天下制覇

Just a list of updates without any interesting PVs or the like attached to them. …Tuesdays are slow in these here parts.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yet another expansion for Aquastyle‘s roguelike. I really wish they’d drop the whole game thing and just keep on with the awesome fight animations, or even go back to making their awesome SRW animated shorts. There’s a PV of Marisa and Sanae teaching you about the game too, but compared to Reimu kicking tail, that’s dildos. Also comes Dash! Sakuya-san, a brutal looking action game from Y³, who have been around, but have yet to make anything greater than 8 bit or based or not mah-jong. I like a good challenge… and knifing things. All in all, it’s looking like a pretty good Comiket so far. I’ll try to keep on top of news as PVs and announcements get made in the weeks leading up to it, but feel free to drop me a line if I miss anything.

Okay, so maybe this announcement is a month late, but they only actually put up the site… uh… a week ago. Shut up! *ahem* From the makers of Magical Battle Arena comes the oh so creatively titled Touhou Sky Arena, built on a refined version of the same engine but with at least half a dozen more bars and gauges. It’s like Reimu really is a jet now. Or something… Only Reimu and Marisa are confirmed so far, but it’s a safe bet that most of the cast from Touhou Sky Fight will be returning. The trial will be on sale at Winter Comiket this year.

What can I say? When it rains PVs, it pours. I’d still rather Frontier Aja be working on Big Bang Beat II, but this is still looking good too. Yuyuko’s and Youmu’s gothic redesigns look especially good. I’m hoping that with all the recycled enemies, Aja will put a little more thought into level design this time. Well, and that they’re just showing very very very deceptive videos and it’s on to a Symphony of the Night clone. I’ll rationalize however I damn well like, thank you very much.

Frontier Aja should already have their hands full enough with Big Bang Beat 2, but they’ve announced that they’re making good progress on the sequel to the gothic style Castlevania clone from last year, Scarlet Symphony. They’re bringing a trial version to Retaiwhatever on the 19th, but haven’t decided whether to put it up online yet. Still, I’ve got to say that I love the art style and re-imaginings of the characters that they’re doing for this, even if classique Castlevania games aren’t really my thing. I think I preferred SS1’s Sakuya design (I miss the brighter stripes), but this one’s not bad either. Chen’s the only confirmed new character so far, but that probably means that the rest of the PCB gang is coming with her this time around. Who knows, maybe they’ll even include their English (and French!) patch right out of the box this time. Silly doujin games getting official translations these days… what is the world coming to?

Because what the world needed was a crossbreed between Ice Climbers and Smash Bros.

Read the rest of this entry »

Go get it.
And now let us forget that this ever existed. I am hoping that this is like BMW Act 1 and just Werk’s way of doing a proof of concept test before making a real game, but somehow… I doubt it. It’s a shame to see all this spriting talent turn out what is basically a gimmicky Flash game. Now if they’d only make their Battle Idol Wars or whatever the hell their April Fool’s joke from a year or two back was… we’d be in business.

Man, is this the Comiket of terrible control schemes? You may as well just give yourself Carpal Tunnel now. Sky Fight uses the same control as Joust or Balloon Fight that involve rapidly tapping a button just to stay afloat. That’s okay in the party/free-for-all mode, but then they demand precise control in the single player modes. That doesn’t work. The party mode is kind of fun, but janky controls can be frustrating. The ⑨ item also has various effects, but most boil down to losing control of your character who then kills themself for the next 5 seconds. The stage hazards can also be irritating, but at least they don’t meow at you incessantly. Nice music and love the story mode presentation at least. And it has netplay built in, not that I can imagine adding lag will help things.

Somewhat disappointing. I expected Werk to at least get a full roster of bosses, but there are only four and they’re all pretty easy. If you’ve played both demos they’ve released, you’ve already played 3/8ths of the game. Yeah, there’s ‘hard’ mode too, but the patterns are exactly the same. You just don’t regen health between rounds. The dash controls are also a bit touchy, particularly when Kuroko drops her lagdozer on the screen. Misaka was also a pretty lame boss, despite the humor of her being Protoman. Oh well. I’d say that you get what you pay for, but at a third the cost of BMW, I don’t think so. English patch will be out Tuesday. Not because that’s how long it’ll take me, but because Tuesday’s a slow day and I want to finish this BBA block tonight. 3700 lines to go~

Just because I know that people are curious about the new mechanics for TH12.⑨… here you go. Chain freezing bullets, more or less as expected, but Cirno actually has a shot too. That may be the most surprising thing. Original from here, complete in its resplendent 40 frames per second. This also counts as my obligatory post announcing that I am well aware that it’s out. Now if you’ll excuse me, I was in the middle of translating… well… let’s just say that I’ll be more than happy to be done with it and hopefully never have to be involved with a two-headed goat nightmare ever again.