Today's acquisitions (29th April 2015)

I read Weekly Famitsu magazine as usual this afternoon but there wasn't a single piece of news worth mentioning this time. There's no Weekly Famitsu next week due to the holiday season in Japan, so I guess we have to rely on the weekend events for Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi news until the regular updates resume in a fortnight.

This means I have more time free than expected so I'll post a picture of the goodies I've been lucky enough to acquire recently.

I backed the Time Of Eve (Eve No Jikan) Kickstarter a long time ago. So long ago, in fact, that I had forgotten I paid enough to earn two A4 prints and a fully-translated book about the series. The actual Blu-ray disc shipped a while ago so it was a complete surprise when the extras turned up this week. The colour prints were safely protected by an attractive A4 clear file and delivered in the largest shipping box imaginable. My neighbour laughed as he handed over the package, asking whether I'd ordered a box full of air.

The art book is lovely too. It's the kind of thing I'm used to seeing in Japanese but having all of the production notes and interviews translated for English-speaking fans is extremely rare. What a great Kickstarter project that was.

The other big item is the first Blu-ray disc of the brand new Mobile Suit Gundam: The Origin series courtesy of UK distributor Anime Limited. The store-exclusive packaging can only be described as ostentatious; the stunningly-illustrated outer box is as large as a vinyl record even though all it contains is a Blu-ray case (in a slipcase, naturally), art cards and a storyboard book. I haven't seen the anime yet so I'm looking forward to checking it out.

It's never going to fit on my shelves.

The final delivery in the picture is NIS America's standard edition rerelease of Ground Control To Psychoelectric Girl (Denpa Onna To Seishun Otoko). It actually arrived a little while ago and I completely forgot to mention it. I already own the limited edition version of the show so this was a vanity purchase for one reason alone.

My review was quoted on the back! This blog was originally set up for anime-related ranting and reviews. I didn't get too far before posting about Sengoku Basara started consuming all of my free time, but it's a great feeling to have my blog's name on the packaging of a show I really loved.

News roundup: That new Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi promotional video

Today's update is a quick one to highlight a few official website updates that took place this morning. I also want to note that I added a few clarifications/corrections in my write-ups for the first and second days of the Nico Nico Choukaigi 2015 event after posting them, since I rewatched some of the streams.

The third Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi promotional video is now online

The official version of the new video is now available so it can be watched without any risk that it might be taken down unexpectedly.


Just realised that Ishikawa even talks about the morning glory flowers in the lyrics. It's such a beautiful song...

Details of the new zunda-flavoured Country Ma'am biscuits

Fujiya's Country Ma'am chocolate chip cookies received a news bulletin all of their own on the official Sengoku Basara news portal. It seems that there are six different designs available for the wrappers inside the box.

The special edition boxes will be available in souvenir shops across the Touhoku area from mid-May 2015. Each pack will contain eight biscuits and cost ¥363 before tax.

For those who aren't aware, Masamune is closely associated with the Touhoku area and bright green zunda (soybean paste) is one of the region's most well-known flavours. This tie-in is being heralded as part of the ongoing campaign to promote local history for the series' tenth anniversary.

--

The game's official website updated too, as did the Sengoku Basara 10th Anniversary site. I haven't spotted any more new reveals yet so it's likely this Thursday's Weekly Famitsu will bring us the next round of updates.

News roundup: The second day of the Nico Nico Choukaigi 2015 event

It's Sunday in Japan and that means more Nico Nico Choukaigi coverage! I think that most of today's content will be very similar to what was shown yesterday. Don't forget that you can use Nico Nico's Timeshift feature to reserve and view the live streams even after they've finished. They'll expire on 2nd May 2015.

Just like yesterday, the first panel was the Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi 'super' latest information corner on the Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi VS DMC4 SE Nico Nico channel.

They opened up with the old PV from Basara Matsuri again but this time YamamotoD provided commentary over the top to introduce the new characters to viewers. He mentioned some kind of drama between the Setouchi characters.

