The open online beta for BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle has come and gone, giving players on both PS4 and Switch a chance to freely try the game and its base 20 characters. Naturally, since the game is on Switch and any files on the system’s SD card are easily accessible to anyone with the time and right tools and expertise, this means that the dataminers have also had their go at the demo and found some interesting things. Obviously, spoilers for the game’s roster lie ahead, so if you want them to stay a surprise, you’ve been warned.
The most significant discovery is placeholder character select image files and a text document that reveals all 40 characters to be in the game, including the nine DLC characters that have yet to be officially announced. The original Tweets announcing the discoveries can be found here:
Unannounced DLC characters for BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle. All characters have a menu portrait, and the blank ones are for characters that ArcSys has yet to talk about. Thanks to @john_michonski and @Supersonicfan7 for help with identifying some characters. pic.twitter.com/l4tmW9EXzW
— Ehm (@OtherEhm) May 14, 2018
This means that the final nine characters for BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle seem to be as follows:
BlazBlue
- Izayoi
- Nine the Phantom
- Mai Natsume
Persona 4 Arena
- Mitsuru Kirijo
- Akihiko Sanada
- Labrys
Under Night In-Birth
- Yuzuriha
- Merkava
- Mika
This effectively confirms speculation driven by an image shown in the EVO 2018 trailer that revealed Blake and Yang, showing off the silhouettes for all the DLC characters. The community matched each silhouette to a character, and back in March produced the same roster found by this datamine.
On top of the full roster, the datamine also produced the full announcer voice clips, which have been uploaded to YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpCa0YbAPv0
Most of it is all pretty straightforward; callouts for different events in-game, as well as some interesting unused clips. The voices also further confirm the roster, with character select and victory callouts for all the characters listed above. However, the clips that drew the most attention are at 5:55 and 7:40: character select and victory callouts for “Asuka” and “Yumi”, with no last names or titles for either. Neither of these names are used in any of the series in the game outside of side characters, leading to speculation about what they might represent.
The most likely – and least interesting – explanation is that they’re simply junk data. There are several unused voice samples in the video, either dumped from previous games or simply recorded for mechanics that were eventually scrapped or no longer get callouts. It’s also worth noting that no reference to them appears anywhere else in the data, and an Arc System Works representative has directly dismissed it as junk data in a Steam discussion post. The other, much more exciting possibility is that Asuka and Yumi are the names of surprise characters, either unlockable or to be revealed once the full cast has been officially shown off. There’s also the obvious Senran Kagura connection with the names, but only time will tell if they actually represent any surprise reveals or if they really are just junk data.
In other BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle news, PQube has announced that they will have an offline demo available only on PS4 from May 18 until release with a 4-character online beta from May 18-20, and that they will be launching the game in Europe sometime in June. The Switch version will not get a beta or demo in Europe, and neither version will have digital pre-orders available. Meanwhile the demo is still available in North America and Asia on both PS4 and Switch, although the base 20-character roster and 2-player VS are only available on PS4 with a pre-order; otherwise only the four main characters and VS AI are playable. The game is set to launch in Asia on PS4 and Switch on May 31, with the North American and Steam launch set for June 5.
