Finally
Free G-Darius HD Update Adds Three New Versions And Lots Of Improvements
Crikeywww.nintendolife.com
Praise be!
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Talking 'bout Shmups
Praise be!
I’ve been playing Barrage Fantasia for switch, a low-res vertical shooter where you play a witch seeking to reclaim a stolen jewel. I think it caught my eye just because I like the name. Anyway, it’s pretty fun - you can choose various familiars to accompany you, different special attacks, and there’s kind of a difficulty setting where you can decide for yourself how many bombs and HP you get - you only get one life but can have one, three, or five hearts depending on the setting. Bombs and hearts regenerate over time (unless you’ve chosen a difficulty where they don’t), so as long as you can keep it together for a few minutes it’s always possible to recover to full strength.
The game is maybe a bit easy - I was able to clear its five stages after a few attempts, though I was playing on “safety”, which gives five hearts and faster health recovery, so definitely easy mode.
The game is maybe a bit easy - I was able to clear its five stages after a few attempts, though I was playing on “safety”, which gives five hearts and faster health recovery, so definitely easy mode.
Please play Touhou Nemuri Sekai ~ Wonderful Waking World. The practical sell is that it's a free game, and the emotional pitch is that it's incredible that something as good as this is not a paid project. As a Touhou fan game that models itself exactingly on the official material, it's far from the only one, but as the best of derivative works do, seeks to adapt instead of merely emulate. The art and music are recognizably ZUN-influenced, but not carbon copies with plenty pleasing differences to offer; the same remains true for the patterns and boss design, familiar but distinct. Touhou in general has some of most solid and time-tested fundamentals in the genre, so twisting them just so is a great recipe to launch into improvisations from. There's a simplicity to this game that the series proper hasn't had in a long time, which makes it an exceedingly friendly one to learn and get that 1CC on Easy as a starting point if you need or want that foot in the door--no power-up items to manage and no central supplementary mechanics to worry about, just single-minded dodging. With the aesthetics and game mechanics as firmly in grasp as here, it can be a pleasant one-and-done or something to practice at for longer and either mode of interaction ending up equally fulfilling.
So... the most-basic news is that Taito is releasing a Ray-series collection called *sigh* "Ray'z Arcade Chronology."
The perhaps bigger news is that IF you preorder it on Prime Day from Amazon Japan, you'll get a download of R-GEAR, and unfinished/unreleased sequel to Rayforce! (Which is cool, but also sucks ass, since it's contingent on preordering a game that isn't out until March from ONE retailer in ONE 48 hour period.)
The news that complicates the entire thing is Taito/Square has hinted at an international release, and so who knows about R-GEAR there? Are they depending on FOMO to get a double-dip? I guess we have about a week to figure it out...
The perhaps bigger news is that IF you preorder it on Prime Day from Amazon Japan, you'll get a download of R-GEAR, and unfinished/unreleased sequel to Rayforce! (Which is cool, but also sucks ass, since it's contingent on preordering a game that isn't out until March from ONE retailer in ONE 48 hour period.)
The news that complicates the entire thing is Taito/Square has hinted at an international release, and so who knows about R-GEAR there? Are they depending on FOMO to get a double-dip? I guess we have about a week to figure it out...
Ludendorkk
(he/him)
Goddamn I hate this shit. I get that shmups are about the most niche genre possible and that it's all about squeezing the maximal money out of each potential customer, but all this jumping through hoops and mindgame shit is way beyond the pale of tolerability for me
ArugulaZ
Fearful asymmetry
This mad lad reviewed every Sega Genesis shoot 'em up, including related games. It's a whopping three hours and my short attention span typically taps out of YouTube videos after twenty minutes, but the commentary and production values are so good that I can't stop watching it!
Any recommendations for weapon loadouts on Ginga Force?
I've been playing mostly with the homing missiles and either a spread shot or laser depending on the stage. The counter shield as well, although I can't tell if the counter shot is doing much damage.
I played it when it first came out on the XBox 360, but I bought it again for the PS4 and I've been playing it now again. It's great to be able to see the shop menus in English!
I've been playing mostly with the homing missiles and either a spread shot or laser depending on the stage. The counter shield as well, although I can't tell if the counter shot is doing much damage.
I played it when it first came out on the XBox 360, but I bought it again for the PS4 and I've been playing it now again. It's great to be able to see the shop menus in English!
Delicious.