They then went through the new characters with slides. Since it was a repeat of yesterday's information, the tone was much more informal today. KobaP joked that Yoshiteru's time-stop roulette result was like 'The World' from a certain popular shounen manga and later they described Katsuie's new medal outfit as his Turn A Gundam costume. When they got to the returning NPCs KobaP introduced the Uesugi ninja as the 'super-popular Kasuga-chan'.

Other things I picked up were that fans can expect to see an Akechi Mitsuhide costume in the medal rewards and Mitsunari's skill revision lets him cleave the ground.

YamamotoD referred to the scenes of Hideyoshi holding Mitsunari and Ieyasu up with his arms and confirmed it was a reference to the two of them being the Left Arm and Right Arm of the Toyotomi in one of the scenarios. This setting was also used in the last stage play, so I guess those who have seen it might have a few ideas about how the story will develop. I'm not going to spoil it here.

We also got two new video messages from the other NJPW wrestlers who weren't featured yesterday. They both seemed sweet and said they were looking forward to the game.

YamamotoD went into a lot of detail about Sen No Rikyuu's Giga Basara imagery during the discussion about the game's theme songs. The title of Ishikawa Chiaki's ending theme Heavenly Blue can refer to the distinctive colouring of the morning glory (asagao) flowers that Sen No Rikyuu is famously associated with. The plants in his ink artwork are morning glories too and the two infants represent Wabisuke and Sabisuke.

--

The next panel I tuned in for was the gameplay preview session. For some bizarre reason Capcom TV decided to run a Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi gameplay preview on their YouTube channel at the exact same time so it was very confusing keeping track of both. The dedicated Nico Nico stream had much better commentary and gameplay.

They showed the character select screen in Free Battle mode. You can see Yoshiteru's new (very pixellated) elemental symbol in his profile.

Gatchman was lucky enough to get the Akatsukimaru transformation in Battle Roulette during his Yoshiteru gameplay session so he demonstrated how quickly it could move; it zoomed through the stage leaving a trail of destruction.

It was shown yesterday too but the four different elemental attacks from Yoshiteru's Senban No Kiwami ('The Lathe's Zenith') R2 special are named after the classical four gods. They are Genbu (a blue ice effect), Byakko (lightning), Suzaku (fire) and Seiryuu (a dragon made of darkness). Missing with this move is what triggers the panels which cover part of the screen. Missing with his main roulette move triggers seals which appear on his body and weaken Yoshiteru; I think they said it locked his Basara for a short time but I'll have to check properly later.

The second character Gatchman demonstrated today was Maria. Her third special where she controls the camera is quite hard to pull off; she can be knocked out of it easily. Her first special seems to be the move where she grabs the enemy's attention by blowing a kiss at them then wraps them up in cloth. Even though all of the demonstrations are on the easiest difficulty - only Normal and Hard were available in the version on display - poor Gatchman was almost wiped out when he rushed to the end to fight Shingen and Kenshin.

The third demonstration was Sen No Rikyuu. His elemental symbol can also be seen on the character select screen.

YamamotoD wanted to show the way that the game randomly picks either Wabisuke or Sabisuke on the battle preparation screen and randomises which character you start as each time you load the level, but for some reason they kept getting Sabisuke no matter how many times they went back to the character select screen. Wabisuke must be camera shy...

Just as the demonstration was getting started, the costume-clad 'Bokesuke' wandered over from the Capcom TV presentation and gatecrashed the broadcast. After some silly banter he sat down and joined in with the gameplay commentary.

Bokesuke is a fictitious third personality who is supposedly signed up to the famous Yoshimoto talent agency (alongside Wabisuke and Sabisuke, of course). He's played by real-life comedian Osada Shouhei of Chocolate Planet. During the Capcom TV stream a little earlier he'd come on stage and introduced himself with the fake announcement that Chocolate Planet was changing its name to Green Tea Planet.

I suppose it makes a change from the usual booth babes!

Once Bokesuke left the players went back to demonstrating the game properly again. They showed a Giga Basara attack with Rikyuu and Yoshiteru and had some fun with tagging, then went ahead and finished the stage.

