ExA-Arcadia

The is a ROM cartridge-based arcade system board released on November 27, 2019, by the Japanese game company of the same name, exA-Arcadia.

History

exA-Arcadia was developed with the concept of bringing traditional joystick based arcade video games back to arcades of any size on a global scale, providing game content solely for arcade locations to drive foot traffic and sales and solving the Japanese business model issues surrounding overseas game availability of Japanese arcade titles and purchasing expensive new game cabinets while also enforcing high network revenue share fees imposed on Japanese game centers.

exA-Arcadia titles are developed by in-house teams, 2nd party co-developments and 3rd parties. Early on, almost all titles were developed by 3rd parties, but in recent years, the majority of game development has shifted to 1st party teams as exA-Arcadia expanded in-house development to eight teams.

2017–2019 (pre-launch)

Development of the exA-Arcadia hardware started in Fall 2017 and debuted at the Japan Amusement Expo (JAEPO) 2018 show held at Makuhari Messe in Japan in February. The system's first title, ''Aka & Blue Type-R'', was developed by ex- Cave Interactive staff and the first shoot'em up to be sold in the arcade market since '' Dodonpachi True Death'' in 2012. Partnering with Microsoft, exA-Arcadia created a custom operating system which is based on a heavily modified version of Microsoft Windows similar to the Xbox line of consoles. It removes numerous pieces of the operating system to optimize game performance and input latency beyond the off, the shelf versions of Microsoft Windows. Content partners at the time included Tanoshimasu and Picorinne Soft as well as veteran arcade developers G.rev, M2 and Seibu Kaihatsu. At the Japan Amusement Expo (JAEPO) 2019 show held at Makuhari Messe, Japan in January, new content partners included Kadokawa, Sunsoft, Natsume Atari, Tatsujin (Toaplan), RS34 (Milestone), City Connection (Jaleco/ Psikyo/Success), Degica and others. ''Aka & Blue Type-R'' was released on November 27, 2019. In the same year, the 2D Fighter Maker 2nd engine was exclusively licensed to exA-Arcadia and the first title from this partnership on the platform was ''Axel City 2''. exA-Arcadia rebuilt the 2D Fighter Maker 2nd engine to use hardware graphics rendering and added new features such as 0.3 frames input latency. Pre-orders for the conversion kit were available to the Japanese market in September, and later to the rest of the world in November.

2020–2022 (COVID-19 era)

In March 2020, Cave Interactive joined exA-Arcadia in development of '' Dodonpachi True Death EXA Label'', the first title in the EXA Label series, which was released in the same year on November 30. In Japan, distribution was handled by the prize manufacturer, Eikoh, while retail partners, Beep and KVClab, carried exA-Arcadia product in their brick & mortar stores in Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan in the same year in September.

Due to cancellation of events stemming from the widespread pandemic, however, the US trade show debut of exA-Arcadia was at Amusement Expo International (AEI) 2021 held in Las Vegas, Nevada in June. A deluxe sized American style cabinet with a 55" 4K display debuted at this event along with 24 games on exhibition. During the same year, several developers joined to exA-Arcadia as content partners, such as Team Arcana for their updated version of ''Arcana Heart 3 Love Max Six Stars!!!!!! Xtend''; SNK Corporation for an uncensored version of ''Samurai Shodown V Perfect''; and Success Corporation for their title '' Cotton Rock 'n' Roll'', which is the first arcade cross platform release on exA-Arcadia and Sega's ALL.Net P-ras MULTI Version 3 (APM3). Dave & Buster's and Round 1 USA began to operate exA-Arcadia conversion kits at a number of locations nationwide from the Fall of 2021. The first ever official Team Shanghai Alice licensed Touhou Project arcade game, ''Touhou Perfect Sakura Fantastica'', was released on exA-Arcadia in 2022.