All the praise I had to offer Cosmo Dreamer on the last page still stands for Like Dreamer, which is now available. It is its older sibling but bigger, bolder, and even more savvy to what makes an exemplary danmaku game. There's a ton of customization of player kit and specific difficulty adjustments that allow most skill thresholds to push on through, and new play modes open up as you keep on with it, sometimes substantially changing the play experience. Beautiful escalation once again, with a stage or two that I could consider genre-best without issue (stage 7, especially). Aesthetics still remain imaginatively cute for the enemies and stages and comically cheesecakey for the cast instead of upsettingly sexualized like so many other genre works; it's themed around virtual streamers and modern social media so that aspect even has some light contemporary relevance without pretending to be a ripped-from-the-headlines commentary on any of it. It's a tremendous show of work in honing a genre to its peak performance with limited available resources--just expertise, persistence and a whole lot of love for the medium.
Managed Maniac (normal) difficulty 1CCs in both Cosmo and Like Dreamer today. I'm an average skill level player on my best day, but the games's design facilitates a very thoughtfully implemented learning curve, which I outlined thus:
Recently Drainus was also built entirely around its shield absorption mechanics, and likely had a higher completion rate among players thanks to the leeway the feature and the surrounding design afforded as a result. That game is very kind even when pushing it to its limit though, while the Dreamer duology are... not. The point is that there's a great awareness in them that this genre, despite its ultra-niche reputation, is enjoyed and loved by players of a wide range of skill levels and it is possible to cater to all of them at once through providing the necessary options, and integrating them in ways that elevate and highlight the design language instead of suppressing it.
Recently Drainus was also built entirely around its shield absorption mechanics, and likely had a higher completion rate among players thanks to the leeway the feature and the surrounding design afforded as a result. That game is very kind even when pushing it to its limit though, while the Dreamer duology are... not. The point is that there's a great awareness in them that this genre, despite its ultra-niche reputation, is enjoyed and loved by players of a wide range of skill levels and it is possible to cater to all of them at once through providing the necessary options, and integrating them in ways that elevate and highlight the design language instead of suppressing it.
I’ve been playing Judgement Silversword on switch (comes with Eschatos), and I’m really enjoying it. So far on normal difficulty I can reach area 20 on one credit, and at best I’ve reached the second phase of that area. I’ve read that later in the game you fight two of the area 20 boss at once, which seems crazy, but not so long ago I was lucky to get to area 13 on one credit so who knows what I can do with some practice. I’m a big fan of M-KAI’s way of giving additional credits as you play the game more, also seen in Pleasure Hearts and Eschatos, because it stops me from just credit feeding through the game on my first try but gives me some hope of beating it eventually. That said, at present I’m reaching 20 on my first credit and then losing all subsequent credits on the same stage.
I made a big change in my gameplay today, which led to my score more than doubling (and got me into the top thirty on the switch leaderboards, though I suspect the competition is fiercer on other platforms) - I’m using autofire. Silversword doesn’t have any pickups besides extends that drop I believe the first time something dies (including you) after you cross certain score thresholds, so your ship is always at full power. You have three attacks: a forward shot, a wide shot, and a shield (a ball that appears in front of your ship and can block bullets or damage really close enemies, but which has limited durability). Holding either shot button will fire it continuously. If you hold both only the wide shot will fire. But if you hold forward shot and rapidly tap wide you effectively get both shots at once. Prior to today, I was doing this manually some of the time. Today, I realised my controller has an autofire setting so I can turn it on for the wide shot and then just hold both buttons, and that’s what I’ve been doing. As a result enemies are dying much quicker, improving both my survival and score.
I don’t generally play shooters for score, but now that I’m not that far down on the leaderboard it’s kind of tempting, and also I’m pretty sure the extends are tied to score so getting a better score improves my survival chances too. The basic thing with scoring is to beat enemies quickly - there’s a score multiplier which goes up as you hit enemies and rapidly falls when you don’t, so the quicker you beat each wave the higher it goes. You also get a bonus at the end of each wave which I think is higher the better your time. Your multiplier generally drops back to 1x between waves, but if you manage to play without dying or blocking bullets with the shield then the lower limit increases over time. I don’t think I’ve lasted long enough to get the baseline above 5x, but even that increases my score dramatically.