As a treat they let the viewers see Rikyuu's victory sequence, which switched between both identities then showed Sabisuke blasting of into the sky.

--

The next panel was KobaP's Super Talk Room. His first pair of guests was Yokoyama Masayoshi of Sega Games (series producer for Ryuu Ga Gotoku) and Ichimura Ryuutarou of Square-Enix (series producer for Dragon Quest).

Both men were very talkative and engaged. They introduced their own titles first, then the discussion turned to Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi and other Capcom games.

• Yokoyama thought Yoshiteru was cool and would fit right in with the Ryuu Ga Gotoku (Yakuza) games.
• He was amused that they'd managed to make a version of Sen No Rikyuu which was completely unlike any other, even though he's been portrayed in numerous ways in the past.
• He praised KobaP's team for being able to make great female characters like Maria. In comparison, they're not so good at making women for the Ryuu Ga Gotoku series.
• Ichimura is familiar with both Sengoku Basara and Tales Of Zestiria and thought the characters suited their crossover costumes rather well.
• Yokoyama joked about having the Ryuu Ga Gotoku characters dressing up like musician Himuro Kyousuke when he saw Ieyasu's T.M.Revolution costume.
• Ichimura asked KobaP whether he could pose like T.M.Revolution and he was more than happy to give it a try mid-discussion.

• Ichimura is interested in pro-wrestling so his face lit up when they got to the NJPW tie-in. He thought it was very well done.
• Yokoyama is pleased to see classics like Devil May Cry 4 returning on current consoles so that people can play them again. He thinks it's a good idea to make older titles available on new systems where they can continue to be enjoyed.
• Ichimura has various things planned for next year's 30th anniversary celebration of the Dragon Quest series.
• Speaking of anniversaries, it's the tenth anniversary for Ryuu Ga Gotoku too. The release of Ryuu Ga Gotoku 0 was just one of the activities they have planned.

Once the discussion was over, KobaP was joined by the next set of guests: Matsuyama Hiroshi of CyberConnect2 (company president) and Harada Katsuhiro of Bandai Namco Entertainment (Tekken project leader). Harada was wearing a Pikachu onesie as tribute to Pokken Tournament and he'd decorated it with a blue ribbon - a reference to Hestia from anime DanMachi and a recent meme.

It was difficult to pay attention properly with Harada dressed in such a ridiculous manner and the conversation was even crazier than the last one.

• Matsuyama got super-excited about Yoshiteru and the guests both agreed he resembled Char Aznable from Mobile Suit Gundam.
• Matsuyama exclaimed that Rikyuu was the first time he'd ever seen anyone use the foreign loanword 'psychic' to describe someone from the Sengoku era. He calmed down after a while and said it was typically 'Basara-ish'.
• Harada joked that he wanted to stop this sort of messed-up representation of Japanese culture from spreading worldwide.
• Matsuyama asked whether Maria's weapon was really cloth - surely a whip?
• Harada asked why 'Sengoku' was even in the title any more when it had become such a bizarre jumble of nonsense, especially with all of the different tie-ins. All three men were laughing helplessly by this point.
• With regards to the Tales Of Zestiria collaboration, Matsuyama thought that the fantasy-style hairstyles characters have in Sengoku Basara made the crossover work well.
• When they got to Ieyasu's T.M.Revolution costume, Harada asked KobaP who this kind of thing was aimed at, exactly, "Who asked for this??"
• KobaP said that both the fans of the series and T.M.Revolution fans were interested but Harada still seemed skeptical.
• The NJPW collaboration left both guests speechless for a while, yet they were impressed.
• Matsuyama finds it fascinating that Harada is so active in marketing his games to a global audience (he's often active on Twitter soliciting feedback from fans in English, even though he gets a lot of trolls).
• They talked about what kind of game they'd make if their three companies collaborated (there was no real consensus because they kept getting distracted by other topics.

It was another presentation which was deeply funny if you could follow the Japanese but there were no visual aids for anyone who couldn't.

