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Yesterday, Cave released its latest revival of the arcade game Dodonpachi Resurrection on Steam, Dodonpachi Resurrection Reignite.
Originally announced back in April 2026, the new take on the classic game was said to include new stages, characters, and music, as well as an all-new Battle Royale Mode, generating a lot of excitement ahead of its release.
However, since going live yesterday, it has been hit with a "Very Negative" rating on Steam, after 100 reviews, with shoot 'em up fans taking to social media and Reddit to voice their grievances with the new release.
One major criticism we've seen online is the lack of content from prior reissues, with numerous fans complaining about the absence of the Black Label and arrange modes, as well as a training/practice mode — all of which were previously available in the 2016 Steam release.
One Steam user, for instance, wrote: "Somehow they have managed to turn this release into a disaster [...] there's none of the content from the previous port made by M2 back in the 360 era, it's just a straight arcade port on the level of rom emulation, there's no support for multiple monitors you have to manually change the primary monitor to have the option to borderless screen, TATE mode only works in arcade mode, battle royale is broken and only works in the ranked when it wants to work, so don't expect to matchmake with friends.
"This entire thing is utterly disappointing, if you can get the 360 port. The PAL version is region-free, if not the Switch version; even that emulates and runs better than the official *CAVE* release."
Another similar Steam review, meanwhile, reads, "Absolutely not worth the price for a stage 6 and a battle royale mode that will likely not last long. No practice mode either. Get the original Steam release, as it is jam-packed with content that this release severely lacks."
A lack of content isn't the only issue people have identified with the new release either, with its use of AI tools to translate the game's text from Japanese into the other available languages, leading to some fairly sloppy translation errors, which have since started circulating on social media.
In response to this news, one user on Reddit questioned "how [the] devs thought this would be well received..." arguing that "This should have been a DLC for the original game" rather than its own standalone release," while another suggested that this release has turned them off the idea of wanting Cave to port more of their classic titles to Steam, doubting their abilities to do so.
Since its release, Cave has already pushed an update for the game, focusing primarily on audio issues, and has promised to "continue working to improve the game and provide a better experience." But it seems the new release is still a long, long way from being the definitive way to experience the arcade classic.