If you're one of the people who ordered the physical edition of The Game Paradise / Tengoku: CruisinMix Special from North American company Dispatch Games, then you're no doubt awaiting some kind of confirmation of when the product is going to arrive.
Dispatch Games hasn't got the best track record for this kind of thing, with poor communication and repeated delays souring an already fractured relationship with its customer base. However, City Connection President & CEO Nobuhiro Yoshikawa has now issued a statement that aims to shift responsibility for the Game Paradise delay from Dispatch Games onto his own company. City Connection, in case you were wondering, is the Japanese company that published the game on Switch digitally.
Here's the statement from Yoshikawa:
Dear Customers,
This is City Connection CEO Yoshikawa.
We've been receiving a lot of questions and messages about "The Game Paradise: Cruisin Mix Special" from Dispatch Games in North America.
I'd like to answer the most frequently asked questions: "Is Dispatch Games a group company? Is it a subsidiary?" Dispatch Games is a partner that handles our game titles in North America, and we have no capital relationship with them. However, this does not mean that we are avoiding responsibility.
As the rights holder and developer of the game, we regret that our products have not been delivered on time, and we would like to apologize for this.
After a long period of discussions and providing as much support as possible, we are now on track to release the game. Once again, we would like to ask our customers who have purchased the product to please wait for a while. Dispatch Games will make an announcement regarding the details and release date.
We hope that you will continue to support us with the titles released by our current partners, the digital versions we release, and the expansion of our U.S. operations.
We appreciate your continued support.
The game launched in Japan way back in December 2019 and was released digitally on May 28th, 2020 in the west. The original Game Tengoku: The Game Paradise! was released in arcades in 1995 by Jaleco.
We reviewed the Switch version back in June, saying:
It's easy to see why Game Tengoku CruisinMix Special is so beloved by Japanese shmup fans, but it's equally easy to understand why it's not as well known in the west as Parodius, despite being very similar in tone. The levels are inventive and the action is reasonably compelling, but it's overshadowed by better examples of the genre – especially in 2020, when Switch owners have games like ESP Ra.De. Psi and Ikaruga to keep them busy. It's by no means essential then, but if you're a hardcore shooter nut, then this is still well worth a look.