--

The last event of the day was the second Challenge Gatchman! Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi 'Super★Bomb Soldier Challenge'. The stages were the same as before and since it is a special build of the game it's hard to say whether any conclusions can be drawn from the gameplay that was shown; a lot of the Nico Nico commenters were hoping for lots of enemies on screen at once and complaining about how expensive it was to buy a PlayStation 4.

The second player from the audience was a young man who said Sasuke was his favourite character so while they were chatting YamamotoD confirmed that Sasuke was definitely getting a drama route in Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi (it was also mentioned the day before). During the challenge they managed to sprint to the end and clear the entire stage (proving that Sasuke was a sub-boss in the process). Sadly the bomb soldier didn't have his own victory sequence.

Once the challenge session was over, Capcom announced that players at the demonstration area in their booth had managed to earn a total of 173,786 medals today for a total of 373,820 over the weekend! Even if the medal rewards are less common in the actual game than in the trial version, it looks quite easy to acquire them.

--

Bonus: Notes from yesterday's 'Party with KobaP and the developers!' panel.

I didn't cover this at the time as I'd been watching the live streamsall night long and was exhausted, so I watched it today instead. KobaP sat down with directors Itsuno Hideaki (Devil May Cry 4 SE) and Yamamoto Makoto (Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi) to discuss various behind-the-scenes trivia now that both of the new games are approaching release.

KobaP had some oversized question cards prepared to help stimulate the discussion. The directors drew the cards at random. I'm not going to translate every word but here are a few points I found interesting:

• Itsuno suggested that if he had the chance he'd like to work on a new fighting game like Star Gladiator or Shiritsu Justice Gakuen (Rival Schools).
• YamamotoD had to talk about something that KobaP did which he considered reckless. He chose the pace of release for new Sengoku Basara games, joking that eleven games in ten years was rather unusual.
• At one point the dramatic conflict between Ieyasu and Mitsunari in Sengoku Basara 3 was compared to an afternoon soap opera, which caused a lot of mirth on Twitter (and in the panel itself).
• YamamotoD was asked which aspect of the game they put the most effort (i.e. money) into working on. His answer was immediate: the playable characters.
• They've adjusted the balance in Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi as they regretted making some aspects of Sengoku Basara 4 disproportionately difficult. The commenters on Nico Nico were guessing this might relate to improvements to the camera or Yoshiteru's noticeable toughness when compared to other bosses.
• One of the reasons SCANDAL were chosen to provide the ending song for Sengoku Basara 4 was to give it a youthful feel to match Sakon and Katsuie. But of course the real reason is that YamamotoD happens to be a big SCANDAL fan.
• It takes about a year to produce a Sengoku Basara or Devil May Cry game. About half of that time is spent on active development.
• Towards the end of the segment the three creators read the comments from the Nico Nico viewers and responded live to their ideas. Both directors laughed when they were asked about the next major games in their respective series, Sengoku Basara 5 and Devil May Cry 5. YamamotoD protested that they were still working on the current games! A crazy number of suggestions popped up in the comments at this point, with fans clamouring for such varied things as scenes from Yukimura's past, playable Bontenmaru, happiness for Oichi and more about Katsuie's past.
• There were lots of fanciful crossover ideas suggested such as a Devil May Cry Takarazuka musical, more Gakuen Basara projects, fighting game crossovers, a Sengoku Basara concert; the directors were interested reading what everyone thought.
• Someone asked whether Sasuke was going to have a drama story and YamamotoD answered that he would.
• Lots of comments asked when the Butai Sengoku Basara 4 DVD was coming out (yeah, where is it?).
• My respect goes to the person who asked them to make a Ryuu Ga Gotoku (Yakuza) tie-in costume for Kojuurou. KobaP read out another comment which mentioned wanting a Sasuke figure of some kind.
• When he plays Sengoku Basara, Itsuno likes to use Kanbee.
• YamamotoD asked the audience whether they were more interested in Wabisuke or Sabisuke. The response was varied with neither dominating the vote. The fans then suggested a new addition which made everyone laugh: Xavisuke.
• They talked nostalgically about all of the old characters who aren't included in Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi like Ranmaru, Nouhime, Kennyo, Musashi, Ujimasa... they even remembered the Gohon-yari. KobaP joked about introducing a tanned Okinawa-themed version of Itsuki called Satsuki.

