Bandai Namco Announces One Piece Dawn Strike – New Punching Arcade Game

The new arcade games just keep on coming with Bandai Namco, as today they have sprung a surprise announcement on us – a new video punching/boxing arcade game based on the huge One Piece anime and manga series, One Piece Dawn Strike. Let’s take a look at the information on it out there so far…

One Piece Dawn Strike

Announced out of nowhere with a surprise reveal on a livestream for the franchise (much like the confirmation of Taiko no Tatsujin’s USA release last year, as some may remember), One Piece Dawn Strike is Bandai Namco’s newest arcade piece for the swashbuckling pirate fantasy series. They have done a few titles for it in Asia before – there’s been at least a couple of trading card games, the latest of which has been kept exclusive to China via UNIS, and a “medal” game (what would be called redemption/videmption over here) to boot. Dawn Strike however looks to have them take a completely different approach to all their efforts for it so far: that of the video punching/boxing genre.

Arcade fans will immediately recall the likes of Taito’s classic Sonic Blast Man and Real Puncher with this, whilst for a more recent example, GiGO also put out their own take on it with Breaking Down Arcade just over a year back. Similar to the latter, it seems that Namco may even be using the same cabinet base as Taito’s 2011 Sonic Blast Heroes revival, but where this one differs is it using a vertically mounted screen instead of a landscape one, as well as the One Piece license of course.

Unfortunately all we have to go off of for now is this one cabinet shot and screenshot below, but more details are definitely forthcoming. We have the official website and an announcement post that was made in tandem with the stream; then the location testing period for Japan was announced as being held from the 22nd of August to September 1st at Namco Yokohama World Porters.

This screenshot shows that there are stages against characters Doflamingo and Kaido. Some text at the bottom of the cabinet render also stresses that this is still in development and may yet change, though that of course goes for any game being placed on test.

Could this have a chance at releasing out West? Due to how it’s been announced, any official word from Bandai Namco’s overseas subsidiaries will have to wait just a little while longer, but it’s certainly more likely to happen now than it was a few years ago. Though none of the arcade games have came over, the company has notably rolled out numerous One Piece Card Game trade shops/stations as part of their Namco Funscape and Gachapon locations in recent times. Even if not a full release to all locations it could end up sited with those.

With the One Piece franchise being fundamentally more well known overseas now too, particularly after the big ongoing live action Netflix adaption, there’s always the possibility they may try to localize it in accordance with that. Either way, it would be cool to see in some capacity over here… boxers have always stood the test of time in earnings and it’s been too long since there’s been good choice for video-based examples on the market.

What do you think of One Piece Dawn Strike? Would you like to see this new Bandai Namco game release in the West?

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