News roundup: Jump Festa 2014 takes place in Japan

Today was the first day of Jump Festa 2014, a big event for fans of manga, anime and games held in Makuhari Messe, Chiba. Capcom came along with a booth and held stage events at 12:10 and 15:50 on Saturday, promising gameplay demonstrations for Shikanosuke and Nagamasa along with the latest Sengoku Basara 4 news. Game director Yamamoto Makoto and series producer Kobayashi Hiroyuki were both present to help promote the game.

There was no live stream for the Capcom parts of the event (sadly) so it's necessary to rely on rumours from Twitter, forums and blogs again until the press publish their reports. Here's what I've seen so far following Saturday's show.

• Nagamasa was shown fighting on Aniki's stage.
• When YamamotoD was playing as Oyassan, Shikanosuke was left almost defenceless.
• The elusive PV4 and the game's opening were shown again. Perhaps the rest of us will at least get to see PV4 during the week?
• People frequently mentioned content from the two videos: Nagamasa embracing Oichi, Oyassan jumping through Motonari's ringblade, Sakon standing on Nagamasa's head, Gyoubu capturing Kanbee with his beads, Hanbee and Mitsunari standing together with Hideyoshi, Ieyasu with his back to the Toyotomi forces, Tenkai confronting Nobunaga, Shikanosuke riding on top of the Xavi head with Sourin.
• Tsuruhime said "I've been appointed as the 'second generation' Himiko!"
• The game has a confrontation between Hisahide and Kojuurou.
• Photos of the booth. Dengeki added some official press coverage. KobaP also tweeted plenty of pictures showing it loaded with merchandise.
• The full range of Ichiban Kuji lottery prizes was on display.
• Tomorrow's gameplay presentation is said to feature Hanbee with Gyoubu as his battle comrade, on the Xavi Land stage. It will be held at 9:45.
• The folks on 2ch have spotted yet another store-exclusive bonus item for Sengoku Basara 4, this time a desk calendar at Sanyodo.

This next comment has nothing to do with Jump Festa, but Balder over at Koei Warriors noticed a very interesting visual cue in the interface which might be useful to importers who have yet to master Japanese. This marker should make it a lot easier to work out which special move you have currently selected in battle without resorting to trial and error!

Update 22/12/2013: We now have some gossip from the Sunday event too. There were two separate presentations again.

• The first stage had Hanbee at Xavi Land as promised. There's a roller coaster as part of the stage.
• It was a different version of the stage to the one we've seen in previews as this one didn't include Sunday Mouri. They thought the name was the same, so perhaps the 'normal' and 'outbreak' versions of Xavi Land have different bosses.
• The fans got to see them performing a Giga Basara but so far I haven't seen any reports confirming Gyoubu's.
• @eiji_76cla mentioned three Xavists who come out together: Endless Nishida (as explained previously), Yuukingu KBT and Hosomura K. The last two are references to Kobuta Yuuki (Masamune) and Hosogai Kei (Yukimura), the actors who graduated from the stage play earlier this year.
• The V Jump booth held a demonstration with Sakon and Katsuie. When playing on the Dragon-Tiger version of Osaka Castle, the soldiers bicker about who will be the supreme commander - Masamune or Yukimura.
• During the second Capcom presentation, a time attack was attempted on a Motonari stage using Hideyoshi as the player character (his battle comrade was Mitsunari). It was tough as they had to beat the boss within three minutes.
• The stage was said to be a rare one which doesn't appear very often, involving Motonari's stolen version of Aniki's fortress. One person thought the name was 浮遊要塞・天空日輪 (Floating Fortress: Heavenly Sun). It's said to float in the air like a certain castle in a certain Studio Ghibli movie.
• 'Himiko' apparently sounds like Motonari speaking in a higher pitched voice.
• YamamotoD cleared Motonari's stage so quickly that he also showed off the tunnel stage (Kanbee's). They ran out of time before finishing, however.

That seems to be all; hopefully we'll get the new PV this week and then on Thursday it will be time for the next live stream. And for once, I'll be at home to watch it at the correct time (I'm so happy!).