Radiant Silvergun XBLA

[Raff]

So Treasure are finally porting this to XBLA for Spring next year!

I made myself a naughty copy of it for Saturn a few years ago (MkI Saturn disc swappin' yo), since it's so expensive and only released in Japan. It's a really nice game, A LOT more fun than Ikaruga. If you have even a passing interest in scrolling shooters, this is the one you need to play.

The gimmick is that you constantly have about 10 very different guns/attacks available (including a sword!), rather than just the one, all mapped to their own buttons. This works much better in practice than you're probably thinking!

What's also nice is that unlike Ikaruga, it uses a normal 4:3 screen orientation(even the original arcade version), so you won't need to rotate your screen to play it as intended.

Great music too. Can't wait!

EDIT: Oh my god I just saw that Mr Panzer Dragoon is making a Panzer Dragoony thing for Kinect. Now I might have to buy it.

Edited September 22, 2010 by Raff

[Kolzig]

Yeah, one more cool thing for Xbox Live Arcade...

Shame that I don't have the machine to play it, but this is really cool that huge amounts of people get to enjoy the game finally instead of it just being a legend that nobody got to play.

[Raff]

Ah, thank god. Kinect is optional for the Panzer Dragoon thing.

[Tanukitsune]

So we finally get to play Radiant Silvergun without having to play a babillion dollars for it?

Speaking of shooters, did anybody notice how the King of Fighters one snuck up on the XBLA yesterday without warning? It's a good time to be a shmup fan! :3

[Raff]

There's a KoF shooter? never heard of that! *googles*

[Raff]

Just seen that they're also doing Bangai-O HD for XBLA. Never played that one.

Japan is back!

[Irishjohn]

What about all those vertical shooters still being made for the Dreamcast? Or were they "still" being made four years ago and are not being made now?

It's weird to think of a flurry of vertical shooters returning to market, but then fighting games "came back" I guess.

[Tanukitsune]

They also said that the adventure game was dead...

I assume the reason they say any genre is dead is because that genre didn't get "famous" games:

-People said adventure games were dead when Lucasarts and Sierra stopped making them, even though other companies did.

-The same happened to fighting games, no Street Fighter? The genre must be dead!

I'm not so sure about shmups though? It was always the more obscure genre that only hardcore gamers know about, they never stopped making shmups in Japan, but we never got any of them? Or maybe it was because we got no more Gradius sequels?

[Drath]

I personally don't think fighting games ever died... they just became more convoluted with other new genres that sprung up. There's been a new Mortal Kombat, a new Street Fighter clone (or the real ones), a new Tekken, a new Dead or Alive every year since the the hay-day of the fighter genre on the Genesis/Super Nintendo/Arcade.

[Raff]

What about all those vertical shooters still being made for the Dreamcast? Or were they "still" being made four years ago and are not being made now?

It's weird to think of a flurry of vertical shooters returning to market, but then fighting games "came back" I guess.

There's a german developer who makes (I'm told) pretty-but-shit shooters for neogeo (as in actual massive cartridges) and then ports them to DC, one of those came out recently I think.

There's always been a steady trickle of scrolling shooters on the 360, xbla and discs. Raiden Fighters Aces is out soon in the UK.

[twmac]

North America have it better, at the moment I have Mushihimesama Futari, Death Smiles IIX, Raiden IV, Raiden Fighters Aces on disc alone that have been absolutely awesome.

If you are into shooters Raiden fighters Aces is the best value of the lot. It has three distinct game from the series on it and I managed to pick up a copy for 29.99 brand new.

[Raff]

It's crazy cheap here

Blimey it's JoWood, not seen a console game from them in a long time.

[Tanukitsune]

It's crazy cheap here

Blimey it's JoWood, not seen a console game from them in a long time.

WOAH! That's perfect! But I thought Jowood only dealt with RTS on PC?

[Tanukitsune]

We should rename this the Shmup thread! XD

Has anybody tried the Gundemonium collection on PSN? Or the TouHou series?

[Tanukitsune]

I just played one of the Gundemonium, they are PC indie bullet hell games all right, but...

You have to beat the game on the hardest mode and do almost perfectly to see the REAL ending....

EDIT: Forget what I said, GundeadliGne is the only "not insane" one of the the collection... in Gundemonium Recollection the final bosses has way too many forms.... I gave up on the 7th form...

Hitogata Happa.... Am I missing something here? I can't even beat the first boss on the easiest mode! And not because I die, it's because the timer always kills me! The game has a super bomb, but it requires you to sacrifice a WHOLE life....

If you can beat Ikaruga blindfolded... you might be able to deal with these games...

Edited October 3, 2010 by Tanukitsune

[Sno]

Hey, so some fellow shmuppers here, that's cool.

Bangai-O Missile Fury comes out on May 4th, i hope you guys know, and it looks really, really amazing. It was supposed to be out last year, but Treasure delayed it to implement some online co-op.

Also, you guys should check out Strania, it just came out on XBLA a couple weeks ago for ten bucks.

