TOKYO--Sammy held an exhibition today displaying its upcoming arcade game lineup. Sammy's main exhibit was the upcoming 2D fighter for the Atomiswave system named Rumble Fish. The game is totally unrelated to the 1983 Francis Ford Coppola movie of the same name.

　　Rumble Fish was created by Dimps, which is a studio that consists of former Capcom and SNK fighting-game developers. The game seems to use a combination of vector planes and bitmap graphics for the characters. This new style gives the characters in Rumble Fish a body movement that's as smooth as a demo in Macromedia Flash but with graphics that look like traditional 2D fighter games.

　　Sammy has been unusually tight-lipped about the game, thus reflecting the company's high expectations. Rumble Fish is scheduled for release in March, so more information should be available at the AM Show (Amusement Machine Operator's Union Show) next month.

　　Sammy's Atomiswave 3D fighting game Force Five was also on display. Force Five was already seen at the 2003 AM Show, but the concept behind the game seemed to have been tweaked. The game previously ran with a unique system where each stage consisted of five 20-second bouts. The game now runs in a standard two-bout format. The damage that attacks can inflict has been greatly toned down from the demo shown during the AM Show, where a single combination could nearly deplete all of an opponent's life. Force Five is scheduled for release this spring.

　　Aside from fighting games, Sammy exhibited its networked mahjong game Salaryman Kintarou. Salaryman Kintarou, which adopts a manga character as its mascot, runs on a touch-panel-type Atomiswave cabinet. While traditional mahjong games have required the cabinets to include more than 14 buttons for each of the mahjong pieces, Salaryman Kintarou is controlled solely by touching the screen. Up to four players can compete against one another by playing on aligned cabinets.

　　In addition to playing mahjong, Salaryman Kintarou also lets players compete against human or computer opponents. Salaryman Kintarou is scheduled for release this spring.