Exa-Arcadia Announces Cave’s DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou Exa Label, Teases WayForward Partnership

After an 8-year hiatus, Cave’s DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou is making its valiant return to arcades with the “Exa Label” suffix for the Exa-Arcadia platform.

The original version of DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou was released exclusively in Japan by Cave for arcades on the CAVE CV1000D system in 2012 and for homes on Xbox 360 in 2013. It served as the sixth installment in the DonPachi series of vertical danmaku shooters.

DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou Exa Label is licensed by and developed in association with Cave. As many of you likely know, Cave is renowned for its work in the shoot-em-up genre, including such titles as Dangun Feveron, Guwange, Ibara, Deathsmiles, and, of course, DonPachi.

For those of you who didn’t get the memo, Exa-Arcadia is a recently released multi-game arcade hardware system very similar in function to the Neo-Geo MVS. (That being said, I have a darn good feeling the number of arcade gamers who aren’t familiar with Exa is growing smaller and smaller with each passing month.)

Cave's first Exa Label title is scheduled for release in summer 2020. According to the Exa-Arcadia website, more information regarding new game modes and features will be revealed as time goes on.

In other news—new that I’ve been meaning to address for weeks—Exa-Arcadia founder/CEO Eric “Shoutime” Chung teased a partnership with WayForward on January 31.

“Visiting here today,” Chung said in a tweet accompanying a photo of WayForward headquarters.

WayForward is a prolific independent developer with over 200 titles under its belt, including Mighty Switch Force!, DuckTales: Remastered, Regular Show: Mordecai and Rigby in 8-Bit Land, Adventure Time: Hey Ice King! Why'd You Steal Our Garbage?!!, River City Girls, and the highly regarded Shantae series.

With such an outstanding pedigree of retro-inspired games, the thought of WayForward partnering with Exa-Arcadia is something I find truly delightful.For now, speculation is our best friend, but I’m hopeful we’ll hear something concrete soon enough.

Now that I’ve wrapped everything up in a bow, it’s time I sign out. Are you interested in DoDonPachi SaiDaiOuJou Exa Label and/or a potential partnership between WayForward and Exa-Arcadia? Share your thoughts with me on Twitter or Discord.

And if you more Exa-Arcadia is what you crave, make sure you check out Monday’s article on Motoaki Furukawa’s Steam Pilots and his desire to bring the game to the coveted arcade system.

As always—and I can’t possibly stress this enough—keep it real, ya sweaty nerds.