Change Air Blade was developed by Sammy Corporation and released in Japan in late 1999, already in the commercial twilight of the classic vertical shoot 'em up. Its distinctive idea is the versus mode: instead of traveling through a stage against the CPU, two players can face off directly, one at the top and one at the bottom of the screen, settling the duel best-of-three like a fighting game, with different ships and support power-ups.
It's a late but interesting experiment within the genre, published only in Japan and therefore little known outside shooter-collector circles, at a time when the Japanese arcade market still sustained niches that had already disappeared in the West.
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