The Imperial Combat Revue deserves better
Fuck it. What if ’90s anime RPG franchiseSakura Warscrossed over with military battle royale mobile titlePUBG? It appears that question was asked sometime, somewhere, around some table in some developer’s office. Weirder yet, someone else agreed to it, and thus it is about to become a reality.
Yes,PUBG Mobile— the handheld spin-off to Bluepoint Games’ mega-popular shooterPlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds— has announced that an upcoming in-game event will feature paid DLC content based onSakura Wars, Sega’s cult RPG franchise that blew up in the mid/late ’90s, before making something of a mainstream comeback earlier in 2020.
It’s not entirely clear what form this crossover will take, but it appears that JapanesePUBG Mobileplayers will soon be able to purchase and downloadSakura Wars-themed “Voice clip” packs, allowing for various shouts and battle cries as performed by the warriors of the Imperial Combat Revue. A short teaser trailer features the famous horn-filled blarings of the famousSakura Warstheme tune, along with a brief match commentary from the original Sakura herself, actor Chisa Yokoyama. Just plain weird.
Sakura Warslaunched on PS4 in 2020 to a subdued but positive reception. Unfortunately, this was followed bydisastrousmobile releaseSakura Wars: Hanasaki Maidens,a hugely expensive project that reportedly lost Sega millions of dollars. The studio is continually pushing for aSakura Warscomeback, but seems to be lost in how to market the legendary franchise — and this crossover is no exception. A localized, visually enhanced re-release of the originalSakura Warscollection would be the perfect kick-start. How Sega has not established this yet is, frankly, mind-boggling.
