exA-Arcadia At ShootersFes 2026: Dragon Blaze, Wild Guns Rawhide, Truxton & More

It’s been a little while since we last heard anything about upcoming shooting games (STGs/shoot ’em ups/shmups) from exA-Arcadia, as they have recently focused more on their fighting game repertoire, but that all changes today. As part of this year’s ShootersFes 2026 event focused on the genre in Japan, they have now provided updates on several of their previously-announced titles, which are on track to release soon. Let’s take a look:

exA-Arcadia At ShootersFes 2026

As is tradition with ShootersFes, all the happenings are surrounding a livestream by Mikado Game Center, in conjunction with City Connection (who own the Jaleco IP, including their namesake, and release various titles for home platforms). exA were first in line on this, meaning that if you want to watch their Japanese presentation before reading the English summary below, it won’t take long to find it:

The focus here will be on the games discussed, but it is worth mentioning that before those appeared on stream, exA also talked about how they will be attendance at Summer Game Fest next week with Avatar Legends – The Fighting Game, as well as EVO 2026 at the end of June. Note that there will be some major new game announcements at the latter, to make up for a few that couldn’t show up at EVO Japan in May.

Dragon Blaze EXA LABEL

One of the games that was previously announced at last year’s ShootersFes was this, exA’s first release of a Pysiko shooting game (and one of their very best, in the minds of many). We did not hear much more about it other than that it was coming, but now a whole host of new details on it have been revealed.

First and foremost among those is the creative talent attached. One thing we did already know was that in keeping with other exA titles, the choice of the original soundtrack and a new arranged one would be available, and for the latter they have got Keishi Yonao, who previously produced tracks for their version of Air Gallet and has worked on a whole host of other game music over the years. As well as that, the game now also has new key visuals and character designs from Takeshi Ogata, one of the original game’s artists.

For those new character designs, you can see those here below. These additionally have new voices, with them once again coming from noted anime actors, something exA have also done with their other titles over the years. These include Takeshi Kusao (Trunks in Dragon Ball Z), Aya Hisakawa, Mitsuaki Madono, Masaharu Sato, and the late Kozo Shioya, who sadly passed away just last January, but completed work for this game some months ago.

Location tests for it are set to begin this Autumn at Taito HEY in Akihabara and Kohatsu in Osaka, with orders opening that same season too. That makes it a very likely candidate to appear at IAAPA 2026 in November (it wasn’t available on exA’s booth last year). exA also brought out a special EXA board on the stream, showing off what appears to be a Limited Edition version with Dragon Blaze’s artwork on it.

Wild Guns Rawhide

A title that has been known of for a little while now is Wild Guns Rawhide, their release of Wild Guns Reloaded from over 15 years ago. This was originally announced back in November 2024 for Japan’s Amusement Expo, but it did not make it over to IAAPA that same month, and was absent throughout 2025. It did however make a low-key appearance at Amusement Expo International in Vegas this March, where a pre-release build was shown off (photos and videos were prohibited, but I got to play), and now things seem to picking up further.

This one supports exA’s trackball, but will work with a joystick too, being a three button game (shot/jump/bomb) and that also supports up to four players simultaneously. Their version will have three modes: Original, Arcade & Boss Rush. It also has the original and a newly arranged soundtrack by Super Sweep. Another welcome addition to this game is this exclusive fifth character. Nothing else is known about it (and that text says “In Progress”), but exA will begin testing this game this summer, where players will be able to check him and the rest of the game out.

Truxton II EXA LABEL

Like Dragon Blaze above, this new EXA LABEL edition of Truxton II was also announced at 2025’s ShootersFes, but now we have a few more details, with it looking like the most complete of the bunch that was exhibited by them here. That goes as far as it actually receiving a full gameplay trailer, with the others just being represented by their slides, so make sure to watch that if you haven’t already (the timestamp is 1:01:05 on the stream – it is not available as a separate trailer on exA’s own channel at this time).

The game has four game modes that the player can chose from (Original, Original Dash, EXA MODE, Training), each with a Normal or EXTREME difficulty setting. Players can also choose between the Japanese and Overseas versions on Original.  There are three selectable soundtracks here, new voice actors, and as with most other exA STGs can be played in vertical (“TATE”) or horizontal mode.

The EXA MODE has several changes to the gameplay, in both “systems” that are present in the original, as well as in adaptive difficulty. The training mode is also interesting, in allowing players who might be new to games like this to learn the ins-and-outs. We’ve seen training modes on many of exA’s fighting titles, but it’s been unheard of on their STGs until now (although you could look at their Score Attack modes as being mini-trainers – just no where near as detailed). This will begin testing in Japan in July and may be launching around that time (or August).

Neon Inferno EXA LABEL

For a game that I got to play at IAAPA 2025, but in the form of a very early build (the only work that had been done on it at that point was getting it working with exA’s I/O and the keymapping setup), here’s Neon Inferno. Not much in the way of new information on this adaption of Zenovia’s new shooter was given here, other than that it too is “coming soon” and will once again have a new arranged soundtrack. Like the next game though, it is confirmed to now be receiving an EXA LABEL update though, so hopefully we’ll hear more about some of the changes to it soon.

Asura The Striker EXA LABEL

Finally, ever since Asura The Striker was first announced I have been very interested in seeing what would become of it. Aside from providing a new age interpretation of Space Harrier, it also is the first exA game to use a flight stick controller. Unfortunately it has been absent from all trade shows so far, and there isn’t too much about it shown at ShooterFes again, aside from it having the EXA LABEL brand attached and the information that it will feature an arranged soundtrack in addition to the original. Here’s the console version trailer; there’s no indication on when this will ship yet.

Overall

As always, do remember that all of the titles above will be available worldwide to any arcade that desires to order them. exA did not announce anything new-new here, as they have done in the past, but given the backlog of upcoming games they have built up it is good to get updates on all of these.

That said, they did end with a “One more thing” mystery tease with this elf girl, although if it’s tied to an IP, then it’s pretty esoteric. She looks a little like Zelda, but that’s farfetched; they also wouldn’t tease a totally different genre here. I suppose it could be a character from an unreleased or low production number game that they are bringing back to life. When we’ll find out what it is though, your guess is as good as mine.

That wraps things up for exA-Arcadia’s ShootersFes 2026 showcase; which of their titles featured here interest you the most?

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