天下制覇

 

A week and a half left! What are you interested in?

I’ve gone ahead and made a torrent for the 15 free demos I was able to track down. This is by no means comprehensive and possibly not even accurate, as the Comiket catalogue is an astounding 1,000 pages long, and the (non-hentai) game section is about five pages of this, not withstanding that the really popular groups are put elsewhere and some groups will sell their little tech demos for years and years. I just looked at the sites of anything that seemed interesting or that I recognized and looked for a demo or interesting screenshots then moved on. Although I do find it personally amusing that 07th Expansion (Higurashi) and Zun (Touhou) are put next to each other, and while not sharing a table, they’re within a few meters in the hall. That will be an entertaining clusterfuck. Though Comiket is a clusterfuck anyway… but still.

I’m also hoping for some unannounced surprises from other groups. Tasofro, for example… is still hard at work on Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, and I’d absolutely love a playable demo, even if it just has the big three.

Things with Demos
Torrent of all the demos (or just go to their sites for individual ones)

 

Die Feen
http://www.nekomiminokakera.net/product/df/

Die Feen is certainly a good looking game if nothing else. The engine is also fairly mystifying to me. It’s pretty similar to Mountain of Faith in a ton of ways. You start off with 16 options. You can have 4 out at a time, in 3 different formations. If you bomb, that eats one of your options (feen) and you have to wait (gauge on the left) for a new one to appear. Your score is based on the Rate multiplier (bottom right) that goes up as you pick up items enemies drop and down as time passes. There are other things that can knock away your feen and the like, but that’s the basic gist. The whole thing is done with 3d models, so it looks good, though the shot patterns are fairly mundane. The music is also very very pastoral, which doesn’t match at all as you dodge for your life. Still though, it’s rather well done.

Ether Vapor
http://edelweiss.skr.jp/

Ether Vapor’s various demos have been around forever, and as it creeps ever closer to a final version, it keeps looking better and better. It’s more of the western school of shmup, full of explosions and lasers and blasters, but the way it is put together is downright breathtaking. The bonus missle shootdown right before the first boss is absolutely amazing to play through. As far as the engine goes… pretty basic; a button for the straight shot, a button for spread shot, and a button for guided lasers, all three chargeable. Seriously, this one looks simply awesome. The only catch… their website says that they’re probably going to miss their planned Comiket72 release stating that instead of cutting content they wanted to include, they’d rather push it back to make sure stuff makes it in. *sigh* Hopefully they’ll at least bring another iteration and upgrade to the old trial version.

 

Gundemonium Recollection
http://www20.cds.ne.jp/~murasame/games/re_gundemonium.htm

Gundemonium is a horizontal shooter that Platine Dispositif released a few years back and will be remixing for this Comiket. They’re adding new characters and motifs and whathaveyou, but at its core, it’s the same game that’s been around for a few years. It’s a pretty solid game, but can be somewhat frustrating due to how ginormous your character sprite is. Still, it’s a usual Dispositif game; well crafted and slightly off the beaten path.

Haruran
http://lost-identity.jp/souvenir/frame.html

This is some form of Powerstone clone. Kind of. I opened the demo, and pressed some buttons, and all it would let me do is restart the demonstration battle with different characters… then it Blue Screen of Deathed my computer. So… best of luck to you with this one. Fucking Haruhi… crashing my computer. As far as what it looked like though… not all that great. Character attacks were determined by the weapons they had around, plus each had a special, and a transformation… Haruhi into her bunny girl suit with a guitar, Nagato into her witch outfit with a wand, etc. Other than the appearances and speed/power of the weapons though, there seemed to be little to no difference in their usage. I did see Mikuru make a giant explosion by faceplanting once, so I suppose there was that.

Magical Cannon Girl
http://www.kit-station.com/mcg/index.html

Surprisingly… at least to me… this is actually a pretty solid little game. Very little particularly amazing or groundbreaking about it, but the music’s nice, the graphics are good, the ‘bombing’ charged blasts force you to think and plan ahead instead of just hitting them whenever you get into trouble, and you can actually face backwards and shoot things below you. Very nice.

Mesogears
http://fakefar.jp/

Mesogears is still really more of a tech demo at this point than an actual game, though they’re supposedly releasing another updated trial or -something- this summer. They’ve actually got a pretty solid engine that they’re working on there and have a rather extensive writeup on their wireframes and how well they’re using them on their site if you’re curious. As for the demo… nothing actually attacks you, and it’s over in about 2 minutes. Still, killing strange squash monsters with Suigin Tou occasionally has its charms.

Miko Blasters
http://www.yoshibaworks.com/mikobla/

Miko Blasters is a time based horizontal shmup. Every stage is very very short and instead of lives, you’re just penalized 5 seconds when you get hit. It’s not bad in a manic sort of way, and from the greyed out menu in the trial version, I’m pretty sure the full one has co-op play, which is always a plus, but as far as depth goes… it’s pretty much a one trick pony that you’ll be tired of after about five minutes.

 

Mountain of Faith
http://www16.big.or.jp/~zun/top.html

  

This is it. The bag wahoonie. The huge kielbasa. The whole shebang. The latest of the Touhou series. The epitome of bullet hell, great music, amazing design, and hard as fuck. If you don’t know what all the fuss is about Touhou, this is a back to basics iteration of the engine and well worth the time and effort you may spend on it. The big difference in this version is that scoring is vastly simplified down to a meter that goes up when you collect certain items and down as time passes. Your power meter and bombs are also one and the same as they take the form of options in various configurations.