It's a new game from G.Rev, who you might possibly be familiar with for their Senko no Ronde games and Border Down, or failing that, it's worth noting they're a studio that has worked with Treasure in the past. (Ikaruga and Gradius V, in particular, are running on G.Rev's tech.)

Strania is pretty awesome though, it's a pretty old-school kind of shmup too, if any of you find newer bullet hell shooters off-putting.

[twmac]

Have played Strania's demo, will definitely buy it the next time my X360 is near an internet connection.

I also can't wait for the Bangai-O game, again I will be lugging my X360 to somewhere that has wireless so I can get it.

[Raff]

I'm having to send my 360 off to be replaced so all the good XBLA games are certain to come out in the next two to three weeks.

My first 2007 machine started destroying discs, got replaced under warrenty (but not the discs). The replacement's GPU eventually died out of warrenty. After a year I replaced it with a new slim last September, which I've now discovered is leaking current onto one of its chrome edges which gives shocks and visible sparks if it connects with any grounded surface (such as a PC via my finger).

[Sno]

I'm having to send my 360 off to be replaced so all the good XBLA games are certain to come out in the next two to three weeks.

My first 2007 machine started destroying discs, got replaced under warrenty (but not the discs). The replacement's GPU eventually died out of warrenty. After a year I replaced it with a new slim last September, which I've now discovered is leaking current onto one of its chrome edges which gives shocks and visible sparks if it connects with any grounded surface (such as a PC via my finger).

Heh, i've been through five 360's myself.

Mostly red rings, but one was a failed disc drive.

[Sno]

So this week on XBLA, it's... Not really a shmup, but still from Cave,

. Looks like an amusing diversion, it'll only be five bucks, and profits from it will go to disaster relief in Japan. I think it looks fun, i'll probably get it, good cause and all.

There also is an actual side-scrolling shmup on XBLA this week too, a game i hadn't heard of it, apparently out of the doujin scene.

. Looks a whoooole lot like Deathsmiles to me, with some slightly different mechanics, and not nearly as frantic.

^ Speaking of which, Deathsmiles was, against all odds, apparently actually rather successful in North America, enough that Cave is going to be localizing its sequel as well. Still not the Cave games i want to see released here, but i played Deathsmiles on a whim and came away from it feeling... Well... Really dirty, but also really, really enjoying it. Cave makes great shooters, surprise. Anyways, it seems like the sequel will probably be on XBLA, since it looks like Cave might be self-publishing it.

^ Still on Deathsmiles, the US version of that game rather infamously had all of its slowdown "fixed" for the localization. (Whether it was Aksys or Microsoft or Cave itself isn't really clear.) It took months, but Cave recently released a title update that patches it all back in, bringing the game back in line with its intended level of difficulty. If you're not deeply at odds with the gothic loli aesthetic, i really recommend it, it's a very, very entertaining and actually pretty accessible bullet hell game with a lot of content.

Anyways... next week is Bangai-O: Missile Fury on XBLA. Fruit powered mechas, hurrah!

[Tanukitsune]

The first ending I got in Death Smiles was the bath scene one, that felt pretty awkward.

I'm kinda pissed off at the "moe-fication" of the shmup genre...

Parodius has now became Otomedius and I feel dirty by just looking at the loli trailers...

Which is weird since the last Parodius has actually half naked women in them, of course, these women were of legal age and the game was a comedy shooter, Otomedius seems like it's just Japandering.

[Sno]

The first ending I got in Death Smiles was the bath scene one, that felt pretty awkward.

I'm kinda pissed off at the "moe-fication" of the shmup genre...

Parodius has now became Otomedius and I feel dirty by just looking at the loli trailers...

Which is weird since the last Parodius has actually half naked women in them, of course, these women were of legal age and the game was a comedy shooter, Otomedius seems like it's just Japandering.

Konami is going to make me feel like a horrible person by releasing Otomedius Excellent in the US.

Nnnngh, maybe i'll just play Gradius V again.

[Tanukitsune]

At least it's coming out in the US... I live in Europe!

Speaking of Moe Japandering, Muchi Muchi Pork is so messed up, it's pandering people who like "fat chicks", except they aren't fat, just not anorexic...

This is fat? Sheesh!

And... I feel so dirty for posting this pic...

[Sno]

Oh that's it, the gate has been opened. This thread? Nothing but dirty pictures now. Heh.

Shit, but the thing is, these games seem to be the ones that are selling the best, even in North America and Europe. I know a lot of people who knew absolutely nothing about scrolling shooters or Cave, didn't even REALIZE what kind of game Deathsmiles was, were only super interested in it because of the gothic loli angle. The game ended up selling like a hundred thousand copies outside of Japan, twice what it did in Japan!

So yeah...

Expect more moe girls in your shmups, be made to feel like the guy who tries to argue "Well i read Playboy for the articles."

[Tanukitsune]

Maybe it's just that most Japanese games have "loliness" in them in general? The average Japanese RPG has at least one 14 year old (sometimes even younger) and they seem to have less and less clothes each time.