Is It Really Done?

I finally finished the 1983 shooter impressions. It took so long because the games were agonizingly boring and painful to play. I had three of them left and only one was any good at all.

The write-up can be downloaded here.

I'm not going to paste it here because it is long and I don't want that many horrible games at the top of this site.

Perhaps a Gradius V review soon? We'll see.

Raiden III: Better with Two Ships

As I haven't mentioned, since I have been on a sort of gaming hiatus, I bought Raiden III a while ago. I was sort of sad that I paid $30 good dollars for it at Gamestop and then saw it for $20 at Wal-Mart, but I got over it.

I played Single Mode for a little while (2 or 3 hours), but got bored with it pretty fast. The ship was too slow and unless you used the Vulcan Shot, it was painfully difficult to kill anything if it didn't appear onscreen already within your line of fire. I was also getting stuck at the stage 3 boss. I stopped playing and shortly after I participated in STGT'07 and stopped playing videogames after that. Once I got bored with the real world and returned to enjoying the company of electronics instead of people, I decided to give Raiden III another shot. Tried Single Mode again. Still boring. I gave Dual Mode a try after that and I'll be damned if it isn't a lot better then Single Mode. Since there are only to buttons aside from movement, the PS2 controller is able to handle controlling both ships at once fairly well, and ship speed is much less of an issue since there are two of them. It certainly isn't Mushi or Galuda, but I now feel those 30 bucks weren't wasted. I might write an actual review, although since I have to clear it in order to try Boss Rush or see any of the Extras, I might not.

Hooray for jumping on abandoned bandwagons.

STGT '07 Week 5 and Scores

Week 5:

• We played Giga Wing, much to the delight of most contestants.
• Restart Syndrome, Activate!
• shoe-sama> reflect teh bulletz
• shoe-sama> reflect 'em good
• Milking boats, trains, and planes is dumb
• COME ON!
• Use only Ruby and Stuck. Ever.

My scores are shown at http://arcadepirates.blogspot.com/, which is where I will be posting my scores at from now on.

STGT '07 Weeks 3 & 4

Two more weeks and two more pathetic showings from me. I got busy with other things.

Week 3:

We played Darius Gaiden. Progear would have probably won if It hadn't been excluded from the vote for reasons I don't fully understand. Something about making week 3 too similar to week 5. Bologna says I. Progear isn't even a vert.
Playing with autofire more or less broke the damn game, although it made those never ending bosses die much quicker.

Week 4:

Omega Fighter Special. To be honest, I really didn't play this game and my score/ranking shows it. I played 4 credits and then got lost in other things (education and such). Although It's scoring system seemed akin to Ketsui's. I never fully grasped some of the aspects, like how your end of level bonus as calculated. At first I thought it was based on how many X10 multipliers you scored, but that wasn't it. Oh well. I'll probably end up going back to it to get my old-school fix while avoiding the old-school frusteration.

Wrap up of STGT '07 next week with Week 5 and the final results (and my scores, which I've neglected to post)

STGT'07

Alright, so the first two play weeks of shmupsforum's Shooting Game Tournament 2007 are over with and the third week is coming up. How did the first two weeks go? Let's review:

Week 1

• Collectively, the competitors agreed that nobody likes Gradius III.
• The competitors also agreed, collectively, to play Twin Bee Yahhoo, disregarding the fact that a majority enjoyed playing Parodius more.
• We like it better with extends.
• Juggling bells is almost as appealing as eating hot glass.
• *Kling*
• SiKrAiKeN still needs to release his superplay video.
• Edge doesn't have excel skills.

Week 2

• Raiden Fighters 1/2 are unloved by the masses.
• Vote manipulation results in lulz
• 100% seems easier in your head.
• Posting videos on youtube is what the cool kids do.
• Most players spent 75%-90% of their playtime restarting level 1.
• We love snipers and medal pods.
• SiKrAiKeN wins again.

I wasn't around the forum for the first half of last year's competition, although there seemed to be much less bitching and moaning then there is now. Granted the only horrible game played during the last half of STGT'06 was Star Force.

So far, the forum has (for the most part) shown ineptitude when it comes to picking good games for scoring competitions. Here's hoping this changes for Second Place Week.

The unofficial results can be seen at http://www.stgranking.com

I'm Bad at G-Darius

I saw a copy of Taito Legends II at Gamestop a few days ago and snatched it up for $15. The price was more then a deal. I'd pay more then that for G-Darius alone. There are 39 games total. The shooters included are:

• Darius Gaiden
• G-Darius
• Gekirindan
• Grid Seeker
• Gun & Frontier
• Insector X
• Metal Black
• Ray Storm
• Space Invaders '95
• Space Invaders DX
• Space Invaders '91

There are problems with a few of the games in Taito Legends II. An example is Metal Black. The MAX Beam can be either focused or unfocused. If you release the MAX Beam button to unfocus the beam, it won't refocus if you hold the button down again. Some will not like it but I assume most will be able to forgive and work around the problems because you get so much for your $15.

Many of the games are emulated in MAME, but you also get G-Darius and RayStorm, so there's still something there for those of us who have no qualms about using ROMs of long forgotten arcade games.

Shikigami no Shiro II: A Review

Also known as Castle Shikigami II for those of us who purchased the hilarious translated version.

I originally didn't plan to ever buy a Shikigami game but seeing this used at Gamestop for $7.99 changed my mind.

Story:


(From the manual of Castle Shikigami II)
A dark twisted castle appears in the sky.

A war has begun between humanity and the Demon Gods of Castle Shikigami in the skies of Tokyo.