This is kind of a tangent, but aside from trying to get better at shooters, in the past couple years I’ve been getting back into playing the piano. Among other things, I’m trying to get a grip on one of Mendelssohn’s songs without words, op. 85 no. 4, which is just a really nice piece of music. It struck me today that the process for learning this is kind of like learning a shmup - there’s an element of memorisation, an element of dexterity, an element of reading what’s happening on the screen/page and reacting in time, and a big element of repetition. I guess the 1cc equivalent for the piano piece would be playing all the right notes in the right order, something I am not particularly close to at the moment, and once (if) I get that I can work more on the dynamics and stuff to improve my score. For now I’m pretty much credit feeding it, pushing through the mistakes and restarting the odd bar if I screw up particularly badly. Just like the game, there are bits I cruise through and bits that almost always get me (the simultaneous c#/d♮ at the start of the seventeenth bar, for example, which is a brief and pleasant dissonance when Barenboim plays it but brings me to a halt with how wrong it sounds when I do). Probably I’d make progress quicker if I were to focus on getting sections right before moving on but I insist on just playing from the start each time. I’m still sometimes dropping wrong notes in the opening bars that I’ve played a hundred times, just like I’m still sometimes getting killed by popcorn enemies in the first couple areas of the game.
Anyways, I may never be particularly good either on the keyboard or the controller, but I’m enjoying both.
I made a big change in my gameplay today, which led to my score more than doubling (and got me into the top thirty on the switch leaderboards, though I suspect the competition is fiercer on other platforms) - I’m using autofire. Silversword doesn’t have any pickups besides extends that drop I believe the first time something dies (including you) after you cross certain score thresholds, so your ship is always at full power. You have three attacks: a forward shot, a wide shot, and a shield (a ball that appears in front of your ship and can block bullets or damage really close enemies, but which has limited durability). Holding either shot button will fire it continuously. If you hold both only the wide shot will fire. But if you hold forward shot and rapidly tap wide you effectively get both shots at once. Prior to today, I was doing this manually some of the time. Today, I realised my controller has an autofire setting so I can turn it on for the wide shot and then just hold both buttons, and that’s what I’ve been doing. As a result enemies are dying much quicker, improving both my survival and score.
I don’t generally play shooters for score, but now that I’m not that far down on the leaderboard it’s kind of tempting, and also I’m pretty sure the extends are tied to score so getting a better score improves my survival chances too. The basic thing with scoring is to beat enemies quickly - there’s a score multiplier which goes up as you hit enemies and rapidly falls when you don’t, so the quicker you beat each wave the higher it goes. You also get a bonus at the end of each wave which I think is higher the better your time. Your multiplier generally drops back to 1x between waves, but if you manage to play without dying or blocking bullets with the shield then the lower limit increases over time. I don’t think I’ve lasted long enough to get the baseline above 5x, but even that increases my score dramatically.
This is kind of a tangent, but aside from trying to get better at shooters, in the past couple years I’ve been getting back into playing the piano. Among other things, I’m trying to get a grip on one of Mendelssohn’s songs without words, op. 85 no. 4, which is just a really nice piece of music. It struck me today that the process for learning this is kind of like learning a shmup - there’s an element of memorisation, an element of dexterity, an element of reading what’s happening on the screen/page and reacting in time, and a big element of repetition. I guess the 1cc equivalent for the piano piece would be playing all the right notes in the right order, something I am not particularly close to at the moment, and once (if) I get that I can work more on the dynamics and stuff to improve my score. For now I’m pretty much credit feeding it, pushing through the mistakes and restarting the odd bar if I screw up particularly badly. Just like the game, there are bits I cruise through and bits that almost always get me (the simultaneous c#/d♮ at the start of the seventeenth bar, for example, which is a brief and pleasant dissonance when Barenboim plays it but brings me to a halt with how wrong it sounds when I do). Probably I’d make progress quicker if I were to focus on getting sections right before moving on but I insist on just playing from the start each time. I’m still sometimes dropping wrong notes in the opening bars that I’ve played a hundred times, just like I’m still sometimes getting killed by popcorn enemies in the first couple areas of the game.
Anyways, I may never be particularly good either on the keyboard or the controller, but I’m enjoying both.
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So does your piano have an autofire setting?
Strictly Limited Games has announced the localization of Ray'z Arcade Chronology, with preorders going up tomorrow:
store.strictlylimitedgames.com
I'm sure ININ will be releasing it digitally at some point, although there's usually some lost content with their releases of Taito stuff, and the SLG store page says "bonus content will be announced soon" for the compilation, which is likely the first level of the canceled Ray'z title R-GEAR...so that might be exclusive to the physical...but we'll see.
