In case you missed the earlier press release, Nicalis is bringing a hardcore 2D sprite based fighter to the Nintendo eShop sometime in the future. Why the date is so vague is a pretty good reason as you will see in our interview, they are trying to see if online multiplayer can work or not. Nicalis is a gamers company and if they aren’t satisfied with the performance of something they won’t release it. I appreciate that.

Yatagarasu is a title developed over the years for the PC in Japan by Circle Edge. A three person indie developer whose past ties include the King of Fighters series. Yatagarasu is a love letter to the Street Fighter III: Third Strike style of fighting games and features a high and low parry system. What makes it unique besides a whole new set of characters is that parrys are button based. The main title is a four button fighter much like King of Fighters, but the high and low parrys replace the third punch and kick. Why this is a good thing is it makes charge characters much more competitively viable, as instead of having to tap forward to parry and break charge, they can keep it going. Nicalis did explain they are looking into possibly adding a Third Strike style of parrying as an option for players who want to feel right at home jumping from Third Strike to this.

Playing through the game I selected two of the more unique characters of the title. Two samurai blade armed schoolgirls, one a charge the other based on half circle motions. What struck me as to why the game was so good was that linking combos and cancels felt really good and natural and not like trying to snipe a flea off a dog’s back from 3 miles away with a .22 caliber rifle.

Another neat feature if the optional commentary system, the Japanese version has three pro players that will quip during the match in a style meant to emulate live arcades or tournament commentators. Nicalis is interested in bringing in some of the top American fighters to localize for this version but stressed that it would also keep the original Japanese commentators which included Tokido. The version that will hit the eShop is version 4.2 which I believe is not available for PC yet, so the 3DS is getting a brand new version when it hits. For more information check out my interview at PAX Prime 2012 here: