Wednesday 11 December 2013

News roundup: Live broadcasts begin tomorrow - and the final four Sengoku Basara 4 characters have been leaked!

The first fortnightly Capcom Game Special: Sengoku Basara 4 live broadcast is tonight

This is a reminder so that nobody misses this show due to forgetting when it will be broadcast or overlooking the tiny mention I gave it in the footnote of last week's magazine reveal post. I won't be around when it airs so I'll be relying on everyone else for reports until I can get home and watch it for myself!

The show in question is an hour-long Sengoku Basara 4 special broadcast hosted by comedian Kanada Satoshi of Hannya, and DJ/model Nakada Kurumi. The first episode - which airs today - will also include appearances from series director Yamamoto Makoto and seiyuu Seki Tomokazu (Ishida Mitsunari). As a reward for watching, one lucky(?) viewer will have a chance to win a replica golden skull tea bowl created by artisan Maruoka Kazumichi especially for Sengoku Basara 4. We can expect plenty of hints about the game as well as glimpses of all of the latest reveals and goodies.

I think this will be the first time I see Kanada Satoshi appearing in something where he might resist cross-dressing! Unless we're in for a surprise Kasuga cosplay...

As I'm discussing broadcasts, a few more have now been announced as well. Here's a quick summary of the current schedule with links to the page on Nico Nico Douga where known.

Thursday 12th December (22:00): Capcom Game Special: Sengoku Basara 4 episode 1
Saturday 14th December (21:00): Hagi-Toko Sengoku Basara 4/Monster Hunter 4 coverage
Monday 16th December (20:00): Hagi-Toko featuring Sengoku Basara 4
Thursday 19th December (20:00): Capcom Channel Intelligence Agency Special: Sengoku Basara 4
Thursday 26th December (22:00): Capcom Game Special: Sengoku Basara 4 episode 2
Thursday 9th January (22:00): Capcom Game Special: Sengoku Basara 4 episode 3
Thursday 23rd January (22:00): Capcom Game Special: Sengoku Basara 4 episode 4
Thursday 6th February (22:00): Capcom Game Special: Sengoku Basara 4 final episode

While the Nico Nico broadcasts are very likely to be recorded and uploaded later on by one of the viewers, it's not guaranteed; I'd recommend trying to view them live if your time zone gives you the opportunity! It's free to make a basic Nico Nico account and you can switch the language to English. If you decide to pay the subscription charge, you also gain priority for bandwidth along with the ability to reserve shows that haven't aired yet to watch them at a later time.

In the middle of all of these broadcasts, there's still the live Sony Play.Community Sengoku Basara 4 gameplay demonstration event taking place this weekend for the handful of lucky Japanese fans who managed to win tickets in a draw. A few prominent bloggers are going to be attending, so I'll try to round up any new information that appears as soon as they get home and post their reports.

Asian version of the Sengoku Basara 4 game sleeve leaks online, reveals full playable cast

Fan momotsu (who I believe has appeared here a few times!) surprised everyone on the Koei Warriors forum this week by providing a link to the Asian box art for Sengoku Basara 4. This is a very significant find since it confirms Sourin, Muneshige, Hisahide and Kotarou will be the last four playable characters in the game.


The box art also advises that two-player content will be offline-only. The 4,000KB hard disk space requirement is for saving; installing the game will take 1,500MB. It's likely that the contents of the game disc will be identical to the Japanese edition since there's no translated version being distributed, therefore we can safely assume everything specified on the box art is probably the same in both regions.


Ujimasa fans are still going to have to keep waiting another week for final confirmation of his fate. My money is on him appearing as an NPC even if we technically have 40 characters revealed now.

Relatedly, KobaP has been talking about the Taiwanese press event he flew over to attend this week too. Chinese news sites are definitely the place to be at the moment for those who can read the language. Unfortunately, I can't read it properly, so here are some pictures instead of a detailed translated report. Naotora's Giga Basara artwork is finally revealed in decent quality and that Basara-e store-exclusive calendar looks amazing.

A new Shima Sakon/Ii Naotora gameplay video appears

It's the same TGS 2013 demo build of the game we've seen plenty of times, but this Chinese play-through stood out because the video quality is good and I felt really close to the action when I was watching. There are also new (to me) glimpses of the in-game menus but I'll wait for a source from the final version of the game before adding screenshots to my translation guide.

Sakon, Naotora and Takeda army fans owe it to themselves to take a look at the demo gameplay in the meantime. I had missed things like the Takeda stage being 'fuurinkazan' themed its its layout before now, or Masamune and Mitsunari being sub-bosses on the Kitanoshou Castle stage, and a lot of small details about the ranks and items make more sense now than they did during the early demo videos. The small scrolls Sakon picks up seem to give credit towards your next battle rank, while the item boxes give materials for weapon enhancement and experience for your Inrou.


Sony hosts a survey to determine the most popular playable Sengoku Basara 4 character

During the wait for Capcom to announce the next major character ranking, Sony's Playstation blog held a small survey to try to see which characters the fans were most excited about for the new game. The poll was in Japanese but anyone with a PSN account could participate, so long as they didn't mind the slow loading times of Sony's website and went through the trouble of configuring their account.

The results were rather strange, though please bear in mind that there were only 478 votes in total on the morning the survey was scheduled to close. Perhaps this only actually represents the demographic of fans who use Sony's blog as a source of information... or perhaps it foreshadows a surprise outcome in the next official poll.

1. Tokugawa Ieyasu (89 votes)
2. Mouri Motonari (83 votes)
3. Sanada Yukimura (53 votes)
4. Date Masamune (43 votes)
5. Ishida Mitsunari (41 votes)
6. Ootani Yoshitsugu (26 votes)
7. Kuroda Kanbee (20 votes)
8. Takenaka Hanbee (16 votes)
9. Sarutobi Sasuke (14 votes)
10. Katakura Kojuurou (10 votes)

Edit: I updated the list when the voting ended on Friday morning.

Online retailer Ami Ami reveals a special bonus item for their Sengoku Basara 4 customers

As well as being one of the few English-speaking online retailers which has confirmed the first press Date Masamune DLC outfit will be included with their shipments of Sengoku Basara 4, Japanese hobby shop Ami Ami has added new listings for the game which include a special store-exclusive 'cleaner cloth' as a bonus item.

If you already have a preorder with Ami Ami, I'd recommend contacting them to see whether you'll receive the bonus item too. It's a separate listing so they might not send it unless you ask. Here are all of the links: standard edition, standard edition with bonus item, special edition, special edition with bonus item.

Bushou Matsuri 2013 DVD delayed

The Butai Sengoku Basara Bushou Matsuri 2013 DVD containing footage from the summer's event has been delayed yet again, this time until 26th December 2013. It's quite disappointing since it contained some Sengoku Basara 4 comments from the seiyuu and now I won't be able to watch it until I already have the game. Something must have gone wrong during production for it to have slipped back a whole month like this.

Official Sengoku Basara 4 website updates

Fans of the last batch of characters - Motonari, Yoshihiro, Yoshiaki, Kenshin and Kasuga - can now check the character page for their voice samples and profiles. There are also updates to the system page with the information from last Thursday's Weekly Famitsu. The most interesting new shots for me were probably the pictures of Matabee confronting Kenshin and Shikanosuke pointing at Motonari in a very accusing manner. The bottom row of snapshots from the opening CG movie is new too, and also worth a look.

My next post will be after the live broadcast has aired. I can't wait!

19 comments:

  1. Just sent a message to ami ami, hopefully i wont have to cancel my original order and order it again just to get that cloth -__-

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    1. I hope they can sort it out for you; how frustrating! Good luck :)

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  2. I'm a bit mixed of happy and embarrassed that you remember me. Thanks. xD

    The result of recent poll by Playstation site is a bit weird indeed. But I don't mind Ieyasu to finally get the first. His ranking in BSR48 was quite disappointed.
    Anyway, CAPCOM still has not yet revealed anything regarding official popularity poll for Basara4 right?

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    1. I should be thanking you; it's hard for me to find news from Chinese sources without having the language skills and that was a particularly fantastic picture!

      On the poll, that's right; I think they're going to hold it with the game release again this time. I sort of hope they build up to it with a campaign like they did for the BSR48 vote ^^

      It's good to see the Ieyasu fans giving him a boost since he's been regarded as the least popular of the main characters due to BSR48. I'm sad about Kojuurou's low number of votes, though (hehe).

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    2. Nah, I just found it while wondering aimlessly in weibo. (but in fact my Chinese skill is mediocre at its best.) And, yeah not mention that we're all indebted to you for your great afford and everything you've contributed to Eng Basara fandom. xD

      And Motochika is not in top ten too. It's pretty weird, if you ask me. =w=;

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    3. Those Ieyasu fans were really determined; I just updated the final votes as there were some late entries and he received even more than I thought. Aniki getting fewer than ten votes is quite shocking...

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    4. "It's good to see the Ieyasu fans giving him a boost since he's been regarded as the least popular of the main characters due to BSR48. I'm sad about Kojuurou's low number of votes, though (hehe)."

      As of BSR48, Keiji's the least popular of the main characters to appear (coming 11th is...ouch). But going by SB3? Yeah, Ieyasu got the short end of the stick. And he's at risk of falling even lower now - Hanbei & Hisahide are back in the gaming mix, AndrogenOichi and Golden Boots have entered the fray and Keiji, if Volume 3 is anything to go by, is more anticipated for this game than Ieyasu is and now we have Yamamoto pushing Keiji's relevance in this game. Ieyasu's fans have to really push him if he's gonna maintain his spot in the top ten.

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    5. Haha, 'Golden Boots'.

      Keiji was dumped right back into the background for most of the SB3 marketing and storyline, so I'm not surprised he did poorly. It's really fun to speculate on the results now SB4 is in the picture. I'm mostly interested whether Sasuke's voters will switch to give Yukimura a boost, and where all of the votes that Sakon is likely to get are going to come from. It could drop Mitsunari if a lot of people switch to Sakon since they're such a popular pairing already, or they could come from elsewhere...

      I have to admit that I'm going to enjoy Sakon myself ^^; though I'm saving my vote for someone else...

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    6. Yeah, Keiji really got demoted in 3. Luckily Ieyasu didn't get too much of the same treatment from 3 to 4 and it seems like the team realized just how badly they shafted Keiji from 2 to 3. Yukimura on the other hand...a second gen soldier like Sakon playing with him the way he did in the videos almost makes Yuki a joke character now, which sucks.

      As for newbies, the only one to really worry about is Sakon. Taking a portion of Mitsunari's healthy pool of supporters would spell bad news for those below. Katsuie isn't all that popular with the people, so nothing to worry about there.

      And who gets to vote?

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    7. I'm guessing that they'll do it as a voting slip with the game again since that seemed to work very well, and it prevents people voting too many times to boost weird characters above where they should be (not least because the game is quite expensive so buying multiple copies isn't easy...). Nothing has been announced though yet.

      I agree that Sakon is the biggest threat to those battling for their place in the top positions. He's really captured a lot of the enthusiasm.

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  3. I really do hope that they will at least announce an English subtitle for these upcoming Capcom Game Special broadcast! PLEASE CAPCOM! PLEASE! :'(

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    1. Unfortunately with the box art for the Asian version not listing any English I think we are out of luck this time; there don't seem to be any plans to accommodate English-speakers. We'll just have to keep letting Capcom know that we are out there and hoping :(

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  4. OMG... Ujimasa's not in the game, even as an NPC? :o

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    1. We should know in the next few days when Weekly Famitsu information starts to appear (probably Tuesday). Personally I think that Ujimasa will be included as a normal NPC and Hisahide will be the '41st' character since Hisahide always does whatever he wants.

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  5. Hell yeah!!!!!!!
    That's in my speculation when i talk about character's super art skill (R2) to you.

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  6. Oh no I missed that broadcast. But you will report back what happened right :)

    Ps. I might be the only one glad to see Yoshiaki back, but he looks fabulous ☆

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    1. Is it possible for him to look anything other than fabulous? :)

      I bet he's looking forward to trying to impress Nobunaga at every opportunity!

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  7. Is it possible to watch the broadcast if we don't have a membership on nicovideo ?

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    1. I'm afraid not, though signing up for a basic account is completely free. A premium account is needed to reserve a slot to watch shows after they've originally aired (which is what I have to do because of my job). People sometimes upload some of the footage to sites like YouTube later.

      There are two live broadcasts coming up which use different websites (YouTube and Ustream) which might be better if you'd prefer not to make a Nico Nico account.

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