--

There was also occasional coverage on the Capcom TV YouTube channel which can still be watched now that the event is over. Please note that I have nothing against DMC but I didn't watch those shows because I didn't want to miss any Sengoku Basara coverage.

News roundup: The first day of the Nico Nico Choukaigi 2015 event

I decided to stay up all night long to watch the live streams so I'll update this post every couple of hours with what I spotted in the stream.

The Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi VS DMC4 SE was the first channel I checked out. After an introduction from hosts KobaP and net personality Gatchman, director YamamotoD joined them for the informal Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi 'super' latest information corner.

YamamotoD, KobaP and Gatchman (L-R)

They introduced the game to new viewers and ran through the latest announcements. One of the first things they confirmed was that the five non-playable characters from Sengoku Basara 4 are now playable, as we knew.

The background of the picture showed glimpses of the five characters' Giga Basara ink artwork. It looks as though Shingen, Kenshin, Kasuga, Toshiie and Matsu will have pictures of a tiger, Bishamonten, a flurry of roses, something I can't work out at all from the picture and a hawk respectively. KobaP commented that there were a lot of Kasuga fans out there and they'd been very vocal about their disappointment when she wasn't playable before.

They also highlighted the three brand new characters in more detail.

Next came a rundown of the new game mechanics and some previews of more of those medal reward costumes. It's hard to make this picture out but it shows the new characters will have skill revisions for purchase too in case that wasn't obvious. Also, the costs are different to those in the previous screenshots we've seen which is annoying; I wonder which values are correct?

They described Rikyuu's medal reward third costume as the 'coffee version' (lol).

They also highlighted one of Masamune's costumes we already knew about. There's no reason for this costume other than the opportunity to make a joke about 'Date Masamune' and 'Date Megane' ('fake glasses'); it's silly fan service.

The Light Armour (no helmet) and Pitch Black Dragon King versions of Masamune were shown off for the first time, along with a new blue costume for Mitsunari. I'm only going to mention the new ones - sorry, Ieyasu!

We also got a glimpse of Katsuie's medal costume and a second medal outfit for Yukimura with Oyakata-sama's helmet.

A new dinosaur-style costume for Matabee, a close-up of a different hairstyle for Naotora and an Amago Haruhisa-themed outfit for Shikanosuke.

Shots of the four skill revisions for the series' leads.

The six major collaborations were confirmed next. They played special messages from Okada and Nakamura, two of the four NJPW wrestlers whose costumes will feature in the game.

They also previewed the preorder DLC and KobaP warned everyone that there are no plans to make it available later so it's important not to miss out. Then came a sample of the e-Capcom exclusive Masamune towel to demonstrate how big it was compared to YamamotoD. It's pretty big.

Next came the first actual announcement. Capcom is teaming up with the NGC Nico Nico Game Jikkyou Channel to broadcast gameplay from its three upcoming summer titles. The Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi broadcasts will take place at 19:00 Japan time on the 6th, 13th, 20th and 27th of July. They should be worth checking out.

Eventually it was time for the debut of the event video they've been teasing all month!

I saw scenes with Motonari and Gyoubu, Ieyasu and Hideyoshi punching one another, the three ninja interacting and Kingo gambling with Sakon (?!). There were also some cool stylised scenes which looked as though they were from an opening sequence rather than the game's story modes.

The new ending song is beautiful. I thought it was slightly too 'folksy' at first but Ishikawa's voice swept me away as the video continued.

(Raindrops' note: The reason some of the pictures look better than others is that the less-blurry Capcom TV stream showed the PV again while I was writing up my notes.)

The hosts got back to the announcements once the PV was over. There's going to be some kind of official Sengoku Basara examination in Tokyo and Osaka on 23rd November 2015. You'll be able to earn a Sengoku Basara qualification! There are also apparently plans to make the test questions available (presumably in a book).

