Earlier this year, we reported that SEGA would be teaming up with Japanese light novel publisher Dengeki Bunko on several projects in celebration of the novel publisher’s 20th anniversary. This celebration was kicked off with the announcement of the “SEGA Hard Girls” novel series earlier this year. Today, the next collaboration between the two companies has been announced: Dengeki Bunko Fight Climax.
DBFC will be a 2D fighting game that crosses over DB’s most popular characters, along with some of SEGA’s cast. At the moment, the only characters confirmed for the game are Asuna and Leafa from “Sword Art Online and Shana and Wilhelmina from “Shakugan no Shana”. No SEGA characters have been confirmed, though Valkyria Chronicles has been mentioned.
At the moment, a platform and release date for the game hasn’t been confirmed, but more details should be revealed when the game is shown again at the Dengeki Bunko Autumn Festival on October 6th.
We’ll be reaching out to SEGA regarding chances of localization, so stay tuned for that. Given the relative obscurity of many of Dengeki Bunko’s franchises, combined with the fact that these licenses are spread across several different licensors in America, it is unlikely this game will be heading west. It was this same issue that kept the Jump Superstars crossover series from heading west, despite it containing a variety of popular characters including Naruto and DBZ’s Goku. On the other hand, some of Dengeki Bunko’s franchises have found some popularity among America’s anime fans. The most popular among them, Sword Art Online, currently airs on Adult Swim’s Toonami block. So, if the rights can be sorted out, localization may not be completely out of the question. Just don’t hold your breath.
You can check out some footage for the game here. You can check out more screenshots below.
Any idea who is the developer?
At the moment, no.
Shakugan no Shana? REALLY??? I hope it’s released as a PS3 game, so I can at least import it!
yen press actually just got the rights for the sword art and date live light novels, and i believe it’s viz who has the rights for the shakugan no shanna lights novels, having tried to localize them in the past (they actually put out a few volumes before stopping). funimation though, has the anime rights for shakugan, while aniplex has the rights for sword art i bealive. so, yeah, just figuring out the liscencing part would defintely be a nightmare.
Here’s a video clip showing the game in action http://youtu.be/snEDW2lTgik
Sword Art Online was a good series. It’s stupid, but enjoyable, I mean.
I think SEGA is long overdue to have an established fighting game franchise. They’ve forgotten about VF (as great as it is, it just doesn’t catch the core or even casual FG enthusiasts), and I keep telling them to revive the Eternal Champions franchise, but do they ever listen? No.