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Umihara Kawase BaZooKa!! Game Heads West for PS4, Switch in July

Publisher ININ Games announced on Monday that it will release Success and Studio Saizensen's Umihara Kawase BaZooKa!! game for the PlayStation 4 and the Nintendo Switch in North America, South America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand in July. In addition, Success and Studio Saizensen launched a Steam page for the game, revealing a PC release on May 28. ININ Games is streaming an announcement trailer for the game.

ININ Games describes the game:

Umihara Kawase BaZooKa! is a fast-paced action game with several multiplayer modes. Perform combos with your Bazooka and use the extraordinary fishing rod to defeat your opponents. Fire up your skills to be the last one standing in Battle Royale Mode!

Have you ever wanted to use a herd of sheep in a battle? We got you covered! Or would you rather prefer to summon a fire dragon? No problem! Each of the 22 in-game characters uses a unique special attack that can decide the tide of the fight. Other attacks consist of multi bombs, sword dance, space time dash, homing bullets and many more.

The game will launch in Japan for the PS4 and Switch on May 28. The game is the latest installment in the Umihara Kawase franchise. In the games, the player controls the sushi chef Kawase Umihara, using her fishing rod to navigate the games' levels. The new game will allow up to four players to play together online. The engine and basic graphics for the game remain the same, but the game will emphasize "competitive and cooperative stage-clearing action." The game will feature both original characters and characters from existing Success and Studio Saizensen games.

Umihara Kawase Fresh! shipped in Japan for the Switch in April 2016. Nicalis released the Switch game in North America and Europe last July. In all regions, the game had both a digital and a physical release. The game has multilingual support including English and Chinese. Kiyoshi Sakai developed the Umihara Kawase Fresh! game, and Toshinobu Kondō designed the characters and provided illustrations. Both worked on the original 1994 Umihara Kawase game.

Agatsuma Entertainment released the Umihara Kawase Trilogy game set for PC via Steam in 2015. The set includes Umihara Kawase, Umihara Kawase Shun, and Sayonara Umihara Kawase Chirari. The games were delisted from Steam in January 2016 after Agatsuma Entertainment shut down in December 2015. However, Degica acquired the rights to the games and re-listed them on Steam later in January 2016.

Sources: ININ Games' Twitter account, Umihara Kawase BaZooKa! Steam page via Gematsu