There's another new region tie-in to go with the major Kofu City and Saitama Prefectural Museum of History and Folklore promotions that were announced over the last few months: Zunda-flavoured Country Ma'am biscuits. They'll be limited to the Touhoku region. Country Ma'am is a well-known brand so this announcement caused a lot of laughs during the stream.

Then came the big new project announcement: a Sengoku Basara VS Devil May Cry stage play. The official website is already online. Butai Sengoku Basara vs Devil May Cry will run between 20th August 2015 and 30th August 2015 at the AiiA 2.5 Theatre, Tokyo. There will be 18 performances in total.

All advance tickets will cost ¥7,500. Members of the official Basara Club fan club can apply for tickets from 11:00 on 25th April 2015 while everyone else has to wait until 5th July.

In pursuit of a demon which emerged in some mysterious ruins, Dante, Lady, Trish and Vergil from Devil May Cry end up in the tumultous Sengoku era. There they meet the warriors of Sengoku Basara, such as Date Masamune and Sanada Yukimura. What kind of tale awaits them in the land of Hinomoto?

Cast:

Yamaguchi Daichi (Date Masamune)
Matsumura Ryuunosuke (Sanada Yukimura)
Isaka Tatsuya (Maeda Keiji)
Sakurada Kousei (Azai Nagamasa)
Kotani Yoshikazu (Mouri Motonari)
Taniguchi Masashi (Akechi Mitsuhide)
Suzuki Hiroki (Dante)
Nanba Shouhei (Vergil)
TO BE ANNOUNCED (Lady)
TO BE ANNOUNCED (Trish)
Yoshida Tomokazu (Prototype Nelo Angelo)

Yoshida played Kojuurou in the Butai Sengoku Basara stage play series so his presence will excite a lot of fans. All of the Sengoku Basara cast members are Butai Sengoku Basara regulars.

--

The next panel I watched was the premiere of the new Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi characters' gameplay with live commentary at noon.

First, Gatchman took control of Yoshiteru and YamamotoD talked him through everything that happened. Yoshiteru certainly does look powerful and his roulette effect is less cumbersome than I thought. His Basara animation looks beastly in action. The pause menu showed that they were demonstrating the characters at level 51 and another shot showed it was Normal difficulty.

The demo stage was the new Battle of Kawanakajima: Intrusion. By the way, the stage select screen has a total of 48 stages listed (although only 2 were shown).

When Gatchman messed up with one of Yoshiteru's roulette moves, part of the screen was covered up to make things harder.

The best part of the stage was Yukimura launching himself from the sky on Shingen's command but there were a lot of interesting cutscenes.

They stopped the demonstration before Gatchman advanced too far into the stage to keep some content secret.

The next demonstration had Gatchman selecting Sen No Rikyuu on the new Battle of Kokka-Anko (National Peace) stage, a clash between Hideyoshi and Ieyasu. Naturally, Mitsunari is there too and Aniki apparently shows up to assist his friend, so it looks as though there'll be a lot of drama involving this battlefield. It's the one with the 'Demon Gate' shown in the screenshot from yesterday.

Rikyuu's Ooyose ('Great Gathering') move is his R1. It's fun to see him roughly tossing the enemies around. He switches between his Sabisuke and Wabisuke personalities extremely quickly.

The third character demonstrated was Maria and she skipped and pranced through the stage. She floats in the air when she jumps, like a dancer. Her moves look extremely fun, using her cloth to bind the enemy soldiers and spin them around like crazy spinning tops.

The video stream quality was poor but I think her first R2 special is called Warawa No Toriko♪ ('My Prisoner♪'). For her Basara attack, she rises up into the air suspended by cloth and the enemies fly around as though they're being used in a game of pinball. The next of her R2 specials is Oshibeshimobe-guruma♪ (Stamen Servant Car♪) where she uses the enemy soldiers like a sledge. Ichiya No Himegoto♪ ('One Night Secret♪') has Maria binding and controlling the camera with her cloth. Her R1 move has her using the cloth like a skipping rope.