Nanoha Taiken 2nd Chu
http://www5b.biglobe.ne.jp/~aoi_pg/download/dl.htm

This is a sequel/updated version of the original Nanoha shmup they released at the last Comiket. It’s pretty much just a poor man’s Imperishable Night… switching characters and what-have-you. Like the first iteration of the game, it’s not sinfully bad, not particularly good or noteworthy either. Fairly forgettable compared to any of the Touhou games… or even lesser games of a similar vein like TWilight INSanity.

RayGing Blue
http://www.k2.dion.ne.jp/~itbs/pages/download/rgba.htm

Pretty standard vertical shmup. Not much to really recommend it. The trial version comes without music. The gimmick of the ‘color’ thing is also pretty lame. Each of the three ships charges their guns as they shoot enemies and then does a different thing to ‘bomb’ which depletes the gauge a limited amount (along with dropping the weapon power) until it charges back up. Each gets a different version… Red gets a bomb around it, Green gets homing shots, I forget what Blue gets. The thing is though… it takes about 5 seconds to go from empty to full… so… challenging it ain’t.

Rosenkruez Stilette
http://kurotama.sakura.ne.jp/product/rks/

If Megaman were a gothic witch, you’d get Rosenkruez Stilette. Coming on the heels of Megamari last year, this is nowhere near the hard mode kick in the junk of Tasofro’s Blue Bomber clone, but still packs a punch. The stages aren’t too bad, but the bosses are pretty killer. One has an unavoidable attack if you let her stand still for more than about a second, so you spend the fight trying to stay on her ass while simultaneously trying not to run into her because touching a boss nets you a nice 25% of your life. And lets not even talk about the prologue boss who tries to body slam you. If you like Megaman games, be sure to check this one out. Very well done, and while Megamari probably has the edge, it certainly at least has competition now. The demo version lets you play the Arcade mode (no story sequences) for the prologue and 3 stages. Also, let me note that the German this game uses is pretty hilarious.

 

Touhou Kokuhugi
http://president-room-id.hp.infoseek.co.jp/hp/tk_01/index.htm

 

This is a super ghetto clone of Shoot the Bullet. I’m sure it’s just because it’s the demo, but there’s no music at all and no sound outside of the menu. Instead of playing Aya and taking pictures… you’re using Reimu and making ‘seals…’ but it all amounts to the exact same photographic gameplay. This fan version features some especially rudimentary patterns though with none of the changing or evolution of the ones in StB, let alone any of the other Touhou games.

 

Trouble Witches
http://trouble_witches.mails.ne.jp/index.htm

Trouble Witches is another Studio Siesta game, and while they haven’t had any megahits yet, they’re well known enough for AirRade, which they’ve been milking for years. Trouble Witchs is another horizontal shmup. Only one character and two stages are playable in the trial version, but there are some neat mechanics going on with a bullet catching cat (that turns the shots into money if you kill the enemy) and a store that you buy extra magic and different shot patterns from.

Twinkle – Matataki
http://sirokurost.com/product.html

A pretty run of the million danmaku shmup. Not really too much to say about this one. It’s pretty much your generic run of the mill danmaku. If you’ve played any of them, you’ve pretty much played Matataki as well. Certainly doesn’t come anywhere near the elegance or aesthetic coolness of the Touhou games though. *shrug*

Zillion Beats
http://rezet.rdy.jp/rezetia/index8.html

Zillion Beats is hard. It’s a pretty typical vertical shmup though. A sort of strange BPM meter controls scoring, and you can flip back and forth between a spread vulcan weapon and a narrow beam laser with the powerups you pick up charging whichever you’re currently using. It’s pretty decent, though it sort of combines the “blow everything up” and “everything and its mother fires 80 bullets at you” shmup subgenres a little too much and makes it less about finesse or chaotic fun and more about just painful difficulty.

 

Starting from here is a handful of games of note that I stumbled across in the catalogue that didn’t have freely released demos, but for whatever reason are noteworthy. At least to me.

Fuuka Taisen
http://www.icnet.ne.jp/~my_friends/

 

Last Comiket had a very rudimentary version of this HiME based fighter released. They’ve added a few more characters and are approaching a full version. It’s still not the best game around, but it’s up there with other games like Queen of Hearts or Super Cosplay War Ultra. A solid little fighter that’s pretty fun to screw around with, but certainly nowhere near Melty Blood, IaMP or EFZ.

 

RefRain -Prism Memories-
http://www.rebrank.org/

Made by the same people that brought us the very well done Samidare. I’m pretty sure that they’ve sold a demo for the last two Comikets and supposedly it’ll be ready for release at this one. Samidare was rather well done with a unique engine where you had a shield that charged your guns by letting it get hit with bullets when it was on, making it both a game of dodging and planning ahead to know what patterns were best to shield through and then punish the enemy. I’m pretty sure RefRain uses the same engine.

 

Scarlet Weather Rhapsody
http://www.tasofro.net/

 

The sequel to the amazing projectile based fighter, Immaterial and Missing Power will be having a trial version sold. The engine is very much reworked from the ground up along with new characters. The demo will probably be what we already saw at Reitaisai (Touhou festival) containing just Aya, Marisa and Reimu, but it’ll still be a lot of fun to play around with the new engine and get a feel for how things have changed.

 

Fei/Ikki
http://p-s.rgr.jp/

I don’t know. In fact, I don’t think I want to know.