Ray’z Arcade Chronology
Exclusive Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 and PlayStation Vita games in strictly limited quantities.
store.strictlylimitedgames.com
I'm sure ININ will be releasing it digitally at some point, although there's usually some lost content with their releases of Taito stuff, and the SLG store page says "bonus content will be announced soon" for the compilation, which is likely the first level of the canceled Ray'z title R-GEAR...so that might be exclusive to the physical...but we'll see.
Yeah, ININ are separating things out, as they did with G-Dar and DBACEX+ among others. There'll be a physical and digital release of just the HD versions of RayStorm and RayCrisis, and a digital-only release of the full Arcade Chronology. Not sure why they're consistently favouring the smaller/lesser releases for their boxed copies...
(The HD version of RayStorm is not the one that was released on XBLA, but a new one that keeps the original arcade aspect ratio and play area, etc. The RayCrisis port is of course also brand new. Sounds like they're both getting essentially the same treatment as G-Dar, which is close to perfect, imo. I swore I would never buy another LE after marking out with an absurd number of Darius ones, but I'm terribly tempted by this.)
(The HD version of RayStorm is not the one that was released on XBLA, but a new one that keeps the original arcade aspect ratio and play area, etc. The RayCrisis port is of course also brand new. Sounds like they're both getting essentially the same treatment as G-Dar, which is close to perfect, imo. I swore I would never buy another LE after marking out with an absurd number of Darius ones, but I'm terribly tempted by this.)
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Radiant Silvergun is now (or not; it may have been momentarily pulled from the eShop by the publisher as Mushihime-sama was upon its release) out on Switch, courtesy of Live Wire. It seems like a straightforward port of the XBLA release with some niggling audiovisual issues, like an odd screen-tear line that persists on screen most of the time and some faulty audio playback, but the issues are minor and will possibly be patched when it's returned to a purchasable state. What's left is judging the game by its inherent merits and faults, and it's no great revelation to me that I'm not much of a fan.
Ikaruga only exacerbated the design language present in Treasure's shooters that put me off from them until Gradius V, and despite Silvergun being less rigid in its structure than its follow-up, it's nonetheless a prescriptive game to the extreme. "Puzzle-like" is the descriptor often applied to the pair, where they order their stages, enemy waves, chaining loops and general level design topography to ask specific questions of the player to which there is often only one optimal or even acceptable answer. Failure to play along to the routine results in sudden gotchas, dropped scoring chains (which inform how fast your weapons level up and thus even your basic survivability) and a general sense of admonishment in deviating from the prescribed choreography; even if you do "well" in an improvisational state of play, it never feels satisfying to pull off as the game only expects or wants to see its dictated solutions to its challenges.
I'm not a score player and probably never will be, but even playing for survival in these games feels like a hollow exercise as they do not accommodate anything outside of exacting mastery, their mechanics--whether the verb-overload of Silvergun's six-pronged armament or Ikaruga's binary absorption and reflection scheme--designed for pinpoint counters to specific situations instead of reaching for any kind of player-directed and preferred versatility. It's a valid and distinct way to design a shooter, but if I have one long-standing point of annoyance about the reputation both games hold as the genre apexes they're often framed as, it's not that people like them whereas I largely don't--it's that they exist so distinctly within their own niches as to what kind of design language they espouse that propping them up as exemplary works in the genre should always detail those specific idiosyncracies as a priority of that evaluation.
As it is, do I recommend Radiant Silvergun now that it's more widely available than ever, at a fraction of the cost it would otherwise command? Yes, for the rollercoaster spectacle that it presentationally is and how greatly Hitoshi Sakimoto's work carries it on that audiovisual front to match; for the more-bosses-than-stages excess of Treasure at their most unrelenting and the inventiveness of the concepts therein. I may never like it, but it should be played.
Ikaruga only exacerbated the design language present in Treasure's shooters that put me off from them until Gradius V, and despite Silvergun being less rigid in its structure than its follow-up, it's nonetheless a prescriptive game to the extreme. "Puzzle-like" is the descriptor often applied to the pair, where they order their stages, enemy waves, chaining loops and general level design topography to ask specific questions of the player to which there is often only one optimal or even acceptable answer. Failure to play along to the routine results in sudden gotchas, dropped scoring chains (which inform how fast your weapons level up and thus even your basic survivability) and a general sense of admonishment in deviating from the prescribed choreography; even if you do "well" in an improvisational state of play, it never feels satisfying to pull off as the game only expects or wants to see its dictated solutions to its challenges.
