to be worth sixty dollars. It's just these reviewers reinforce the belief that arcade games suck and aren't worth your time because they are perceived as "too simple" and "redundant" while not pushing the hardware to its limits. They also fail to realize since most arcade games today ask a dollar per session, 60 dollars is a VERY small drop in the bucket if you were playing Senko no Ronde all the time if it ever existed on Western shores. The concept is not that difficult to understand: start 60 single player gaming sessions or challenge an opponent sixty times and you've already gotten your money's worth.

Another possible reason as to why Senko no Ronde is receiving bad scores is that the reviewers themselves have had their intelligence insulted because they don't "get it" and aren't willing to understand and appreciate the intricacies of this game just like other competitive titles on the 360 because it was made by a relatively obscure company whose legacy isn't really that apparent - one review complains how difficult it is to try and hit your opponent because it requires a new method of thinking in order to hit them properly with your shots. Perhaps if Treasure or Rockstar developed this game, it would've received higher ratings.

That, or it could be because the game feels too Japanese for them, what with all of the effeminate character designs and strange mech designs and all.

Because of these differences, Acceleration of Suguri distinguishes itself enough from Senko no Ronde to be an interesting game in its own right, but talking about how cool it is would require its own article. Until that happens, take a look at the game's screenshots which were taken from the most recent update dubbed X-Edition.