In the recent past, a band of champions gathered to engage this threat. Using weapons forged by the great magicians and masters of arcane sciences, the heroes managed to banish the demons, quelling their thirst for conquest!

The time: 2006, the distant future. The Demon God's and their mystical castle have re-appeared above the skies of Tokyo City with the goal of continuing the domination and conquest of humanity. Can the heroes of recent legend return to defeat the nemesis of all mankind? The tools for defeating the gods are trapped within the very castle in which the demons reside. The hope of the world lies on the shoulders of these heroes, they must succeed or the world is no longer...

Castle Shikigami's story can be described in one word: Throwaway. It probably made sense in Japanese, but what I typed above is about as comprehensible or deep as it gets if you bought the english release.

Sound:

The music in Castle Shikigami II is actually pretty good. There is the original music and the remix soundtrack to blast demon ghosts to. It's just too bad that everything is forgettable.

The sound effects are generic and boring. Nothing stands out except the sound of hundreds of coins being collected at once. Which is awesome.

Graphics:

The visuals in Shikigami no Shiro II remind me of the look of Homura...but worse. Both graphically and artistically. The characters look like typical anime characters and the enemies are mostly what I imagine are phantoms or demons. Although all they manage to look like is that horrible clay figurine you made in 2nd grade. Abstract garbage.

The scrolling backgrounds are varied, ranging from city streets to waterways to dark corridors.

You can also unlock pictures in a gallery by meeting certain requirements. These pictures are much better looking then anything else in the game.

The bullets have 4 predominant colors: Yellow, Green, Purple, and Red. For the most part you won't have the 'invisible bullets' problem that so many people bitch about when discussing Battle Garegga.

Let's just finish up saying that you aren't going to be buying this game for the eye candy because the "candy" is like that Hershey Kiss from Halloween last year.

Gameplay:

Alright, gameplay-wise, Shiki II is leaps and bounds ahead of it's presentation. Scoring revolves around collecting coins and the "Tension Bonus System".

"Tension Bonus System" is a different way of saying "We want you to play with fire and if you don't get burned, you win!". It appeals to those of us who like to do really stupid things like juggling knives or eating funny looking berries that you find in the forest.

The way it works is when you kill an enemy it releases a base amount of coins. A multiplier will be applied to this base value if you are close to a bullet or an enemy when you kill the enemy. The closer you are to an enemy or an enemy bullet when the enemy dies, the bigger your multiplier, up to x8. The number of x8 actions will be kept track of and at the end of a level you get bonus points that correlate to how many x8 actions you had. Naturally, this means that you want to constantly be grazing bullets so that enemies are nice and generous about how many coins they drop and the size of your after level bonus is sizable.

x8 Action is important for more then just score however. If you are close enough to a bullet (close enough to get a x8 action) then when you fire your standard shot, it will be an uber-standard shot (a.k.a. Hi-Tension attack). So you can increase your firepower by doing something stupid like sitting in the middle of a bullet pattern.

The weapons at your disposal aside from that standard shot and the Hi-Tension attack are your Shikigami (Mobile Light Force in the English version) and a bomb.You use your shikigami like the laser in DoDonPachi. By holding the shoot button down you will slow down and your Shikigami will unleash itself. Characters have two Shikigami types each. Each character's shot, Shikigami, and bomb are unique to that character. This leads to a wide variety of attacks, but unfortunately a whole bunch of them are really dumb. An advantage to using a Shikigami is that, instead of the released coins falling down to the bottom of the screen, they are auto collected into your inventory. So the ideal position for scoring is to use your Shikigami while in a state of High Tension.

Levels come in sets of two, and each pair of levels shares a similar setting and enemies. The first sub-level's boss is a generic enemy blown up to several times it's size. The second sub-level's boss is a generic anime character that you talk to before you begin to brutally murder each other.

The game has a Practice Mode and a Boss Rush mode along with the two arcade modes (Normal and Extreme).

When you don't feel like beating up clay ghosts and the equivalent of playing with razor blades via the Tension Battle System, you can visit the Story Recollect Mode. Possibly the greatest part of this game, it does just what the name implies. It lets you re-watch any of the cutscenes (by cutscenes I mean boxes of text with stills of the characters) that you have seen before. This may seem boring until you realize just what you're getting into. This game gets "The Engrish Ever" award. The translation was so butchered that Jack the Ripper would blush. I'm talking laugh out loud horrible. And since there is a unique script for each of the characters and each of the character combinations (since you can play 2 player co-op) you have plenty of comedy material in that little disc in your Playstation 2.

Closing:

If you like bullet-scraping and using your secondary shot more then your primary one, then Shikigami no Shiro II will probably suit you fine. People who don't like to intentionally fly near lethal things for money would do better to play a different game.

Shiki II is the average-looking duckling that tries to teach you that doing dangerous things will make you a winner instead of believing that inner beauty will overshadow physical appearance.

The Collection Grows.

So I just received ESPgaluda in the mail from Play Asia. I have to say I'm pleasantly surprised. I was less then ecstatic about ESP Ra.De. so I was cautiously optimistic about Galuda, but now I have cast all doubts aside. The scoring system is different from Ra.De.'s and simple enough to grasp but I'm still having trouble with the intricacies and learning when it's best to use the Kakusei Mode. Still, I have to agree about it being one of Cave's easiest titles. Not that that's a bad thing. Sometimes it's fun to not be molested when playing videogames.

I suppose I could write a review for it a while down the road. You know...after I write the reviews for Shiki II and Gradius V like I said I would.

...and when I get back from Cross Country Camp on Friday I plan to knuckle down and finish that 1983 project I mentioned