BlazBlue Hits Europe In 2010 With New Characters

European fighting game fans who’ve held off on importing Arc System Works’ over-the-top BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger will be rewarded for their patience in 2010, as the game will supposedly come with brand-new characters.

BlazBlue, the quirky, over-the-top 2D fighter that was the spiritual successor to Arc System Work’s Guilty Gear series of quirky, over-the-top 2D fighters, hit shelves in North America last month to critical acclaim. Unfortunately, it’s taken some time to make its way across the Atlantic, leaving many European fighter fans unable to spam Jin’s ice-car move against opponents online.

Well, reports Kotaku, the patient Europeans will be rewarded with some goodies that weren’t in the Japanese or North American version when the game comes across the sea in 2010, “as a result of publisher PQube and Zen United, a consortium of Japanese and Asian developers targeting the European market.”

“The long running 2D fighting genre has seen a welcome boost in 2009 with updated versions of several franchises brought to Next Gen PS3 and 360 consoles” and Tomo Ohno, Head of Zen United, reported “BlazBlue reached number 1 in the Japanese arcades and already sales of the Japanese and US console versions have beaten forecasts”.

Not only will the game be fully localized in German, Italian, French, English, and Spanish, but there will be genuine bonus content as well: “[N]ew gameplay content not available anywhere, like new characters and moves.” The report also makes mention of an official strategy guide and an official soundtrack release (because damn, BlazBlue has some rockin’ tunes) – but those came with the Collector’s Edition here in the States anyway, so we can’t really be jealous.

New characters, though? That’s something very different, and one has to wonder how they’ll be incorporated into the game’s zany, branching storyline – if at all. For that matter, if the European version allows players to fight opponents across the Atlantic via XBL or PSN, how will it be balanced? All I can think of is that if Arc System Works is going to go to all the trouble of creating new characters and moves, they’d better offer them up as (ideally free) DLC to all the early adopters.