I'm not a score player and probably never will be, but even playing for survival in these games feels like a hollow exercise as they do not accommodate anything outside of exacting mastery, their mechanics--whether the verb-overload of Silvergun's six-pronged armament or Ikaruga's binary absorption and reflection scheme--designed for pinpoint counters to specific situations instead of reaching for any kind of player-directed and preferred versatility. It's a valid and distinct way to design a shooter, but if I have one long-standing point of annoyance about the reputation both games hold as the genre apexes they're often framed as, it's not that people like them whereas I largely don't--it's that they exist so distinctly within their own niches as to what kind of design language they espouse that propping them up as exemplary works in the genre should always detail those specific idiosyncracies as a priority of that evaluation.
As it is, do I recommend Radiant Silvergun now that it's more widely available than ever, at a fraction of the cost it would otherwise command? Yes, for the rollercoaster spectacle that it presentationally is and how greatly Hitoshi Sakimoto's work carries it on that audiovisual front to match; for the more-bosses-than-stages excess of Treasure at their most unrelenting and the inventiveness of the concepts therein. I may never like it, but it should be played.
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It's an amazing game with one too many systems. The music, level design, weapon loadout, and boss patterns are all superior. The consecutive color-shooting, however, is a lot to manage in a game that already has a lot of complexity. It's cool that it affects your score (for those who care about score), but I wish it didn't factor so strongly into your experience points. If you overlook the color-shooting, your weapons will be severely underpowered.
I will also criticize the XBLA port for having a poorly-tuned campaign mode. It just takes too many hours of gameplay to unlock extra continuous. They should have unlocked at a much faster rate.
I will also criticize the XBLA port for having a poorly-tuned campaign mode. It just takes too many hours of gameplay to unlock extra continuous. They should have unlocked at a much faster rate.
ArugulaZ
Fearful asymmetry
In hindsight, it is a rather pattern-based game, with lots of nooks and crannies you've got to weave through in order to survive. It works well enough as a credit-feeder, though, if you have the credits to feed it. Ikaruga, less so.
Peklo's entitled to her opinion. I can't stand Under Defeat's central play mechanic, and think both that and its ugly ship designs ruin the whole thing for me. However, I've noticed that compared to other shooter fans, my opinion is way out in the rough. I'm sorry, I just don't like being dropped to a different section of the map because I died! Take me back to a checkpoint if you must, but dropping me into an entirely different scenario as punishment is disorienting as all hell and just guarantees more lost lives. "I almost understood what to do in the first stratum, and could probably do it this time... IF I hadn't been dropped to a new, completely unfamiliar stratum."
Peklo's entitled to her opinion. I can't stand Under Defeat's central play mechanic, and think both that and its ugly ship designs ruin the whole thing for me. However, I've noticed that compared to other shooter fans, my opinion is way out in the rough. I'm sorry, I just don't like being dropped to a different section of the map because I died! Take me back to a checkpoint if you must, but dropping me into an entirely different scenario as punishment is disorienting as all hell and just guarantees more lost lives. "I almost understood what to do in the first stratum, and could probably do it this time... IF I hadn't been dropped to a new, completely unfamiliar stratum."
Highlighting a few recent releases.
Hazelnut Hex by Chunderfins is a breakfast cereal-themed horizontal bullet hell comprising of five stages, three shot load-outs and a large number of unique enemy designs. Aesthetics are absolutely the draw here, with the pastel palette giving the game its distinctive look--I would compare it favourably to Outside's Dreamer duology, which is high praise as someone who fell for those games in a big way. The difference in that regard is that there isn't a hint of exploitative excess in the character designs of Hazelnut Hex, making it easily approachable without caveats. It's also not exceedingly difficult, but does have sufficient teeth to it when pushed, and can be made potentially more challenging by focusing on scoring with its charge shot mechanic which leaves you open, but consequently can also erase oncoming bullets in a pinch.
For the kind of game it is, it's just a really good time executed to the fullest of its premise. The only issue I have with it isn't even specific to it, but a wider symptom of its format: I don't believe horizontal bullet hells of a particular bullet density and velocity are ever a good idea, simply because at least in my own experience, tracking movement on that axis as compared to vertical orientation is always uncomfortable past a certain threshold, no matter how well a game is otherwise designed. Whether this is my own sensory limitation or something endemic to a collective human experience, it nonetheless limits the ways in which I'd like to interact with games of this type. Hazelnut Hex thus reads as an exemplary of a form that I find fundamentally misconceived.
