Those lucky folks over at Akihabaranews recently went to an arcade to try out Banpresto’s latest masterpiece: Senjo no Kizuna.
The game is played inside a cocoon-like station where you have access to two joysticks and pedals which control your mech robot’s functions and the game is played online with other people throughout Japan. Although it’s not very impressive graphically, it looks like the most realistic experience one can experience with a mech game.
As if that feature wasn’t cool enough, to play the game you need to acquire a Pilot Card which records all of your data and allows you to purchase items through a different machine to use in the game. Yeah, it’s a money grabber, but for such an original and well thought idea, I’d gladly give some of my money to them.
Just from the pictures, these resemble the Virtual World Tesla pods used in various game/bar places across the US. They run the MechWarrior game; last version I had contact with was 2.3 (about 2 yrs. ago, if memory serves correct). These in the story, in contrast, seem to decimate those in terms of design and graphics.