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Dr Seedyman

By Dr Seedyman,
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Yasawas

Yasawas

Posted
Posted

I have finally finished GG Aleste 3. Until the final area I had vague dreams of maybe finally losing my 1CC virginity to this game since it seemed feasible that I could get good enough and liked the idea of learning it, and then stage 7 happened :lol: It's the one area that really punishes death since while you retain your sub weapon the power is reduced, and it gets almost manic enough to be bullet helly for the only time really, and even using save states as sanity checkpoints I would be surprised if I did that last gasp in under 100CCs last night. But it counts! The videos on YouTube of people 1CCing it (and even some with the slowdown off - which is a menu setting, wonderfully) emphasised how far I had to go and I'm just nowhere near possessed of the determination.

 

Came solely for the M2 support, by the time I finished GG Aleste 2 I thought I had a new favourite 8-bit shooter, and by the time I played the sequel I realised I actually had now and was mentally rearranging my all-time top shmups list. I'll let the dust settle for a bit but GGA3 is way up there for me and a sizeably welcome surprise.

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Dimahoo

Dimahoo

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17 hours ago, immortaljellyfish said:

Gun Frontier, which I confess I had not heard of until now, is a great time! I do love me a 'chunky' shmup that really does make you feel like you're blowing shit up.

 

It was basically Taito's attempt as pushing the F2 hardware to its utmost limits but the guy the made the board had left the team to work elsewhere so the main programmer had too learn it inside out.

An intresting titbit is the waterfall on stage 2. Ram was an issue on the board (probably why the explosions look why they do) and Taito's managment was so insistent that the waterfall stay in place (as it frankly looks awesome and i'm assuming was a competing factor) that they would have stopped development if it had to be removed.

 

So anyhoo the dev (Takatsuna Senba) didn't have time to put in the 3 frames of animation required for the waterfall so held off until the summer. At the same time he had to do a report on some chracter creation tool but as part of cost-cutting if only one employee was working the air-con was switched off. The computer driving the creation tool had no fan and the temprature increased to 40 degrees.

 

So Takatsuna had to strip to his underware with a chilled towel wrapped around his head whilst he did the animation and report!

 

The big irony of course is you can't actually "see" the inspiration behind Battle Geregga BECAUSE ITS MOSTLY THOSE SHIT BLACK BULLET THINGS MIXED WITH STREAKY LONG LAZORZ!

 

However the bomb effects are awesome.

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PikaStu

PikaStu

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I occasionally check the App Store to see if they’ve updated Mushihimesama (Bug Princess) to run on current iOS. Out of all of my Cave purchases a few years back only Dodonpachi Blissful Death has been updated. My only other options are Dodonpachi DFK which I own on several platforms, and Deathsmiles which I don’t fancy on a touch screen (IMO horizontal shmups don’t work well as your finger hides a lot of the action).

 

Anyway, a nice surprise was finding Rayforce / Layer Section for £2.49! 
It plays pretty well with touch controls, providing you pick Remix Mode where movement is 1:1 with your finger. In Arcade mode the movement is too sluggish.

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ImmaculateClump

ImmaculateClump

Posted
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You tried Aka to Blue, PikaStu? That was made from the ground up with touch controls in mind by ex cave devs - https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/aka-to-blue/id1255167241

 

Cosmo Dreamer getting a switch port!

 

Quote

Our circle's #Cosmo Dreamer Nintendo Switch port will proceed with the cooperation of Wakuwaku Games.
 thank you! 🌟

 

Quote

Circle "Autoshido" @Outside_danmaku 's bullet hell shooter joins the Switch! "Cosmo Dreamer" Switch version is scheduled to be released at the end of this year. Please look forward to the follow-up report.

 

If you don't play on pc, you'll be wanting this. One of the best games of 2020.

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immortaljellyfish

immortaljellyfish

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On 16/08/2022 at 07:42, PikaStu said:

I occasionally check the App Store to see if they’ve updated Mushihimesama (Bug Princess) to run on current iOS. Out of all of my Cave purchases a few years back only Dodonpachi Blissful Death has been updated. My only other options are Dodonpachi DFK which I own on several platforms, and Deathsmiles which I don’t fancy on a touch screen (IMO horizontal shmups don’t work well as your finger hides a lot of the action).

