Version 1.0.6 is now out and contains a lot of small changes and improvements!

Difficulty adjustments for Beginner and Easy Chaingear boss fights

I've realized that people playing the game at Easy or Beginner do not necessarily want to go through the wringer of a full chaingear fight and are there mostly for the lore, the arcade endings or just to have some good time after work. So, I adjusted the difficulty of the boss for just those two difficulty levels:

• At Beginner, the Chaingear will now deal 50% less damage and its armor will withstand only 10 hits
• At Easy, the Chaingear will now deal 25% less damage, while its armor will break after 12 hits

The fight at Medium and higher remain unchanged. The beam attack was only slightly altered to be able to hit another chaingear more than once, with no effects against other characters.

However, the boss gained a new attack at Medium and above (which you will probably see very rarely): with full super bar, the Chaingear can now unleash a rotary plasma beam attack, but only if its shield is up. This is mostly for flavor purposes, since it's unlikely to trigger this in an arcade run

A cleaner UI for the Grab Shield bar

After gathering some feedback, I adjusted the UX of the chaingear fight a little to make it clearer how the boss works. It was never my intention to obfuscate information, but turns out the iconography I've used to convey the message was everything except clear for some players

I've redesigned the Grab Shield bar to make it clearer that you can't grab the 'gear until it's depleted. This was originally meant to be conveyed by the small "grab button" icon close to it, but some players did not find it clear at all - especially while playing on smaller displays. Now, the UI is slightly clearer without affecting the difficulty of the fight - it's still ye olde Chaingear, just a little bit more transparent w.r.t. the amount of information you have, asking for less guesswork.

The Gauntlet

Gauntlet is a 10-opponent ladder ending against Cannon Fodder, the mad gunhead of Slumslum City, instead of the renowned Stratosphere Chaingear.

Gauntlet counts as a classic Arcade mode for the sake of unlocks (and for some achievements too) and also gives access to the game's arcade endings, so, if you hated fighting the Chaingear, you can now try your luck against another final boss which plays more by the rules of the game.

The choice is yours - the 'gear is still mandatory in Time Attack and Survival mode, but now you have more options to unlock costumes, stages, endings and gallery illustrations! 

Quick Settings in Character Selection

Did you know you could access a Quick Settings menu from Character Selection by pressing Back/Select on your joypad? Well, I'm not surprised if you didn't, because there was no visual indication of it, my bad!

Now, you can see a handy prompt whenever you can access them. Works in Arcade and Free Match, allowing for a quicker access to settings such as CPU difficulty and number of rounds! 

Quick continue in Arcade Mode

Since I had to fix arcade mode anyway, now it is possible to Quick Continue after losing a match, skipping the opponent's victory screen and the continue countdown. This reduces the friction, especially against characters like I.N.A.B.A. or Yume-Yume that love to cause sudden game overs.

Just press the Start button (or Enter on your keyboard) and retry cutting dead times!

Revision Select

Ever mourned the loss of a busted version of a character because of pesky reworks or balance changes? Mourn no more! Exploding Judo Federation has now a built-in Revision Select tool per character. It must be first activated in the Settings and then it will be available in Versus and Training mode.

Revisions keep engine quirks and bugs that were present at that time, such as e.g. untechable back grabs on juggle (v0.14.4) or a dead frame before being able to act between moves (< v1.0).

Tourney Mode can also be customized to default to a specific revision (0.14.4, Evo 2025, v1.0, Latest).

(*Not all characters have access to previous revisions)

You can mix and match characters from different revisions too and let them fight against each other! Both will keep their unique quirks from their respective versions! 

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that caused one dead frame between states and caused knockdown infinites against certain characters
• Fixed a bug that caused wrong behavior in record&replay in Training Mode
• Fixed a bug that prevented Callowman's grab from doing any damage to the chaingear in certain stage sections
  
• Fixed Apple's win quotes against the Chaingear
• Fixed a missing picture from the gallery (one from Yume-Yume's ending wasn't properly registered)
• Continuing in Arcade Mode after a transformation would keep the visuals of the transformation for the next match, even if none of the perks were maintained. This bug has now been fixed and the transformations are correctly reset on Continue.

Minor Balance Adjustments

There have been minor character adjustments, mostly due to unintended behaviors reported by some players:

Bea Gattonero

• Added new move (6K, Gattonero Roundhouse Smash)

MIRAI Nanami

• Improved frame data on j.P and reduced landing lag, making it more useful as it was originally intended to be
• Delayed cancel window of 8R/2R after 5KKK to avoid unwanted back grab meterless combos. It still works on counter hit

Yume-Yume

• Reduced frame advantage on hit for 2P, 5K 2R+K, 8R+K
• Fixed startup on 8R+K
• Increased startup on 5K
• Improved long range tracking on 5K
• Yume-Yume was able to string 2P and 5K indefinitely and combo into j.K from 5K, which wasn't intended behavior. Yume-Yume is still very strong, but now can't lock down the opponent in a 25 hit combo without them being able to escape (she could do that, yes)

Bura Malebolge

• Added two followups to 4P on hit - this move felt rather useless, but now they can cancel it into 3P or 6R on hit
• Fixed move list to remove reference to non-existing chain

Chaingear

• Added new move (6K, Far Heavy Stomp)
• Added new super (R+T, Rotary Incandescent Plasma Beam)

More balance changes are expected down the line, leading to v1.1 later this year!