By April 2022, over 1,000 games were in operation throughout the world and through the creation of the new JVS' (JVS Dash) standard, exA-Arcadia have improved input latency performance on the system to 1 frame or 16.6 milliseconds even on engines such as Unity. They planned to roll out updates to existing game releases to take advantage of this breakthrough. The same year at IAAPA Expo held in Orlando, Florida in November, exA-Arcadia debuted their new ARC-1 cabinet in 1, 2 & 4 player configurations, while also planning to expand their American distribution channels to nationwide distributors: AVS Companies and Shaffer Distributing. 32 games were exhibited on the show floor with a number of new in-development titles that were available to play. Tatsujin, the current IP holder of Toaplan titles, collaborated with exA-Arcadia to release '' Batsugun EXA Label'' in June 2023, as the fourth title in the EXA Label series.

Hawt Pink Club is an exA-Arcadia compatible arcade board focusing on adult arcade games and is developed by the Dutch company, Hawt Pink Club BV. This system made its debut at AVN Expo 2020 that was held in January. After this exhibition, no news would be revealed until the following year in April in Japan where the company, Hacker Global, announced that it would start distribution of this product line. The system and games were exhibited in a private location at Amusement Expo International that July.

2023 onwards (post COVID-19)

By February 2023, exA-Arcadia had improved input latency performance on the platform to 0.3 frames or 5 milliseconds, which is the fastest input response time of any modern console or PC. In Japan, GM Corporation (Japanese: 株式会社ジーエム商事) started distribution of exA-Arcadia product while Genda GiGO Entertainment, who acquired all of the Club Sega locations, began operation of exA-Arcadia conversion kits throughout Japan. In the US, distribution channels were further increased by major nationwide distributors: Player One Amusement Group (Cineplex Entertainment) and Moss Distributing. In India, CSML Group also began distribution of exA-Arcadia product. In Indonesia, PT Megaindo Gemilang Lestari also began distribution of exA-Arcadia product.

In 2024, exA-Arcadia released the game titled ''Jitsu Squad featuring Samurai Pizza Cats'', based on the game '' Jitsu Squad'' from Tanuki Creative Studio and the animated series ''Samurai Pizza Cats''. By that April, over 2,000 games were in operation throughout the world and the company had acquired the rights to Gazelle's games. The first Gazelle title to be released on the platform was '' Airgallet EXA Label'', which was developed by the original staff, including Junya Inoue, who returned to work on this remaster. Another title from Tatsujin was '' FixEight EXA Label'', which was released the same year in October, and was developed by the original staff from Toaplan, including Nanpei Kaneko. At EVO Japan 2024 held in Ariake GYM-EX, Japan in April, exA-Arcadia announced their new Japanese style sitdown cabinet dubbed the ARC-32 and 10 new fighting games. By that year, exA-Arcadia became the only remaining Japanese arcade manufacturer whom still releases traditional joystick arcade games. exA-Arcadia signed a partnership with Riot Games to produce arcade cabinets for their new fighting game, '' 2XKO''. In the same year, exA-Arcadia acquired the rights to '' Vanguard Princess'' via a ruling made by the Government of Japan's Agency of Cultural Affairs. That July, exA-Arcadia became the first foreign arcade company in history to be accepted as a member by the Japanese Amusement Industry Association (JAIA (Japanese: 一般社団法人 日本アミューズメント産業協会)).

Hardware

* OS: Customized Microsoft Windows
* CPU: Intel
* Memory: 8 GB
* Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce
* IO: JVS and JVS', utilizing JVS to JAMMA I/O boards, compatible with JAMMA
* Resolution: 4K, 1080p, 768p, 720p, 480p (4:3), horizontal and vertical screens
* Dimensions: A4
* Media: ROM cartridge up to 2 TB
* Compatible engines: Unity, Unreal Engine, GameMaker Studio 2, Clickteam Fusion 2.5+, Corona/Solar2D, XNA, Construct 3, Godot, STG Builder, OpenBOR, 2D Fighter Maker 2nd, Pixel Game Maker MV, HTML5
* Input latency: 0.3 frames
* Network connectivity: N/A
* Network revenue share fee: None

exA-Arcadia has developed 3 different cabinet styles since the system's introduction in 2019:
* Funco
* ARC-1
* ARC-32

Games

Notes

External links

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References

{{reflist

Arcade system boards
Products introduced in 2019