The game is available on Switch and on itch.io, and has additionally been uploaded on Archive.org by the developer. Support them if possible.
Yoiyami Dancers: Twilight Danmaku Dancers by doujin circle tripper_room is a Touhou Project fan game starring Rumia and Eternity Larva. Both characters are stage 1 bosses of their respective home games (parts six and sixteen, respectively) and as such aren't the most popular or represented in derivative works, and so these starring roles are heartening just on a basis of diversifying the portfolio of how the series is adapted by others.
Yoiyami Dancers is a rhythm-based danmaku game, in a genre fusion reminiscent of works such as Crypt of the Necrodancer. Much as there, movement occurs on a grid, in specific a five-by-five dance floor upon which either of the player characters busts their moves to the beat and avoids the oncoming barrages usually from the front, but in the more hectic moments from most any direction. Touhou's bullet graze mechanic is adapted such as that when you take a step directly at a projectile, you safely pass through it and gain a momentary power boost as the risk-reward. It's an ingenious interpretation of a series fundamental and how it might function in an unfamiliar genre, and forms the linchpin of both beginner and advanced play both because of how necessary it is to make use of and eventually master, and simply because pulling it off provides one with a similar performative rush as successfully parrying in Street Fighter III. It's a fantastic hook to an already strong play concept, fully embodying the "easy to get into, hard to master" ethos the game exudes.
Navigation of the wave-based stages and culminating boss battles is supported by an equally adept aesthetic backbone. Yoiyami Dancers's art is all rounded and button-cute with nary of the suspect connotations that might arise from such a treatment in less guided hands; in here the adorable can simply be taken as read. The goofy narrative involves a dancing fad and fever that justifies the game mechanics, and for all its irreverence the game commits to the bit well: Rumia and Larva strike their poses with every step both via their representational pixel art as well as in their illustrated portraits; similarly the dance adversaries tangoed with along the way are recipient to the same kind of joyful exuberance as portrayed. The music needs to be able to support the game's structure and spectacle, and it more than measures up: all songs are remixes of series material that not only instrumentally evoke the distinctive ZUN sound with more rhythmic emphasis, but don't limit themselves arranging one track at a time and instead mix two or more into versions that are as fresh as the game's concept. The audio design in particular elevates a lot of the game's design in how thoughtful it is--sometimes pointed out by the also series-authentic in-game liner notes--in how tempo, BPM, or the absence of rhythm are used throughout both to provide distinct wrinkles and challenges in the rhythmic play and to characterize the opponents to whom those audio cues are matched and what role they play in the narrative.
Yoiyami Dancers gets very difficult in short order, though it provides ample resources for any kind of player to hang with it--a good tutorial, four distinct difficulty modes, a host of equippable and usable items, an exceedingly customizable practice mode, unlimited continues and game over comeback power-ups, and two characters with their own quirks/stages/bosses/stories all ensure that there is a lot to dig into and be supported along the way if needed. That it feels like such a hurdle is to me also indicative of what makes it so special: you may have played other games partly like it, but nothing else is really exactly reflective of what it sets out to do and so skills gained in adjacent genres don't directly transfer to its specific challenges and rhythms. It's absolutely stellar and among the best the wild and unpredictable world of Touhou fan games has to offer. The recent English release on Steam hopefully foretells a Switch equivalent, where the game has been available in Japanese since 2020.
For the kind of game it is, it's just a really good time executed to the fullest of its premise. The only issue I have with it isn't even specific to it, but a wider symptom of its format: I don't believe horizontal bullet hells of a particular bullet density and velocity are ever a good idea, simply because at least in my own experience, tracking movement on that axis as compared to vertical orientation is always uncomfortable past a certain threshold, no matter how well a game is otherwise designed. Whether this is my own sensory limitation or something endemic to a collective human experience, it nonetheless limits the ways in which I'd like to interact with games of this type. Hazelnut Hex thus reads as an exemplary of a form that I find fundamentally misconceived.
The game is available on Switch and on itch.io, and has additionally been uploaded on Archive.org by the developer. Support them if possible.
Yoiyami Dancers: Twilight Danmaku Dancers by doujin circle tripper_room is a Touhou Project fan game starring Rumia and Eternity Larva. Both characters are stage 1 bosses of their respective home games (parts six and sixteen, respectively) and as such aren't the most popular or represented in derivative works, and so these starring roles are heartening just on a basis of diversifying the portfolio of how the series is adapted by others.
