Airframe Ultra Weekend Megacity West

Airframe Ultra is still coming soon on Steam for Windows. Megacity Open — also posted as Weekend Megacity West — was a four-day public playtest from June 26 through June 29, 2026. The door was the Steam store page: Join the Playtest, the same control later used for Desperada and the same demo pipe described on Demo and Playtest. No Discord key mailer. Wishlist the full game, install while the flag is on, then expect the window to close.

This page exists so June does not get flattened into “that Next Fest beta” or “that Desperada beta.” Three public 2026 tests, three jobs. Megacity Open was the mid-year weekend: play the city, watch Akupara stream the bookends, send clips. It was not the first open race week and it was not the shops-and-rider test that followed in September.

How the weekend was structured

Dates: Friday June 26 through Monday June 29, 2026. Steam news told players to Join the Playtest on the store page. That is the same app slot that has held a character creator, a tutorial-only demo, and the February Next Fest open beta. When the weekend ends, the slot can shrink. If you boot the client in July and only see a punching bag, you did not lose Megacity West forever — the test harness went back in the drawer. The demo guide is the page for that shrinking behavior.

Akupara booked Twitch around the test, not in the middle of it as a substitute for playing. Streams ran Friday and Monday at 10am PST on twitch.tv/akuparagames. Friday opened the weekend. Monday closed it. Those VODs are publisher context, not the playtest.

They also asked for clip submissions. That is the public QA the studio cannot fake in a closed Discord: messy Warehouse votes, pipe fights in an arena, a Cruiser that will not turn, a Hopper that everyone already called bad after Next Fest. Send clips through the channels they named in the news post. File crashes on the bug tracker linked from Links.

Online matchmaking was the public path that weekend. Split-screen is still part of the game. Couch play and online PvP / co-op both exist. A busy Join the Playtest queue does not delete local play, and a living-room session does not mean the title is local-only.

Not the February open beta

The first open beta ran February 23 through March 2, 2026 during Steam Next Fest and ended 9am PST March 2. That test used the demo download, stacked every prior track, and shipped the quality-of-life testers had asked for since Warehouse: rebindable keys, walk-up voting, circuits of three races with points that carry. The recap after Next Fest added a hard circuit rule: you must win at least one race to take the circuit even if you lead on points. Single races were pulled for that test and are slated to return at launch.

Megacity Open was four months later and four days long. It reused Join the Playtest. It did not replace the Next Fest recap, and it did not reset the timeline. If a friend says they “played the open beta,” ask which month. February is the Next Fest atlas. June is this weekend. Details of the February payload stay on Demo and Playtest. Closed betas 1–4 that fed both tests sit in Beta History.

Community pages that called February “Beta 5” are talking about Next Fest, not June. Megacity Open was not branded Beta 5 in Steam news. Save that argument for September.

Not the September Desperada playtest

On September 3, 2026, Steam posted Beta 5: Desperada and opened another Join the Playtest. That later window is the one with new progression, shops, bike building, and a new rider from Baja. It ends Monday 9am PST after that post. Josh’s August Q&A — cosmetics wiping when EXP ships, no official custom maps, balance after features — sits between June and September on Josh Q&A.

Do not walk into Desperada expecting only a map-pack reunion, and do not walk into a recap of Megacity Open expecting a shop tutorial. June was a play weekend with streams and clips. September is a systems weekend with a named rider. Both are playtests. Neither is 1.0.

What to do with a weekend like this

If a future Megacity-style window opens, the useful loop is short. Install from Steam. Create a rider. Run a circuit online or in split-screen. Vote with your feet in Warehouse. Clip one thing that broke or sang. Report it. Then stop. Hardware questions belong on System Requirements. First-hour habits belong on Getting Started.

April 17, 2026 had already seen an Akupara Twitch slot at 10am PST. June reused that 10am PST habit as bookends. September 6, 2026 is a different broadcast: the ten-year Direct at noon PST. Do not treat every Akupara stream as a playtest, and do not treat every playtest as a Direct.

The full game remains coming soon. Megacity Open was a dated Join the Playtest, not a store-page that stayed full-track all summer. When the next city weekend lands, this page is the pattern: Steam button, Friday/Monday streams, clip call, then a close.