 

Anyway, a nice surprise was finding Rayforce / Layer Section for £2.49! 
It plays pretty well with touch controls, providing you pick Remix Mode where movement is 1:1 with your finger. In Arcade mode the movement is too sluggish.

 

For me it's Espgaluda II. The smartphone mode is legit fantastic - was my first ever Cave 1CC!

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Quest

Quest

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Posted

 

Quote

We are also proud to officially announce that we recently acquired Tatsujin which is Embracer’s first studio located in Japan. Tatsujin is led by Masahiro Yuge, one of the founders of the iconic arcade games studio Toaplan known for games such as Truxton, Snow Bros and Flying Shark. Acquiring the rights to the Toaplan catalogue separately in another deal means Tatsujin with several employees that once created the Toaplan games can now curate these classics and shepherd them into the future.

 

https://embracer.com/release/embracer-group-announces-the-11th-operating-group-embracer-freemode/

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phillv85

phillv85

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Posted
5 hours ago, spatular said:

Cant remember if its old news that this is coming out, and and as seen on the shmups forum, akai katana up for preorder on amazon japan. On switch and ps4. City connect. All these cave releases are going to be (financial) death of me.

 

Didn't even know that was coming. Shame it's City Connection, but I'll take it. That's my wallet taking another bashing.

 

FWIW I couldn't see it on Amazon Japan, but it's on play-asia and they do free shipping if you spend over $100 

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PikaStu

PikaStu

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I picked up Andro Dunos 2 for little over a fiver on Xbox. 
Horizontal shmups aren’t really my bag, I’m even more useless at them than I am at vertical shmups, but this seems cool. 
I’m excited for Akai Katana as I enjoyed the 360 port, but tbh didn’t have a clue what I was doing and didn’t get very far. Shame there’s no Xbox Series port, my shmups are spread over Xbox, Switch and Steam and it’s quite annoying… I just want them all in one place 😂

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spatular

spatular

Posted
Posted
11 hours ago, phillv85 said:

FWIW I couldn't see it on Amazon Japan, but it's on play-asia and they do free shipping if you spend over $100 

 

sorry yeah i should have put some links up but it was late. apparently coming to xbox too. got the info from:

https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=70428

 

https://www.amazon.co.jp/s?k=赤い刀+真+特装版&ref=nb_sb_noss

not sure that's all of them there seems to be loads of different versions

 

https://www.amazon.co.jp/s?k=赤い刀+真&s=date-desc-rank&dm=true&language=en&qid=1660937434&ref=sr_moz_back

edit ^ that link seems to work pretty well for me in firefox, in chrome it's more nsfw :unsure:

 

are play-asia alright these days?

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phillv85

phillv85

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44 minutes ago, spatular said:

 

sorry yeah i should have put some links up but it was late. apparently coming to xbox too. got the info from:

https://shmups.system11.org/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=70428

 

https://www.amazon.co.jp/s?k=赤い刀+真+特装版&ref=nb_sb_noss

not sure that's all of them there seems to be loads of different versions

 

https://www.amazon.co.jp/s?k=赤い刀+真&s=date-desc-rank&dm=true&language=en&qid=1660937434&ref=sr_moz_back

edit ^ that link seems to work pretty well for me in firefox, in chrome it's more nsfw :unsure:

 

are play-asia alright these days?


Oh nice one they were on Amazon then, just I couldn’t find them 😅

 

The prices on Amazon are cheapest is regular edition, 6600 is special edition with art pop and cd. 8800 is regular edition with a canvas and most expensive is special edition + canvas. At least from what I can tell.

 

Play-Asia are ok, still expensive but nothing like as bad as they used to be. Back in the 360 heyday their prices were borderline scandalous. These days you get free (but slow) postage over $100 and pay the tax up front to avoid having to pay clearance fees.

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spatular

spatular

Posted
Posted
3 hours ago, phillv85 said:

Play-Asia are ok, still expensive but nothing like as bad as they used to be. Back in the 360 heyday their prices were borderline scandalous. These days you get free (but slow) postage over $100 and pay the tax up front to avoid having to pay clearance fees.