Yoiyami Dancers is a rhythm-based danmaku game, in a genre fusion reminiscent of works such as Crypt of the Necrodancer. Much as there, movement occurs on a grid, in specific a five-by-five dance floor upon which either of the player characters busts their moves to the beat and avoids the oncoming barrages usually from the front, but in the more hectic moments from most any direction. Touhou's bullet graze mechanic is adapted such as that when you take a step directly at a projectile, you safely pass through it and gain a momentary power boost as the risk-reward. It's an ingenious interpretation of a series fundamental and how it might function in an unfamiliar genre, and forms the linchpin of both beginner and advanced play both because of how necessary it is to make use of and eventually master, and simply because pulling it off provides one with a similar performative rush as successfully parrying in Street Fighter III. It's a fantastic hook to an already strong play concept, fully embodying the "easy to get into, hard to master" ethos the game exudes.
Navigation of the wave-based stages and culminating boss battles is supported by an equally adept aesthetic backbone. Yoiyami Dancers's art is all rounded and button-cute with nary of the suspect connotations that might arise from such a treatment in less guided hands; in here the adorable can simply be taken as read. The goofy narrative involves a dancing fad and fever that justifies the game mechanics, and for all its irreverence the game commits to the bit well: Rumia and Larva strike their poses with every step both via their representational pixel art as well as in their illustrated portraits; similarly the dance adversaries tangoed with along the way are recipient to the same kind of joyful exuberance as portrayed. The music needs to be able to support the game's structure and spectacle, and it more than measures up: all songs are remixes of series material that not only instrumentally evoke the distinctive ZUN sound with more rhythmic emphasis, but don't limit themselves arranging one track at a time and instead mix two or more into versions that are as fresh as the game's concept. The audio design in particular elevates a lot of the game's design in how thoughtful it is--sometimes pointed out by the also series-authentic in-game liner notes--in how tempo, BPM, or the absence of rhythm are used throughout both to provide distinct wrinkles and challenges in the rhythmic play and to characterize the opponents to whom those audio cues are matched and what role they play in the narrative.
Yoiyami Dancers gets very difficult in short order, though it provides ample resources for any kind of player to hang with it--a good tutorial, four distinct difficulty modes, a host of equippable and usable items, an exceedingly customizable practice mode, unlimited continues and game over comeback power-ups, and two characters with their own quirks/stages/bosses/stories all ensure that there is a lot to dig into and be supported along the way if needed. That it feels like such a hurdle is to me also indicative of what makes it so special: you may have played other games partly like it, but nothing else is really exactly reflective of what it sets out to do and so skills gained in adjacent genres don't directly transfer to its specific challenges and rhythms. It's absolutely stellar and among the best the wild and unpredictable world of Touhou fan games has to offer. The recent English release on Steam hopefully foretells a Switch equivalent, where the game has been available in Japanese since 2020.
to the extent that treasure's games are held up as pinnacles of the genre in the english-speaking world i think that's something that largely comes from the wider public, as a lot of the more arcade-game centric communities have often been pretty down on the games. ikaruga at least has done pretty well in some years of the "shmups forum" popularity polls, but i think a lot of its "status" comes from having been in the right place (the gamecube) at the right time (the early 2000s, when the proliferation of game websites, weirder magazines, and other previously non-existent avenues of communication like g4 (regardless of each of their demerits) did make it somewhat easier to find out about slightly-obscure-in-the-us games). silvergun is a little harder to explain but there's clearly some kind of association thing that happened there for a long time, "this game is rare and really expensive and made by a famous developer" type thing. and having talked to so many people who were down on it for so long i was surprised how much i liked it when i finally played the 360 port. needless to say, i bought the switch one too. i wonder if being able to practice on the bus is going to be the final push for me to learn the second half of the game for real. if it's not, i won't beat myself up
i'm pretty sure i'd like ikaruga pretty well too if i really gave it a real go for like 20 hours, i just never have.
certainly i think the central appeal of silvergun is the treasure spectacle. it's not as technically mind-blowing as their genesis games got, or as viscerally thrilling as sin and punishment's best moments, but it's still really cool. it's right up there near darius gaiden in that sense for me. mechanically it's a game that turns into a "memorizer" very quickly, more than almost any game that's not an 80's/early 90's horizontal shooter (or at least the sequel to one). i like the feel of the weapons, and i'm used to feeling like shmups are generally like that (it's pretty hard to avoid once you start really trying to figure out scoring, and in most cases random elements don't necessarily have the effect of actually making you change decisions or anything like that), so i think that's fine. and some people don't!
