Fight! BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend On PC
2D fighting from Arc System Works
Cor, what a month for fighting games on PC! Last week brought the announcement of a port for Dead or Alive 5 Last Round, which'll be the series real PC debut, then yesterday saw the PC release of BlazBlue: Continuum Shift Extend (well, sorta - I'll explain). Next week will bring The King of Fighters '98 Ultimate Match Final Edition too. You might deduce from the lengthy names that these are refined versions of their parent games. Anyway, I'm glad to see that the BlazBlue and KoF series have done well enough on PC to keep coming.
So, explanations. BlazBlue is made by Arc System Works, the folks also behind the Gear Guilty series (and Persona 4 Arena, which I'd like so much to come to PC along with the core Persona series. Pretty please, Atlus). I hear very good things about the series and its fighting, but haven't nearly the expertise to explain it myself. If you want BlazBlue online multiplayer on PC, Continuum Shift Extend is probably your best bet. BB: Calamity Trigger first came to PC with GFWL powering its multiplayer, but this was cut out the Steam re-release earlier this year, leaving it only offline.
Except due to reasons unknown, Steam won't sell BB: CSE to folks in Europe. "This item is currently unavailable in your region," it sez to me. I've dropped their PR people a line to find out what's going on. Some folks in a Steam forum thread say you can buy if you trick Steam into thinking you're in the US by tagging ?cc=us onto the end of the Steam store page URL. Others speculate that the series' European console publisher is blocking this, but that's unproven.
This isn't the newest in the series, mind. BB: Chrono Phantasma came to western consoles this year, and I suspect/imagine it might follow onto PC too in not too long.
KoF '98 UMFE was supposed to launch today, but has been suddenly delayed until next Tuesday. It seemed silly to release so soon after BlazBlue anyway. SNK plan to bring The King of Fighters 2002 Unlimited Match to Steam later this winter too.