New ‘Sushi Striker’ Trailer Dazzles With Anime Goodness and Gameplay Footage

This morning Nintendo released a fantastic new cinematic trailer for Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido, showing off its anime-inspired visuals and some exciting new gameplay. Grind up some fresh wasabi and check out the new trailer above!

As you can see, this is not your average puzzle game. Nintendo’s approach always emphasizes doing new and unexpected things to surprise players, and this is about as surprising as match-based puzzle games can get. Believe it or not, players will get to enjoy an elaborately developed game world, with its own unique history, inhabited by its own unique denizens. The synopsis is far stranger than anything we could have dreamed up:

“Imagine a world in which the sinister Empire controls the consumption of sushi with an iron grip and denies any mention of it to all inhabitants of the vanquished Republic. Players assume the role of orphaned hero Musashi (playable as either a male or a female avatar), embarking on a grand adventure to restore sushi to the world. Meet a colorful cast of characters along the way, including treacherous local bully Kojiro, musclebound Imperial enforcer General Kodiak and beautiful sushi assassin Celia.”

Have you ever eaten at a sushi restaurant with conveyor belts? Inevitably, it becomes a contest between you and your friends on who can eat the most and stack the most plates. In Sushi Striker, you’re still trying to eat the most sushi, but the difference is that you’ll hurl your plate stacks at your opponent to take them out!

Each player will have three sushi conveyor belts in front of them, when a seventh, shared conveyor belt in the middle. As the plates go by, you’ll want to link as many plates of the same color as you can to consume the sushi and hurl the plates at your foe. At first you’ll just be frantically swiping to match colors, but soon, you’ll be setting up elaborate combos and playing more tactically. You’ll also be able to employ the aid of unique spirits, or “sushi sprites.”

“Players will encounter divine beings, called Sushi Sprites, which provide special skills that can be chained together in battle for a variety of powerful combos. There are more than 50 Sushi Sprites to befriend, many of which can evolve into more powerful forms.”

If you’d like to play with friends, do keep in mind that player on Nintendo Switch will be able to challenge a friend and play on the same system. Those who elect to buy the game for 3DS will need to have their own copy and own system in order to take part in multiplayer battles.

Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido launches on June 8! This is seriously one of our most anticipated titles of the year (I have months of tweets to prove it), so we’ll have more coverage for you very soon!