and that's also fine.
not that i think it's some bold stance to say that it's a good game. i just don't think it's all that rare for people to not like it much either. it's a really divisive game! and mostly i'm glad more people will at least get a chance to try it and see if it speaks to them at all
i do think it's really funny that (last i saw) the person with the score records on RSG also has the score record on raystorm. i was not surprised to learn this. they've got a kind of similar appeal and pace (i love raystorm too, i'm really excited for that. and raycrisis, which i've never played at all)
i'm pretty sure i'd like ikaruga pretty well too if i really gave it a real go for like 20 hours, i just never have.
certainly i think the central appeal of silvergun is the treasure spectacle. it's not as technically mind-blowing as their genesis games got, or as viscerally thrilling as sin and punishment's best moments, but it's still really cool. it's right up there near darius gaiden in that sense for me. mechanically it's a game that turns into a "memorizer" very quickly, more than almost any game that's not an 80's/early 90's horizontal shooter (or at least the sequel to one). i like the feel of the weapons, and i'm used to feeling like shmups are generally like that (it's pretty hard to avoid once you start really trying to figure out scoring, and in most cases random elements don't necessarily have the effect of actually making you change decisions or anything like that), so i think that's fine. and some people don't!
and that's also fine.
not that i think it's some bold stance to say that it's a good game. i just don't think it's all that rare for people to not like it much either. it's a really divisive game! and mostly i'm glad more people will at least get a chance to try it and see if it speaks to them at all
i do think it's really funny that (last i saw) the person with the score records on RSG also has the score record on raystorm. i was not surprised to learn this. they've got a kind of similar appeal and pace (i love raystorm too, i'm really excited for that. and raycrisis, which i've never played at all)
I'm pretty sure I like Radiant Silvergun more than Ikaruga even though I played Ikaruga first (I think?). If that means anything.
To speak to your first point: those two games were probably the first "modern design" shmups I ever played. So to go from stuff like Gradius III (SNES) or U.N. Squadron to a shmup from Treasure was... impressive, to say the least.
To speak to your first point: those two games were probably the first "modern design" shmups I ever played. So to go from stuff like Gradius III (SNES) or U.N. Squadron to a shmup from Treasure was... impressive, to say the least.
Ludendorkk
(he/him)
They are making a new... Formation Z game? Sure why not
I finally put some time into Andro Dunos II and not only is it way better than Andro Dunos (a middling Neo-Geo shooter), it's... just generally super good? So much modern shooter design focuses on variations of bullet hell that a game that feels like a pre-danmaku shoot-them-up that escaped from like 1991 is just really nice.
I’ve been continuing my gradual trip through the works of M-KAI with Natsuki Chronicles, the sequel/prequel/whatever to Ginga Force. I’m not too far in yet, but it’s interesting seeing the level select, experience, and weapon systems from that game carried over to a hori. It’s also kind of funny how blunt the plot is about you being on the wrong side. In GF as I remember it you start off chasing down what appear to be villainous characters, most of whom join you when you switch sides, but in NC you finish the first couple missions killing the boss and by the third you’re strike-breaking with explicit instructions to kill as many workers as necessary. I’m looking forward to the side switch that is presumably coming up at some point.
By coincidence I picked up Radiant Silvergun when it was on sale recently and gave it a shot last night. It’s got a lot in common with these M-KAI/Qute games, which I guess isn’t a surprise when you consider Pleasure Hearts was partly named after Treasure because of RSG and I’m pretty sure Judgement Silversword takes some inspiration from it too. The way the weapons combine and the mechanics of earning extra lives and weapon upgrades seem similar. Also having characters talk while you’re too busy playing the game to read the subtitles.
By coincidence I picked up Radiant Silvergun when it was on sale recently and gave it a shot last night. It’s got a lot in common with these M-KAI/Qute games, which I guess isn’t a surprise when you consider Pleasure Hearts was partly named after Treasure because of RSG and I’m pretty sure Judgement Silversword takes some inspiration from it too. The way the weapons combine and the mechanics of earning extra lives and weapon upgrades seem similar. Also having characters talk while you’re too busy playing the game to read the subtitles.
Ludendorkk
(he/him)
Anyone want to enlighten me about the two collections starting with "Ray" that released this week?