We also got to see the Battle Roulette mechanic in action. Gatchman was laughing a lot as YamamotoD tried to explain that Battle Roulette was different to Yoshiteru's roulette. Which is also different to the roulette wheel he summons for his elemental R2 attack.

Gatchman was delighted when he got a transformation in the Battle Roulette and turned into Kanetsugu, even though he got hit and transformed back almost immediately. He was playing quite casually but I noticed that Gatchman managed to earn hundreds of Tenka Medals without any problems. It looks as though those medal rewards will be easy to pick up.

We saw what happened when you fail at the Battle Roulette too. On one occasion, the Xavists intervened to stun the player with an attack from the heavens. You have to shake the stick furiously to resist joining the cult.

Incidentally, the shots of the setup screens showed that pressing the R2 button on the stage select screen toggles Battle Roulette on and off.

Finally, YamamotoD brought Rikyuu out again to highlight him in more detail. He first appears on the stage as Sabisuke so YamamotoD drew attention to his taunt. Wabisuke appears for brief moment during the taunt and you can see the struggle for control in some of his animations. It's evidently possible to switch between the two personalities out of combat. YamamotoD closed the presentation by chatting about how he developed the characters and the already-documented graphical differences between the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 versions of the game.

I'm glad I stayed up to watch this demonstration. Rikyuu looks insanely fun to play, even more so than Yoshiteru and Maria (and that's high praise).

--

The next event on the agenda was KobaP's Super Talk Room where he introduced the game to a pair of beautiful female entertainers, Saaya and Raychell. Saaya was extremely energetic and bubbly and it was funny seeing two relatively 'normal' people reacting to all of KobaP's explanations about how ridiculous the new game was going to be.

Both women seemed excited about the game and had a lot of feedback each time they were shown something new. Unfortunately the discussion probably wouldn't be very interesting for those who don't speak Japanese and there wasn't any new information revealed. After talking about Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi for a long time KobaP switched the topic to Devil May Cry.

Eventually Raychell left and Kuraoka Kinatsu replaced her to continue the discussion. The conversation lingered on the characters' physiques when they went through all of the DLC costumes one by one.

--

After the chat session came the Challenge Gatchman! Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi 'Super★Bomb Soldier Challenge'. Fans were invited to try a special build of the game where you played a bomb soldier right from the start of the stage. The objective was to collect as many Tenka Medals as possible within five minutes and beat Gatchman's score.

If they were successful, they could win various prizes including Sengoku Basara mugs, glasses cases, oversized fans, figures, keyrings and coasters. None of the prizes were event-exclusive.

The first challenger was a Rozen Maiden cosplayer who said she was already a fan of the series. YamamotoD provided helpful commentary about the stage (which was the Battle of National Peace Hideyoshi/Ieyasu intrusion mentioned above). He confirmed that it was the stage from the beginning of Sengoku Basara 3. Motochika's Akatsukimaru also definitely shows up as an enemy during the battle.

The second challenge revealed another outcome of failing Battle Roulette: a traditional rain of bombs from the sky. They managed to get it three times in a row during the play session.

They chose a young man as the third challenger since the first two had been female. He cryptically gave his name as 'Man'.

--

A press release appeared after the stream with more details about the new Sengoku Basara qualification you can pay to try to achieve. The questions will cover topics such as famous scenes, lines and character profiles from the series, among other things. Those who pass the exam will receive a certificate with a special illustration, and participants will also be able to purchase exclusive goods.

A full picture of the new Country Ma'am packaging was also released. They look tasty.

If you missed the stream and want to see the PV and gameplay snippets, you can skip through the Capcom TV YouTube recording to find it. Someone's also uploaded it to Nico Nico Douga in an unofficial capacity.

--

There will be more live streaming action from the show tomorrow:

Sengoku Basara 4 Sumeragi VS DMC4 SE
Capcom TV! Nico Nico Choukaigi 2015 Special Show (YouTube link)

The schedule for Sunday is very similar so it should give us a second chance to check out that new PV.