I played the demo for that new Tatsujin game coming out. It was a surprisingly good bit of fun. I'm not terribly versed in the original 2 Tatsujin games, but Extreme at least feels and plays like a quality, genuine classic game. The visuals have that look I associate with "mediocre retro throwback" or bad remakes but it thankfully did not live up to that. When you get fully kitted out, it starts to remind me of caravan games which is a lot of fun. The music also grew on me as I wasn't feeling it at first.
Story mode seems to just be the same as the game's easy difficulty but it just has these animated comics (which is kinda neat). Arcade mode feels very old school minus the new EX feature which is a nice way to kill things quicker in a game with an a full 16:9 aspect ratio. You aren't spending a ton of time on one husky enemy on one side of the screen. You're moving around a decent bit. It also seems like items are a bit more generous although checkpointing is a little weird as they put you back to item caches but you often cannot hit some of them when you spawn. You keep your full weapon power too but I'm not sure if there's a limit on this, like if you die repeatedly, you drop in power. You do lose speed though.
The options menu sucks though. Like really bad. You can change music volume and sound volume. And that is it. You set your resolution and language when you launch the game. Options are not even accessible in the main menu. You have to be in game to access it. Maybe it's just a weird demo choice and the full release with have it on the main screen with far more robust selection of settings. But I don't think I've seen that before so I hope it is just a demo oddity.
Not that my opinion has weight, but it left a very good impression on me and I'll be picking it up when it releases.