 

nice one, i'll have to give them a try at some point

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Yasawas

Yasawas

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Soundtrack CDs are always welcome, posters are fine, postcards less so but make handy bookmarks I guess - but what is the ongoing obsession with Japanese limited editions of everything coming with an A4 clear file? What do they use them for?

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ImmaculateClump

ImmaculateClump

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Hell Blasters 2.0 update is out.
I knew it was coming but totally missed it - https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1696200/view/3380534025703517868

 

  • New Mean Difficulty! There is very little room for error. Please be careful!

  •  

    Arrange Mode is added! The better you play the harder it gets! Can you persevere under the pressure?

     

  • New Arranged Tracks done by crisp, Jasson Prestiliano (JP Soundworks) and Scowsh! You can adjust which arrangement to use on which mode via the Options menu.

  • New languages added: Korean, Simplified Chinese and Traditional Chinese!

  • 2 new wallpapers are added!

  • 8 new endings are added! The new endings are for Arcade Mean and Arrange Mode.

  • 8 new Achievements are added!

  • Several bug fixes.

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phillv85

phillv85

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Posted
1 hour ago, Yasawas said:

Soundtrack CDs are always welcome, posters are fine, postcards less so but make handy bookmarks I guess - but what is the ongoing obsession with Japanese limited editions of everything coming with an A4 clear file? What do they use them for?


It’s a very strange one, my Psikyo Shooting Collection vol 2 came with one. It’s not like I could use it in public with the woman from Sengoku Blade printed on there with max cleavage on display.

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Klatrymadon

Klatrymadon

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Heh, I fear you might be right! I've only had ten minutes on it but my heart sank as soon as I started playing stage 1 tbh. Molasses-slow, floaty bullet patterns in the Touhou style, only they never seemed to pick up or get more interesting later on as they would in those games. It only seems to accept analogue inputs, too?

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ImmaculateClump

ImmaculateClump

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Yeah, I had to do that hold start and press left thing to get the brook pcb to change the stick to analogue.

I was giving it a chance, trying to relax into the pace, but it's just too janky.

On the later stages there's some really funky slowdown where you're never quite sure what's intentional and what isn't, though it can't be performance related since it never dropped below 500fps.

 

How you liking that 10 second black screen before the game starts? Really got me pumped up and ready to play.

 

Yeah, it's just too tame and you're just waiting for the screen to scroll on to give you some enemies.
I decided to run through easy first since some of the bosses were throwing up some bullshit and it's even worse.

 

Meh, they can't all be winners. It's a shame because it did look interesting.

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immortaljellyfish

immortaljellyfish

Posted
Posted
On 20/08/2022 at 18:00, ImmaculateClump said:

 

Hmmm, this is fucking dogshit.
Yawning through the whole bloody thing.
Final stage of easy, got caught on a red brick.
Get it in the bin.

 

hro7ZFU.jpg

 

 

Seeing as the menu is mostly Japanese, am I missing a way to set it to twin stick mode? Cos the stock controls make me wanna hurl.

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ImmaculateClump

ImmaculateClump

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It's not a twin stick shooter, it's more like kiki kaikai.
The second long pause before your shot locks is a nightmare, god knows why that's not on a separate button. It should lock the strafe instantly.

That sort of control scheme can be great when it's done properly and is a much more interesting challenge than playing a twin stick shooter.

MagiGhostDEADline by boghog got it spot on, and the on foot stages in Zenodeath were great as well.


I refunded my copy, it's a mess.

 

hLZ6s9L.jpg

 

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immortaljellyfish

immortaljellyfish

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Posted
1 hour ago, ImmaculateClump said:

It's not a twin stick shooter, it's more like kiki kaikai.
The second long pause before your shot locks is a nightmare, god knows why that's not on a separate button. It should lock the strafe instantly.

That sort of control scheme can be great when it's done properly and is a much more interesting challenge than playing a twin stick shooter.

MagiGhostDEADline by boghog got it spot on, and the on foot stages in Zenodeath were great as well.


I refunded my copy, it's a mess.

 

hLZ6s9L.jpg

 

 

Oh, so it's that way by design? Hmmm...

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